Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform Part 35

Go, leave behind thee all that mars The work below of man for man; With the white legions of the stars Do service such as angels can.

Wherever wrong shall right deny Or suffering spirits urge their plea, Be thine a voice to smite the lie, A hand to set the captive free!

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME.

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 l.u.s.t of power, the love of gain, The thousand lures of sin Around him, had no power to stain The purity within.

With that deep insight which detects All great things in the small, And knows how each man's life affects The spiritual life of all, He walked by faith and not by sight, By love and not by law; The presence of the wrong or right He rather felt than saw.

He felt that wrong with wrong partakes, That nothing stands alone, That whoso gives the motive, makes His brother's sin his own.

And, pausing not for doubtful choice Of evils great or small, He listened to that inward voice Which called away from all.

O Spirit of that early day, So pure and strong and true, Be with us in the narrow way Our faithful fathers knew.

Give strength the evil to forsake, The cross of Truth to bear, And love and reverent fear to make Our daily lives a prayer!

1838.

DEMOCRACY.

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 G.o.d!

Beautiful yet thy temples rise, Though there profaning gifts are thrown; And fires unkindled of the skies Are glaring round thy altar-stone.

Still sacred, though thy name be breathed By those whose hearts thy truth deride; And garlands, plucked from thee, are wreathed Around the haughty brows of Pride.

Oh, ideal of my boyhood's time!

The faith in which my father stood, Even when the sons of l.u.s.t and Crime Had 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 lie The groaning mult.i.tudes of earth!

Still to a stricken brother true, Whatever clime hath nurtured him; As stooped to heal the wounded Jew The worshipper of Gerizim.

By misery unrepelled, unawed By pomp or power, thou seest a Man In 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 G.o.d to him.

And there is reverence in thy look; For that frail form which mortals wear The Spirit of the Holiest took, And veiled His perfect brightness there.

Not from the shallow babbling fount Of vain philosophy thou art; He who of old on Syria's Mount Thrilled, 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 land I hear in every breeze that stirs, And round a thousand altars stand Thy banded party worshippers.

Not, to these altars of a day, At party's call, my gift I bring; But on thy olden shrine I lay A freeman's dearest offering.

The voiceless utterance of his will,-- His pledge to Freedom and to Truth, That manhood's heart remembers still The homage of his generous youth.

Election Day, 1841

THE GALLOWS.

Written on reading pamphlets published by clergymen against the abolition of the gallows.

I.

THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made The 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 sh.o.r.e, Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dim Evermore 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 mult.i.tude, And even the poor companions of His lot With their dim earthly vision knew Him not, How ill are His high teachings understood Where He hath spoken Liberty, the priest At 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 been The loudest war-cry of contending men; Priests, pale with vigils, in His name have blessed The 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s swim The 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 dew The vines and olives of the Holy Land; The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew; The white-sown bones of heretics, where'er They sank beneath the Crusade's holy spear; Goa's dark dungeons, Malta's sea-washed cell, Where with the hymns the ghostly fathers sung Mingled the groans by subtle torture wrung, Heaven's anthem blending with the shriek of h.e.l.l!

The midnight of Bartholomew, the stake Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flame Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's lake; New England's scaffold, and the priestly sneer Which mocked its victims in that hour of fear, When guilt itself a human tear might claim,-- Bear witness, O Thou wronged and merciful One!