Poems in War Time, vol 3, part 4 | Page 9

awe,
The coming of the sword
we saw;
We heard the nearing steps of doom,
We saw the shade of
things to come.
In grief which they alone can feel
Who from a mother's wrong appeal,

With blended lines of fear and hope
We cast our country's
horoscope.
For still within her house of life
We marked the lurid sign of strife,

And, poisoning and imbittering all,
We saw the star of Wormwood
fall.

Deep as our love for her became
Our hate of all that wrought her
shame,
And if, thereby, with tongue and pen
We erred,--we were
but mortal men.
We hoped for peace; our eyes survey
The blood-red dawn of
Freedom's day
We prayed for love to loose the chain;
'T is shorn by
battle's axe in twain!
Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours
Has mined and heaved the
hostile towers;
Not by our hands is turned the key
That sets the
sighing captives free.
A redder sea than Egypt's wave
Is piled and parted for the slave;
A
darker cloud moves on in light;
A fiercer fire is guide by night.
The praise, O Lord! is Thine alone,
In Thy own way Thy work is
done!
Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast,
To whom be glory, first
and last!
1865.
AFTER THE WAR.
THE PEACE AUTUMN.
Written for the Fssex County Agricultural Festival, 1865.
THANK God for rest, where none molest,
And none can make afraid;

For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest
Beneath the homestead shade!
Bring pike and gun, the sword's red scourge,
The negro's broken
chains,
And beat them at the blacksmith's forge
To ploughshares for
our plains.
Alike henceforth our hills of snow,
And vales where cotton flowers;

All streams that flow, all winds that blow,
Are Freedom's
motive-powers.

Henceforth to Labor's chivalry
Be knightly honors paid;
For nobler
than the sword's shall be
The sickle's accolade.
Build up an altar to the Lord,
O grateful hearts of ours
And shape it
of the greenest sward
That ever drank the showers.
Lay all the bloom of gardens there,
And there the orchard fruits;

Bring golden grain from sun and air,
From earth her goodly roots.
There let our banners droop and flow,
The stars uprise and fall;
Our
roll of martyrs, sad and slow,
Let sighing breezes call.
Their names let hands of horn and tan
And rough-shod feet applaud,

Who died to make the slave a man,
And link with toil reward.
There let the common heart keep time
To such an anthem sung
As
never swelled on poet's rhyme,
Or thrilled on singer's tongue.
Song of our burden and relief,
Of peace and long annoy;
The
passion of our mighty grief
And our exceeding joy!
A song of praise to Him who filled
The harvests sown in tears,
And
gave each field a double yield
To feed our battle-years.
A song of faith that trusts the end
To match the good begun,
Nor
doubts the power of Love to blend
The hearts of men as one!
TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS.
The thirty-ninth congress was that which met in 1565 after the close of
the war, when it was charged with the great question of reconstruction;
the uppermost subject in men's minds was the standing of those who
had recently been in arms against the Union and their relations to the
freedmen.
O PEOPLE-CHOSEN! are ye not
Likewise the chosen of the Lord,


To do His will and speak His word?
From the loud thunder-storm of war
Not man alone hath called ye
forth,
But He, the God of all the earth!
The torch of vengeance in your hands
He quenches; unto Him
belongs
The solemn recompense of wrongs.
Enough of blood the land has seen,
And not by cell or gallows-stair

Shall ye the way of God prepare.
Say to the pardon-seekers: Keep
Your manhood, bend no suppliant
knees,
Nor palter with unworthy pleas.
Above your voices sounds the wail
Of starving men; we shut in vain
*
Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain. **
What words can drown that bitter cry?
What tears wash out the stain
of death?
What oaths confirm your broken faith?
From you alone the guaranty
Of union, freedom, peace, we claim;

We urge no conqueror's terms of shame.
Alas! no victor's pride is ours;
We bend above our triumphs won

Like David o'er his rebel son.
Be men, not beggars. Cancel all
By one brave, generous action; trust

Your better instincts, and be just.
Make all men peers before the law,
Take hands from off the negro's
throat,
Give black and white an equal vote.
Keep all your forfeit lives and lands,
But give the common law's
redress
To labor's utter nakedness.
Revive the old heroic will;
Be in the right as brave and strong
As ye

have proved yourselves in wrong.
Defeat shall then be victory,
Your loss the wealth of full amends,

And hate be love, and foes be friends.
Then buried be the dreadful past,
Its common slain be mourned, and
let
All memories soften to regret.
Then shall the Union's mother-heart
Her lost and wandering ones
recall,
Forgiving and restoring all,--
And Freedom break her marble trance
Above the Capitolian dome,

Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome home
November, 1865.
0. Andersonville prison. ** The massacre of Negro troops at Fort
Pillow.
THE HIVE AT