On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The resolution was adopted by Congress, January 31, 1865. The ratification by the requisite number of states was announced December 18, 1865.
IT is done!Clang of bell and roar of gunSend the tidings up and down.How the belfries rock and reel!How the great guns, peal on peal,Fling the joy from town to town!Ring, O bells!Every stroke exulting tellsOf the burial hour of crime.Loud and long, that all may hear,Ring for every listening earOf Eternity and Time!Let us kneelGod's own voice is in that peal,And this spot is holy ground.Lord, forgive us! What are we,That our eyes this glory see,That our ears have heard the sound!For the LordOn the whirlwind is abroad;In the earthquake He has spoken;He has smitten with His thunderThe iron walls asunder,And the gates of brass are broken.Loud and longLift the old exulting song;Sing with Miriam by the sea,He has cast the mighty down;Horse and rider sink and drown;"He hath triumphed gloriously!"Did we dare,In our agony of prayer,Ask for more than He has done?When was ever His right handOver any time or landStretched as now beneath the sun?How they pale,Ancient myth and song and tale,In this wonder of our days,When the cruel rod of warBlossoms white with righteous law,And the wrath of man is praise!Blotted outAll within and all aboutShall a fresher life begin;Freer breathe the universeAs it rolls its heavy curseOn the dead and buried sin!It is done!In the circuit of the sunShall the sound thereof go forth.It shall bid the sad rejoice,It shall give the dumb a voice,It shall belt with joy the earth!Ring and swing,Bells of joy! On morning's wingSend the song of praise abroad!With a sound of broken chainsTell the nations that He reigns,Who alone is Lord and God!1865.
NOT unto us who did but seekThe word that burned within to speak,Not unto us this day belongThe triumph and exultant song.Upon us fell in early youthThe burden of unwelcome truth,And left us, weak and frail and few,The censor's painful work to do.Thenceforth our life a fight became,The air we breathed was hot with blame;For not with gauged and softened toneWe made the bondman's cause our own.We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn,The private hate, the public scorn;Yet held through all the paths we trodOur faith in man and trust in God.We prayed and hoped; but still, with 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 feelWho from a mother's wrong appeal,With blended lines of fear and hopeWe cast our country's horoscope.For still within her house of lifeWe marked the lurid sign of strife,And, poisoning and imbittering all,We saw the star of Wormwood fall.Deep as our love for her becameOur hate of all that wrought her shame,And if, thereby, with tongue and penWe erred,—we were but mortal men.We hoped for peace; our eyes surveyThe blood-red dawn of Freedom's dayWe prayed for love to loose the chain;'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain!Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of oursHas mined and heaved the hostile towers;Not by our hands is turned the keyThat sets the sighing captives free.A redder sea than Egypt's waveIs 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.
THANK God for rest, where none molest,And none can make afraid;For Peace that sits as Plenty's guestBeneath the homestead shade!Bring pike and gun, the sword's red scourge,The negro's broken chains,And beat them at the blacksmith's forgeTo 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 chivalryBe knightly honors paid;For nobler than the sword's shall beThe sickle's accolade.Build up an altar to the Lord,O grateful hearts of oursAnd shape it of the greenest swardThat 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 tanAnd rough-shod feet applaud,Who died to make the slave a man,And link with toil reward.There let the common heart keep timeTo such an anthem sungAs 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 griefAnd our exceeding joy!A song of praise to Him who filledThe harvests sown in tears,And gave each field a double yieldTo feed our battle-years.A song of faith that trusts the endTo match the good begun,Nor doubts the power of Love to blendThe hearts of men as one!
The thirty-ninth congress was that which met in 1865 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 notLikewise the chosen of the Lord,To do His will and speak His word?From the loud thunder-storm of warNot man alone hath called ye forth,But He, the God of all the earth!The torch of vengeance in your handsHe quenches; unto Him belongsThe solemn recompense of wrongs.Enough of blood the land has seen,And not by cell or gallows-stairShall ye the way of God prepare.Say to the pardon-seekers: KeepYour manhood, bend no suppliant knees,Nor palter with unworthy pleas.Above your voices sounds the wailOf 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 guarantyOf 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 wonLike David o'er his rebel son.Be men, not beggars. Cancel allBy one brave, generous action; trustYour 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 redressTo labor's utter nakedness.Revive the old heroic will;Be in the right as brave and strongAs 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 letAll memories soften to regret.Then shall the Union's mother-heartHer lost and wandering ones recall,Forgiving and restoring all,—And Freedom break her marble tranceAbove the Capitolian dome,Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome homeNovember, 1865.* Andersonville prison.** The massacre of Negro troops at Fort Pillow.
IN the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,So terrible alive,Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, becameThe wandering wild bees' hive;And he who, lone and naked-handed, toreThose jaws of death apart,In after time drew forth their honeyed storeTo strengthen his strong heart.Dead seemed the legend: but it only sleptTo wake beneath our sky;Just on the spot whence ravening Treason creptBack to its lair to die,Bleeding and torn from Freedom's mountain bounds,A stained and shattered drumIs now the hive where, on their flowery rounds,The wild bees go and come.Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel,They wander wide and far,Along green hillsides, sown with shot and shell,Through vales once choked with war.The low reveille of their battle-drumDisturbs no morning prayer;With deeper peace in summer noons their humFills all the drowsy air.And Samson's riddle is our own to-day,Of sweetness from the strong,Of union, peace, and freedom plucked awayFrom the rent jaws of wrong.From Treason's death we draw a purer life,As, from the beast he slew,A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strifeThe old-time athlete drew!1868.
RIGHT in the track where ShermanPloughed his red furrow,Out of the narrow cabin,Up from the cellar's burrow,Gathered the little black people,With freedom newly dowered,Where, beside their Northern teacher,Stood the soldier, Howard.He listened and heard the childrenOf the poor and long-enslavedReading the words of Jesus,Singing the songs of David.Behold!—the dumb lips speaking,The blind eyes seeing!Bones of the Prophet's visionWarmed into being!Transformed he saw them passingTheir new life's portalAlmost it seemed the mortalPut on the immortal.No more with the beasts of burden,No more with stone and clod,But crowned with glory and honorIn the image of God!There was the human chattelIts manhood taking;There, in each dark, bronze statue,A soul was waking!The man of many battles,With tears his eyelids pressing,Stretched over those dusky foreheadsHis one-armed blessing.And he said: "Who hears can neverFear for or doubt you;What shall I tell the childrenUp North about you?"Then ran round a whisper, a murmur,Some answer devising:And a little boy stood up: "General,Tell 'em we're rising!"O black boy of Atlanta!But half was spokenThe slave's chain and the master'sAlike are broken.The one curse of the racesHeld both in tetherThey are rising,—all are rising,The black and white together!O brave men and fair women!Ill comes of hate and scorningShall the dark faces onlyBe turned to mourning?—Make Time your sole avenger,All-healing, all-redressing;Meet Fate half-way, and make itA joy and blessing!1869.
Moses Kimball, a citizen of Boston, presented to the city a duplicate of the Freedman's Memorial statue erected in Lincoln Square, Washington. The group, which stands in Park Square, represents the figure of a slave, from whose limbs the broken fetters have fallen, kneeling in gratitude at the feet of Lincoln. The group was designed by Thomas Ball, and was unveiled December 9, 1879. These verses were written for the occasion.
AMIDST thy sacred effigiesOf old renown give place,O city, Freedom-loved! to hisWhose hand unchained a race.Take the worn frame, that rested notSave in a martyr's grave;The care-lined face, that none forgot,Bent to the kneeling slave.Let man be free! The mighty wordHe spake was not his own;An impulse from the Highest stirredThese chiselled lips alone.The cloudy sign, the fiery guide,Along his pathway ran,And Nature, through his voice, deniedThe ownership of man.We rest in peace where these sad eyesSaw peril, strife, and pain;His was the nation's sacrifice,And ours the priceless gain.O symbol of God's will on earthAs it is done above!Bear witness to the cost and worthOf justice and of love.Stand in thy place and testifyTo coming ages long,That truth is stronger than a lie,And righteousness than wrong.
A number of students of Fisk University, under the direction of one of the officers, gave a series of concerts in the Northern States, for the purpose of establishing the college on a firmer financial foundation. Their hymns and songs, mostly in a minor key, touched the hearts of the people, and were received as peculiarly expressive of a race delivered from bondage.
VOICE of a people suffering long,The pathos of their mournful song,The sorrow of their night of wrong!Their cry like that which Israel gave,A prayer for one to guide and save,Like Moses by the Red Sea's wave!The stern accord her timbrel lentTo Miriam's note of triumph sentO'er Egypt's sunken armament!The tramp that startled camp and town,And shook the walls of slavery down,The spectral march of old John Brown!The storm that swept through battle-days,The triumph after long delays,The bondmen giving God the praise!Voice of a ransomed race, sing onTill Freedom's every right is won,And slavery's every wrong undone1880.
The earliest poem in this division was my youthful tribute to the great reformer when himself a young man he was first sounding his trumpet in Essex County. I close with the verses inscribed to him at the end of his earthly career, May 24, 1879. My poetical service in the cause of freedom is thus almost synchronous with his life of devotion to the same cause.
THE storm and peril overpast,The hounding hatred shamed and still,Go, soul of freedom! take at lastThe place which thou alone canst fill.Confirm the lesson taught of old—Life saved for self is lost, while theyWho lose it in His service holdThe lease of God's eternal day.Not for thyself, but for the slaveThy words of thunder shook the world;No selfish griefs or hatred gaveThe strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.From lips that Sinai's trumpet blewWe heard a tender under song;Thy very wrath from pity grew,From love of man thy hate of wrong.Now past and present are as one;The life below is life above;Thy mortal years have but begunThy immortality of love.With somewhat of thy lofty faithWe lay thy outworn garment by,Give death but what belongs to death,And life the life that cannot die!Not for a soul like thine the calmOf selfish ease and joys of sense;But duty, more than crown or palm,Its own exceeding recompense.Go up and on thy day well done,Its morning promise well fulfilled,Arise to triumphs yet unwon,To holier tasks that God has willed.Go, leave behind thee all that marsThe work below of man for man;With the white legions of the starsDo service such as angels can.Wherever wrong shall right denyOr suffering spirits urge their plea,Be thine a voice to smite the lie,A hand to set the captive free!
THE Quaker of the olden time!How calm and firm and true,Unspotted by its wrong and crime,He walked the dark earth through.The lust of power, the love of gain,The thousand lures of sinAround him, had no power to stainThe purity within.With that deep insight which detectsAll great things in the small,And knows how each man's life affectsThe spiritual life of all,He walked by faith and not by sight,By love and not by law;The presence of the wrong or rightHe rather felt than saw.He felt that wrong with wrong partakes,That nothing stands alone,That whoso gives the motive, makesHis brother's sin his own.And, pausing not for doubtful choiceOf evils great or small,He listened to that inward voiceWhich called away from all.O Spirit of that early day,So pure and strong and true,Be with us in the narrow wayOur faithful fathers knew.Give strength the evil to forsake,The cross of Truth to bear,And love and reverent fear to makeOur daily lives a prayer!1838.
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.—MATTHEW vii. 12.
BEARER of Freedom's holy light,Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod,The foe of all which pains the sight,Or wounds the generous ear of God!Beautiful yet thy temples rise,Though there profaning gifts are thrown;And fires unkindled of the skiesAre glaring round thy altar-stone.Still sacred, though thy name be breathedBy those whose hearts thy truth deride;And garlands, plucked from thee, are wreathedAround the haughty brows of Pride.Oh, ideal of my boyhood's time!The faith in which my father stood,Even when the sons of Lust and CrimeHad stained thy peaceful courts with blood!Still to those courts my footsteps turn,For through the mists which darken there,I see the flame of Freedom burn,—The Kebla of the patriot's prayer!The generous feeling, pure and warm,Which owns the right of all divine;The pitying heart, the helping arm,The prompt self-sacrifice, are thine.Beneath thy broad, impartial eye,How fade the lines of caste and birth!How equal in their suffering lieThe groaning multitudes of earth!Still to a stricken brother true,Whatever clime hath nurtured him;As stooped to heal the wounded JewThe worshipper of Gerizim.By misery unrepelled, unawedBy pomp or power, thou seest a ManIn prince or peasant, slave or lord,Pale priest, or swarthy artisan.Through all disguise, form, place, or name,Beneath the flaunting robes of sin,Through poverty and squalid shame,Thou lookest on the man within.On man, as man, retaining yet,Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim,The crown upon his forehead set,The immortal gift of God to him.And there is reverence in thy look;For that frail form which mortals wearThe Spirit of the Holiest took,And veiled His perfect brightness there.Not from the shallow babbling fountOf vain philosophy thou art;He who of old on Syria's MountThrilled, warmed, by turns, the listener's heart,In holy words which cannot die,In thoughts which angels leaned to know,Proclaimed thy message from on high,Thy mission to a world of woe.That voice's echo hath not died!From the blue lake of Galilee,And Tabor's lonely mountain-side,It calls a struggling world to thee.Thy name and watchword o'er this landI hear in every breeze that stirs,And round a thousand altars standThy banded party worshippers.Not, to these altars of a day,At party's call, my gift I bring;But on thy olden shrine I layA freeman's dearest offering.The voiceless utterance of his will,—His pledge to Freedom and to Truth,That manhood's heart remembers stillThe homage of his generous youth.Election Day, 1841
Written on reading pamphlets published by clergymen against the abolition of the gallows.
I.THE suns of eighteen centuries have shoneSince the Redeemer walked with man, and madeThe fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,And mountain moss, a pillow for His head;And He, who wandered with the peasant Jew,And broke with publicans the bread of shame,And drank with blessings, in His Father's name,The water which Samaria's outcast drew,Hath now His temples upon every shore,Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dimEvermore rising, with low prayer and hymn,From lips which press the temple's marble floor,Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.
II.Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing good,"He fed a blind and selfish multitude,And even the poor companions of His lotWith their dim earthly vision knew Him not,How ill are His high teachings understoodWhere He hath spoken Liberty, the priestAt His own altar binds the chain anew;Where He hath bidden to Life's equal feast,The starving many wait upon the few;Where He hath spoken Peace, His name hath beenThe loudest war-cry of contending men;Priests, pale with vigils, in His name have blessedThe unsheathed sword, and laid the spear in rest,Wet the war-banner with their sacred wine,And crossed its blazon with the holy sign;Yea, in His name who bade the erring live,And daily taught His lesson, to forgive!Twisted the cord and edged the murderous steel;And, with His words of mercy on their lips,Hung gloating o'er the pincer's burning grips,And the grim horror of the straining wheel;Fed the slow flame which gnawed the victim's limb,Who saw before his searing eyeballs swimThe image of their Christ in cruel zeal,Through the black torment-smoke, held mockingly to him!
III.The blood which mingled with the desert sand,And beaded with its red and ghastly dewThe vines and olives of the Holy Land;The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew;The white-sown bones of heretics, where'erThey sank beneath the Crusade's holy spear;Goa's dark dungeons, Malta's sea-washed cell,Where with the hymns the ghostly fathers sungMingled the groans by subtle torture wrung,Heaven's anthem blending with the shriek of hell!The midnight of Bartholomew, the stakeOf Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flameWhich Calvin kindled by Geneva's lake;New England's scaffold, and the priestly sneerWhich mocked its victims in that hour of fear,When guilt itself a human tear might claim,—Bear witness, O Thou wronged and merciful One!That Earth's most hateful crimes have in Thyname been done!
IV.Thank God! that I have lived to see the timeWhen the great truth begins at last to findAn utterance from the deep heart of mankind,Earnest and clear, that all Revenge is Crime,That man is holier than a creed, that allRestraint upon him must consult his good,Hope's sunshine linger on his prison wall,And Love look in upon his solitude.The beautiful lesson which our Saviour taughtThrough long, dark centuries its way hath wroughtInto the common mind and popular thought;And words, to which by Galilee's lake shoreThe humble fishers listened with hushed oar,Have found an echo in the general heart,And of the public faith become a living part.
V.Who shall arrest this tendency? Bring backThe cells of Venice and the bigot's rack?Harden the softening human heart againTo cold indifference to a brother's pain?Ye most unhappy men! who, turned awayFrom the mild sunshine of the Gospel day,Grope in the shadows of Man's twilight time,What mean ye, that with ghoul-like zest ye brood,O'er those foul altars streaming with warm blood,Permitted in another age and clime?Why cite that law with which the bigot JewRebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he knewNo evil in the Just One? Wherefore turnTo the dark, cruel past? Can ye not learnFrom the pure Teacher's life how mildly freeIs the great Gospel of Humanity?The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and no moreMexitli's altars soak with human gore,No more the ghastly sacrifices smokeThrough the green arches of the Druid's oak;And ye of milder faith, with your high claimOf prophet-utterance in the Holiest name,Will ye become the Druids of our timeSet up your scaffold-altars in our land,And, consecrators of Law's darkest crime,Urge to its loathsome work the hangman's hand?Beware, lest human nature, roused at last,From its peeled shoulder your encumbrance cast,And, sick to loathing of your cry for blood,Rank ye with those who led their victims roundThe Celt's red altar and the Indian's mound,Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, a pagan brotherhood!1842.
As o'er his furrowed fields which lieBeneath a coldly dropping sky,Yet chill with winter's melted snow,The husbandman goes forth to sow,Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blastThe ventures of thy seed we cast,And trust to warmer sun and rainTo swell the germs and fill the grain.Who calls thy glorious service hard?Who deems it not its own reward?Who, for its trials, counts it less.A cause of praise and thankfulness?It may not be our lot to wieldThe sickle in the ripened field;Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,The reaper's song among the sheaves.Yet where our duty's task is wroughtIn unison with God's great thought,The near and future blend in one,And whatsoe'er is willed, is done!And ours the grateful service whenceComes day by day the recompense;The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed,The fountain and the noonday shade.And were this life the utmost span,The only end and aim of man,Better the toil of fields like theseThan waking dream and slothful ease.But life, though falling like our grain,Like that revives and springs again;And, early called, how blest are theyWho wait in heaven their harvest-day!1843.
This poem was addressed to those who like Richard Cobden and John Bright were seeking the reform of political evils in Great Britain by peaceful and Christian means. It will be remembered that the Anti-Corn Law League was in the midst of its labors at this time.
GOD bless ye, brothers! in the fightYe 're waging now, ye cannot fail,For better is your sense of rightThan king-craft's triple mail.Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban,More mighty is your simplest word;The free heart of an honest manThan crosier or the sword.Go, let your blinded Church rehearseThe lesson it has learned so well;It moves not with its prayer or curseThe gates of heaven or hell.Let the State scaffold rise again;Did Freedom die when Russell died?Forget ye how the blood of VaneFrom earth's green bosom cried?The great hearts of your olden timeAre beating with you, full and strong;All holy memories and sublimeAnd glorious round ye throng.The bluff, bold men of RunnymedeAre with ye still in times like these;The shades of England's mighty dead,Your cloud of witnesses!The truths ye urge are borne abroadBy every wind and every tide;The voice of Nature and of GodSpeaks out upon your side.The weapons which your hands have foundAre those which Heaven itself has wrought,Light, Truth, and Love; your battle-groundThe free, broad field of Thought.No partial, selfish purpose breaksThe simple beauty of your plan,Nor lie from throne or altar shakesYour steady faith in man.The languid pulse of England startsAnd bounds beneath your words of power,The beating of her million heartsIs with you at this hour!O ye who, with undoubting eyes,Through present cloud and gathering storm,Behold the span of Freedom's skies,And sunshine soft and warm;Press bravely onward! not in vainYour generous trust in human-kind;The good which bloodshed could not gainYour peaceful zeal shall find.Press on! the triumph shall be wonOf common rights and equal laws,The glorious dream of Harrington,And Sidney's good old cause.Blessing the cotter and the crown,Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup;And, plucking not the highest down,Lifting the lowest up.Press on! and we who may not shareThe toil or glory of your fightMay ask, at least, in earnest prayer,God's blessing on the right!1843.
Some leading sectarian papers had lately published the letter of a clergyman, giving an account of his attendance upon a criminal (who had committed murder during a fit of intoxication), at the time of his execution, in western New York. The writer describes the agony of the wretched being, his abortive attempts at prayer, his appeal for life, his fear of a violent death; and, after declaring his belief that the poor victim died without hope of salvation, concludes with a warm eulogy upon the gallows, being more than ever convinced of its utility by the awful dread and horror which it inspired.
I.FAR from his close and noisome cell,By grassy lane and sunny stream,Blown clover field and strawberry dell,And green and meadow freshness, fellThe footsteps of his dream.Again from careless feet the dewOf summer's misty morn he shook;Again with merry heart he threwHis light line in the rippling brook.Back crowded all his school-day joys;He urged the ball and quoit again,And heard the shout of laughing boysCome ringing down the walnut glen.Again he felt the western breeze,With scent of flowers and crisping hay;And down again through wind-stirred treesHe saw the quivering sunlight play.An angel in home's vine-hung door,He saw his sister smile once more;Once more the truant's brown-locked headUpon his mother's knees was laid,And sweetly lulled to slumber there,With evening's holy hymn and prayer!II.He woke. At once on heart and brainThe present Terror rushed again;Clanked on his limbs the felon's chainHe woke, to hear the church-tower tellTime's footfall on the conscious bell,And, shuddering, feel that clanging dinHis life's last hour had ushered in;To see within his prison-yard,Through the small window, iron barred,The gallows shadow rising dimBetween the sunrise heaven and him;A horror in God's blessed air;A blackness in his morning light;Like some foul devil-altar thereBuilt up by demon hands at night.And, maddened by that evil sight,Dark, horrible, confused, and strange,A chaos of wild, weltering change,All power of check and guidance gone,Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on.In vain he strove to breathe a prayer,In vain he turned the Holy Book,He only heard the gallows-stairCreak as the wind its timbers shook.No dream for him of sin forgiven,While still that baleful spectre stood,With its hoarse murmur, "Blood for Blood!"Between him and the pitying Heaven.III.Low on his dungeon floor he knelt,And smote his breast, and on his chain,Whose iron clasp he always felt,His hot tears fell like rain;And near him, with the cold, calm lookAnd tone of one whose formal part,Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart,Is measured out by rule and book,With placid lip and tranquil blood,The hangman's ghostly ally stood,Blessing with solemn text and wordThe gallows-drop and strangling cord;Lending the sacred Gospel's aweAnd sanction to the crime of Law.IV.He saw the victim's tortured brow,The sweat of anguish starting there,The record of a nameless woeIn the dim eye's imploring stare,Seen hideous through the long, damp hair,—Fingers of ghastly skin and boneWorking and writhing on the stone!And heard, by mortal terror wrungFrom heaving breast and stiffened tongue,The choking sob and low hoarse prayer;As o'er his half-crazed fancy cameA vision of the eternal flame,Its smoking cloud of agonies,Its demon-worm that never dies,The everlasting rise and fallOf fire-waves round the infernal wall;While high above that dark red flood,Black, giant-like, the gallows stood;Two busy fiends attending thereOne with cold mocking rite and prayer,The other with impatient grasp,Tightening the death-rope's strangling clasp.V.The unfelt rite at length was done,The prayer unheard at length was said,An hour had passed: the noonday sunSmote on the features of the dead!And he who stood the doomed beside,Calm gauger of the swelling tideOf mortal agony and fear,Heeding with curious eye and earWhate'er revealed the keen excessOf man's extremest wretchednessAnd who in that dark anguish sawAn earnest of the victim's fate,The vengeful terrors of God's law,The kindlings of Eternal hate,The first drops of that fiery rainWhich beats the dark red realm of pain,Did he uplift his earnest criesAgainst the crime of Law, which gaveHis brother to that fearful grave,Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies,And Faith's white blossoms never waveTo the soft breath of Memory's sighs;Which sent a spirit marred and stained,By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,In madness and in blindness stark,Into the silent, unknown dark?No, from the wild and shrinking dread,With which he saw the victim ledBeneath the dark veil which dividesEver the living from the dead,And Nature's solemn secret hides,The man of prayer can only drawNew reasons for his bloody law;New faith in staying Murder's handBy murder at that Law's command;New reverence for the gallows-rope,As human nature's latest hope;Last relic of the good old time,When Power found license for its crime,And held a writhing world in checkBy that fell cord about its neck;Stifled Sedition's rising shout,Choked the young breath of Freedom out,And timely checked the words which sprungFrom Heresy's forbidden tongue;While in its noose of terror bound,The Church its cherished union found,Conforming, on the Moslem plan,The motley-colored mind of man,Not by the Koran and the Sword,But by the Bible and the Cord.VI.O Thou at whose rebuke the graveBack to warm life its sleeper gave,Beneath whose sad and tearful glanceThe cold and changed countenanceBroke the still horror of its trance,And, waking, saw with joy above,A brother's face of tenderest love;Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,And from Thy very garment's hemDrew life and healing unto them,The burden of Thy holy faithWas love and life, not hate and death;Man's demon ministers of pain,The fiends of his revenge, were sentFrom thy pure Gospel's elementTo their dark home again.Thy name is Love! What, then, is he,Who in that name the gallows rears,An awful altar built to Thee,With sacrifice of blood and tears?Oh, once again Thy healing layOn the blind eyes which knew Thee not,And let the light of Thy pure dayMelt in upon his darkened thought.Soften his hard, cold heart, and showThe power which in forbearance lies,And let him feel that mercy nowIs better than old sacrifice.VII.As on the White Sea's charmed shore,The Parsee sees his holy hill (10)With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained o'er,Yet knows beneath them, evermore,The low, pale fire is quivering still;So, underneath its clouds of sin,The heart of man retaineth yetGleams of its holy origin;And half-quenched stars that never set,Dim colors of its faded bow,And early beauty, linger there,And o'er its wasted desert blowFaint breathings of its morning air.Oh, never yet upon the scrollOf the sin-stained, but priceless soul,Hath Heaven inscribed "Despair!"Cast not the clouded gem away,Quench not the dim but living ray,—My brother man, Beware!With that deep voice which from the skiesForbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,God's angel cries, Forbear.1843