THE FAREWELL
OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTH-
ERN BONDAGE
G
ONE, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air ;-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTH-
ERN BONDAGE
G
ONE, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air ;-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v27 - Wat to Zor
Whittier's was the voice that more
than a generation ago proclaimed most clearly the duty of man, and
that now calls us most sweetly to thoughts of olden days.
ARE
[All the following poems by Mr. Whittier have been copyrighted, and they
are reprinted here by permission of Houghton, Miffin & Co. , publishers. )
SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE
O"
F ALL the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme, -
On Apuleius's Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human hack,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borák, -
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Body of turkey, head of owl,
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
Feathered and ruffled in every part,
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
Scores of women, old and young,
Strong of muscle and glib of tongue,
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain:-
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead! ”
Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
## p. 15918 (#258) ##########################################
15918
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang —
Over and over the Mænads sang:
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!
Small pity for him! — He sailed away
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay,-
Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
With his own townspeople on her deck!
“Lay by! lay by! ) they called to him:
Back he answered, “Sink or swim !
Brag of your catch of fish again!
And off he sailed through the fog and rain!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
That wreck shall lie for evermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid,
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea,-
Looked for the coming that might not be!
What did the winds and the sea-birds say
Of the cruel captain who sailed away ? -
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide:
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,
And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead! »
Sweetly along the Salem road
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
## p. 15919 (#259) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15919
Little the wicked skipper knew
Of the fields so green and the sky so blue.
Riding there in his sorry trim,
Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting far and near —
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead! »
“Hear me, neighbors! ” at last he cried,
« What to me is this noisy ride ?
What is the shame that clothes the skin
To the nameless horror that lives within ?
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
Hate me and curse me,
I only dread
The hand of God and the face of the dead ! »
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead !
Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea
Said, “God has touched him! — why should we ? »
Said an old wife mourning her only son,
“Cut the rogue's tether and let him run! »
So with soft relentings and rude excuse,
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,
And gave him a cloak to hide him in,
And left him alone with his shame and sin.
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
TELLING THE BEES
H*
ERE is the place: right over the hill
Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-barred.
And the poplars tall:
## p. 15920 (#260) ##########################################
15920
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing above the wall.
There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun,–
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.
A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,
And the same brook sings of a year ago.
There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;
And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.
I mind me how with a lover's care
From my Sunday coat
I brushed off the burs, and smoothed my hair,
And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.
Since we parted, a month had passed, -
To love, a year;
Down through the beeches I looked at last
On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.
I can see it all now,- - the slantwise rain
Of light through the leaves,
The sundown's blaze on her window-pane,
The bloom of her roses under the eaves.
Just the same as a month before, -
The house and the trees,
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-
Nothing changed but the hives of bees.
Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back,
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,
Draping each hive with a shred of black.
Trembling I listened: the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!
## p. 15921 (#261) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15921
Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps
For the dead to-day:
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
The fret and the pain of his age away. ”
But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,
With his cane to his chin,
The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
Sung to the bees stealing out and in.
And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on:-
“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone! ”
MAUD MULLER
M
AUD MULLER, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast,-
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadow, across the road.
She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,
XXVII—996
## p. 15922 (#262) ##########################################
15922
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
« Thanks! said the Judge: "a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed. ”
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles bare and brown;
And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
.
Maud Muller looked and sighed:-"Ah me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!
(
“He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
My brother should sail a painted boat.
“I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.
"And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
And all should bless me who left our door. ”
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still. —
"A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
“And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.
“Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay:
«No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
## p. 15923 (#263) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15923
«But low of cattle and song of birds,
And health and quiet and loving words. ”
But he thought of his sisters proud and cold,
And his mother vain of her rank and gold;
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft in his marble hearth's bright glow
He watched a picture come and go;
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
“Ah, that I were free again!
«Free as when I rode that day
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay. ”
She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein,
## p. 15924 (#264) ##########################################
15924
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
And gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;
And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, “It might have been. ”
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these – It might have been ! »
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away.
BARBARA FRIETCHIE
U"
P FROM the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as a garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished Rebel horde,
## p. 15925 (#265) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15925
On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain wall, -
-
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;
In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the Rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
« Halt! » — the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
« Fire! ) - out blazed the rifle-blast.
(C
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
(Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag,” she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word:
«Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on! ” he said.
## p. 15926 (#266) ##########################################
15926
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
All day long through Frederick streets
Sounded the tread of marching feet;
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the Rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps, sunset light
Shone over it with a warın good-night.
Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.
Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!
IN SCHOOL DAYS
ST
Till sits the schoolhouse by the road,
A ragged beggar sunning;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry vines are running.
Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;
The charcoal frescoes on its wall;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing!
Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.
## p. 15927 (#267) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15927
It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.
For near her stood the little boy
Her childish favor singled;
His cap pulled low upon a face
Where pride and shame were mingled.
Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he lingered;
As restlessly her tiny hands
The blue-checked apron fingered.
He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.
“I'm sorry that I spelt the word:
I hate to go above you,
Because ” — the brown eyes lower fell –
“Because, you see, I love you! ”
Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing:
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!
He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her - because they love him.
THE ETERNAL GOODNESS
O
FRIENDS! with whom my feet have trod
The quiet aisles of prayer,
Glad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.
I trace your lines of argument;
Your logic linked and strong
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.
## p. 15928 (#268) ##########################################
15928
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:
Against the words ye bid me speak
My heart within me pleads.
Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
Who talks of scheme and plan?
The Lord is God! He needeth not
The poor device of man.
I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod;
I dare not fix with mete and bound
The love and power of God.
Ye praise his justice; even such
His pitying love I deem:
Ye seek a king; I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam.
Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss;
I hear our Lord's beatitudes
And prayer upon the cross.
More than your schoolmen teach, within
Myself, alas! I know:
Too dark ye cannot paint the sin,
Too small the merit show.
I bow my forehead to the dust,
I veil mine eyes for shame,
And urge, in trembling self-distrust,
A prayer without a claim.
I see the wrong that round me lies,
I feel the guilt within;
I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
The world confess its sin.
Yet in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings:
I know that God is good!
Not mine to look where cherubim
And seraphs may not see,
## p. 15929 (#269) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15929
But nothing can be good in him
Which evil is in me.
The wrong that pains my soul below,
I dare not throne above:
I know not of his hate — I know
His goodness and his love.
I dimly guess from blessings known
Of greater out of sight,
And with the chastened Psalmist, own
His judgments too are right.
I long for household voices gone,
For vanished smiles I long;
But God hath led my dear ones on,
And he can do no wrong.
I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.
And if my heart and flesh are weak
To bear an untried pain,
The bruised reed he will not break,
But strengthen and sustain.
No offering of my own I have,
Nor works my faith to prove;
I can but give the gifts he gave,
And plead his love for love.
And so beside the Silent Sea
I wait the muffled oar;
No harm from him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where his islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond his love and care.
## p. 15930 (#270) ##########################################
15930
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
ICHABOD!
S°
O FALLEN! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!
Revile him not, - the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!
Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven ?
Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains, –
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from tho great eyes
The soul has filed:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame:
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!
## p. 15931 (#271) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15931
THE BAREFOOT BOY
B
LESSINGS on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,-
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, – the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools:
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl, and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the groundnut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans ! -
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
## p. 15932 (#272) ##########################################
;5932
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy, -
Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel-pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread, -
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch; pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
## p. 15933 (#273) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15933
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat.
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
THE FAREWELL
OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTH-
ERN BONDAGE
G
ONE, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air ;-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash,
## p. 15934 (#274) ##########################################
15934
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, gone, - sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters,-
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone, - sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go,
Faint with toil, and racked with pain,
To their cheerless homes again,
There no brother's voice shall greet them,-
There no father's welcome meet them.
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
From the tree whose shadow lay
On their childhood's place of play,
From the cool spring where they drank,
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank,-
From the solemn house of prayer,
And the holy counsels there, -
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
Toiling through the weary day,
And at night the spoiler's prey.
Oh that they had earlier died,
Sleeping calmly, side by side,
Where the tyrant's power is o'er
And the fetter galls no more!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
## p. 15935 (#275) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15935 .
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
By the holy love He beareth,-
By the bruised reed He spareth,-
Oh, may He to whom alone
All their cruel wrongs are known,
Still their hope and refuge prove,
With a more than mother's love.
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
BARCLAY OF URY
P ,
U By the kirk and college green,
Rode the Laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.
Yet, with calm and stately mien,
Up the streets of Aberdeen
Came he slowly riding;
And to all he saw and heard
Answering not with bitter word,
Turning not for chiding.
Came a troop with broadswords swinging,
Bits and bridles sharply ringing,
Loose and free and froward;
Quoth the foremost, «Ride him down!
Push him! prick him! through the town
Drive the Quaker coward!
(
## p. 15936 (#276) ##########################################
15936
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
But from out the thickening crowd
Cried a sudden voice and loud,
Barclay! ho! a Barclay! ”
And the old man at his side
Saw a comrade, battle-tried,
Scarred and sunburned darkly,
Who with ready weapon bare,
Fronting to the troopers there,
Cried aloud, “God save us!
Call ye coward him who stood
Ankle-deep in Lützen's blood,
With the brave Gustavus ? »
"Nay, I do not need thy sword,
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;
“Put it up, I pray thee:
Passive to his holy will,
Trust I in my Master still,
Even though he slay me.
Pledges of thy love and faith,
Proved on many a field of death,
Not by me are needed. ”
Marveled much that henchman bold
That his laird, so stout of old,
Now so meekly pleaded.
«Woe's the day! ” he sadly said,
With a slowly shaking head
And a look of pity:
“Ury's honest lord reviled,
Mock of knave and sport of child,
In his own good city!
“Speak the word, and master mine,
As we charged on Tilly's line
And his Walloon lancers,
Smiting through their midst we'll teach
Civil look and decent speech
To these boyish prancers! ”
“Marvel not, mine ancient friend:
Like beginning, like the end,”
Quoth the Laird of Ury:
## p. 15937 (#277) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15937
(
“Is the sinful servant more
Than his gracious Lord who bore
Bonds and stripes in Jewry?
“Give me joy that in his name
I can bear, with patient frame,
All these vain ones offer:
While for them he suffereth long,
Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
Scoffing with the scoffer?
“Happier I, with loss of all,
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
With few friends to greet me,
Than when reeve and squire were seen,
Riding out from Aberdeen,
With bared heads to meet me;
“When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
Blessed me as I passed her door;
And the snooded daughter,
Through her casement glancing down,
Smiled on him who bore renown
From red fields of slaughter.
«Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
Hard the old friend's falling off,
Hard to learn forgiving;
But the Lord his own rewards,
And his love with theirs accords,
Warm and fresh and living.
« Through this dark and stormy night
Faith beholds a feeble light
Up the blackness streaking;
Knowing God's own time is best,
In a patient hope I rest
For the full day-breaking! ”
So the Laird of Ury said,
Turning slow his horse's head
Towards the Tolbooth prison,
Where, through iron grates, he heard
Poor disciples of the Word
Preach of Christ arisen!
XXVII-997
## p. 15938 (#278) ##########################################
15938
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Not in vain, Confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told
Of thy day of trial :
Every age on him who strays
From its broad and beaten ways
Pours its sevenfold vial.
Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,
O'er the rabble's laughter;
And while hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter:
Knowing this, that never yet
Share of truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow.
Thus, with somewhat of the seer,
Must the moral pioneer
From the future borrow:
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And on midnight's sky of rain
Paint the golden morrow!
CENTENNIAL HYMN
0
UR father's God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and thee;
To thank thee for the era done,
And trust thee for the opening one.
Here, where of old, by thy design,
The fathers spake that word of thine,
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.
## p. 15939 (#279) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15939
Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
Thou who hast here in concord furled
The war-flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfill
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.
For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank thee; but withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,–
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold!
Oh make thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of thy righteous law;
And, cast in some diviner mold,
Let the new cycle shame the old !
-
WINTER IN-DOORS
From (Snow-Bound)
A
T LAST the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow;
The bull's-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
## p. 15940 (#280) ##########################################
15940
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love's contentment more than wealth;
With simple wishes (not the weak
Vain prayers which no fulfillment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.
Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed with the cider mug their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks wrestling rolled :
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine.
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed
## p. 15941 (#281) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15941
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defense
Against the snow-ball's compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells sound;
And following where the teamsters led,
The wise old doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say -
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at duty's call,
Was free to urge her claim on all —
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother's aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer's sight
The Quaker matron's inward light,
The doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!
So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The almanac we studied o'er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score:
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid ;
And poetry — or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
## p. 15942 (#282) ##########################################
15942
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread;
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
And daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding-bell and dirge of death;
Jest, anecdote, and lovelorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!
CHILD-SONGS
ST
TILL linger in our noon of time
And on our Saxon tongue
The echoes of the home-born hymns
The Aryan mothers sung.
And childhood had its litanies
In every age and clime;
The earliest cradles of the race
Were rocked to poet's rhyme.
Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,
Nor green earth's virgin sod,
So moved the singer's heart of old
As these small ones of God.
## p. 15943 (#283) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15943
The mystery of unfolding life
Was more than dawning morn,
Than opening flower or crescent moon
The human soul new-born!
And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
. From lisping voices learns, —
The voices loved of him who sang
Where Tweed and Teviot glide,
That sound to-day on all the winds
That blow from Rydal-side, -
Heard in the Teuton's household songs
And folk-lore of the Finn,
Where'er to holy Christmas hearths
The Christ Child enters in!
Before life's sweetest mystery still
The heart in reverence kneels;
The wonder of the primal birth
The latest mother feels.
We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God hath his small interpreters:
The child must teach the man.
We wander wide through evil years,
Our eyes of faith grow dim;
But he is freshest from His hands
And nearest unto Him!
And haply, pleading long with Him
For sin-sick hearts and cold,
The angels of our childhood still
The Father's face behold.
Of such the kingdom! — Teach thou us,
0 Master most divine,
To feel the deep significance
Of these wise words of thine!
The haughty eye shall seek in vain
What innocence beholds;
## p. 15944 (#284) ##########################################
15944
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
No cunning finds the key of heaven,
No strength its gate unfolds.
Alone to guilelessness and love
That gate shall open fall;
The mind of pride is nothingness,
The childlike heart is all!
THE YANKEE GIRL
S**
HE sings by her wheel at that low cottage-door,
Which the long evening shadow is stretching before,
With a music as sweet as the music which seems
Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams!
How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,
Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!
And lightly and freely her dark tresses play
O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!
Who comes in his pride to that low cottage-door,-
The haughty and rich to the humble and poor?
'Tis the great Southern planter,— the master who waves
His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of slaves.
“Nay, Ellen, - for shame! Let those Yankee fools spin,
Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin;
Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!
“But thou art too lovely and precious a gem
To be bound to their burdens and sullied by them,-
For shame, Ellen, shame! - cast thy bondage aside,
And away to the South, as my blessing and pride.
« Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong,
But where flowers are blossoming all the year long;
Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,
And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!
“Oh, come to my home, where my servants shall all
Depart at thy bidding and come'at thy call;
They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe,
And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law. ”
»
Oh, could ye have seen her that pride of our girls –
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,
## p. 15945 (#285) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15945
With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel,
And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!
“Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of gold
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold;
Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear
The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!
“And the sky of thy South may be brighter than ours,
And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy flowers;
But dearer the blast round our mountains which raves,
Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves!
« Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel;
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be
In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee! »
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA
SPEA
PEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away,
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array,
Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they far or come they
near ?
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear.
“Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls:
Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy on their souls! ”
Who is losing ? who is winning ? —“Over hill and over plain,
I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain rain. "
Holy mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena, look once more. -
“Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before,
Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, foot and horse,
Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountain
course. ”
Look forth once more, Ximena! —“Ah! the smoke has rolled away;
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray.
Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels;
There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels.
“Jesu, pity! how it thickens! now retreat and now advance!
Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance!
## p. 15946 (#286) ##########################################
15946
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together
fall:
Like a plowshare in the fallow, through them plows the Northern
ball. )
>>
Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on.
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost and who has
won ? -
"Alas! alas! I know not: friend and foe together fall,
O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all!
с
"Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting — Blessed Mother, save my
brain !
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of slain.
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they fall, and strive to
rise :
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our eyes!
“O my heart's love! O my dear one! lay thy poor head on my
knee:
Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me ?
canst thou see?
O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal, look once more
On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy! mercy! all is o'er! ”
Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest;
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon his breast;
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said :
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy aid.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay,
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away;
But as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt,
She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-belt.
With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head;
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead:
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath
of pain,
And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly
smiled:
Was that pitying face his mother's ? did she watch beside her child ?
All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied:
With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother! ” murmured he, and died!
## p. 15947 (#287) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15947
>>
"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth,
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping lonely in the North!
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.
Look forth once more, Ximena! — Like a cloud before the wind
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death
behind:
Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive:
Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive! )
Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool gray shadows
fall:
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all!
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle
rolled;
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.
But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lack-
ing food;
Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung,
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern
tongue.
Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours:
Upward, through its smoke and ashes, spring afresh the Eden
flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air !
THE SEER
I
HEAR the far-off voyager's horn,
I see the Yankee's trail;
His foot on every mountain pass,
On every stream his sail.
He's whittling round St. Mary's Falls,
Upon his loaded wain;
He's leaving on the pictured rocks
His fresh tobacco stain.
I hear the mattock in the mine,
The axe-stroke in the dell,
## p. 15948 (#288) ##########################################
15948
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
The clamor from the Indian lodge,
The Jesuit's chapel bell.
I see the swarthy trappers come
From Mississippi's springs;
The war-chiefs with their painted bows,
And crest of eagle wings.
Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe
The steamer smokes and raves;
And city lots are staked for sale
Above old Indian graves.
By forest, lake, and waterfall,
I see the peddler's show,-
The mighty mingling with the mean,
The lofty with the low.
I hear the tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash of waves that soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm;
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form.
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find -
The raw material of a State,
Its music and its mind.
And, westering still, the star which leads
The New World in its train,
Has tipped with fire the icy spears
Of many a mountain chain. .
The snowy cones of Oregon
Are kindled on its way;
And California's golden sands
Gleam brighter in its ray.
## p. 15949 (#289) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15949
BURNS
(ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM)
N°
MORE these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover:
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of, live together.
Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
The moorland flower and peasant!
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!
The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning, -
The dews that washed the dust and soil
From off the wings of pleasure,
The sky that flecked the ground of toil
With golden threads of leisure.
I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
I hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying;
And like the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow!
than a generation ago proclaimed most clearly the duty of man, and
that now calls us most sweetly to thoughts of olden days.
ARE
[All the following poems by Mr. Whittier have been copyrighted, and they
are reprinted here by permission of Houghton, Miffin & Co. , publishers. )
SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE
O"
F ALL the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme, -
On Apuleius's Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human hack,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borák, -
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Body of turkey, head of owl,
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
Feathered and ruffled in every part,
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
Scores of women, old and young,
Strong of muscle and glib of tongue,
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain:-
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead! ”
Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
## p. 15918 (#258) ##########################################
15918
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang —
Over and over the Mænads sang:
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!
Small pity for him! — He sailed away
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay,-
Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
With his own townspeople on her deck!
“Lay by! lay by! ) they called to him:
Back he answered, “Sink or swim !
Brag of your catch of fish again!
And off he sailed through the fog and rain!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
That wreck shall lie for evermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid,
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea,-
Looked for the coming that might not be!
What did the winds and the sea-birds say
Of the cruel captain who sailed away ? -
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide:
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,
And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead! »
Sweetly along the Salem road
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
## p. 15919 (#259) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15919
Little the wicked skipper knew
Of the fields so green and the sky so blue.
Riding there in his sorry trim,
Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting far and near —
“Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead! »
“Hear me, neighbors! ” at last he cried,
« What to me is this noisy ride ?
What is the shame that clothes the skin
To the nameless horror that lives within ?
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
Hate me and curse me,
I only dread
The hand of God and the face of the dead ! »
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead !
Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea
Said, “God has touched him! — why should we ? »
Said an old wife mourning her only son,
“Cut the rogue's tether and let him run! »
So with soft relentings and rude excuse,
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,
And gave him a cloak to hide him in,
And left him alone with his shame and sin.
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!
TELLING THE BEES
H*
ERE is the place: right over the hill
Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-barred.
And the poplars tall:
## p. 15920 (#260) ##########################################
15920
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing above the wall.
There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun,–
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.
A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,
And the same brook sings of a year ago.
There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;
And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.
I mind me how with a lover's care
From my Sunday coat
I brushed off the burs, and smoothed my hair,
And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.
Since we parted, a month had passed, -
To love, a year;
Down through the beeches I looked at last
On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.
I can see it all now,- - the slantwise rain
Of light through the leaves,
The sundown's blaze on her window-pane,
The bloom of her roses under the eaves.
Just the same as a month before, -
The house and the trees,
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-
Nothing changed but the hives of bees.
Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back,
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,
Draping each hive with a shred of black.
Trembling I listened: the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!
## p. 15921 (#261) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15921
Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps
For the dead to-day:
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
The fret and the pain of his age away. ”
But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,
With his cane to his chin,
The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
Sung to the bees stealing out and in.
And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on:-
“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone! ”
MAUD MULLER
M
AUD MULLER, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast,-
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadow, across the road.
She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,
XXVII—996
## p. 15922 (#262) ##########################################
15922
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
« Thanks! said the Judge: "a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed. ”
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles bare and brown;
And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
.
Maud Muller looked and sighed:-"Ah me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!
(
“He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
My brother should sail a painted boat.
“I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.
"And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
And all should bless me who left our door. ”
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still. —
"A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
“And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.
“Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay:
«No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
## p. 15923 (#263) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15923
«But low of cattle and song of birds,
And health and quiet and loving words. ”
But he thought of his sisters proud and cold,
And his mother vain of her rank and gold;
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft in his marble hearth's bright glow
He watched a picture come and go;
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
“Ah, that I were free again!
«Free as when I rode that day
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay. ”
She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein,
## p. 15924 (#264) ##########################################
15924
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
And gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;
And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, “It might have been. ”
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these – It might have been ! »
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away.
BARBARA FRIETCHIE
U"
P FROM the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as a garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished Rebel horde,
## p. 15925 (#265) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15925
On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain wall, -
-
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;
In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the Rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
« Halt! » — the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
« Fire! ) - out blazed the rifle-blast.
(C
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
(Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag,” she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word:
«Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on! ” he said.
## p. 15926 (#266) ##########################################
15926
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
All day long through Frederick streets
Sounded the tread of marching feet;
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the Rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps, sunset light
Shone over it with a warın good-night.
Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.
Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!
IN SCHOOL DAYS
ST
Till sits the schoolhouse by the road,
A ragged beggar sunning;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry vines are running.
Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;
The charcoal frescoes on its wall;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing!
Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.
## p. 15927 (#267) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15927
It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.
For near her stood the little boy
Her childish favor singled;
His cap pulled low upon a face
Where pride and shame were mingled.
Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he lingered;
As restlessly her tiny hands
The blue-checked apron fingered.
He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.
“I'm sorry that I spelt the word:
I hate to go above you,
Because ” — the brown eyes lower fell –
“Because, you see, I love you! ”
Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing:
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!
He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her - because they love him.
THE ETERNAL GOODNESS
O
FRIENDS! with whom my feet have trod
The quiet aisles of prayer,
Glad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.
I trace your lines of argument;
Your logic linked and strong
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.
## p. 15928 (#268) ##########################################
15928
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:
Against the words ye bid me speak
My heart within me pleads.
Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
Who talks of scheme and plan?
The Lord is God! He needeth not
The poor device of man.
I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod;
I dare not fix with mete and bound
The love and power of God.
Ye praise his justice; even such
His pitying love I deem:
Ye seek a king; I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam.
Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss;
I hear our Lord's beatitudes
And prayer upon the cross.
More than your schoolmen teach, within
Myself, alas! I know:
Too dark ye cannot paint the sin,
Too small the merit show.
I bow my forehead to the dust,
I veil mine eyes for shame,
And urge, in trembling self-distrust,
A prayer without a claim.
I see the wrong that round me lies,
I feel the guilt within;
I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
The world confess its sin.
Yet in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings:
I know that God is good!
Not mine to look where cherubim
And seraphs may not see,
## p. 15929 (#269) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15929
But nothing can be good in him
Which evil is in me.
The wrong that pains my soul below,
I dare not throne above:
I know not of his hate — I know
His goodness and his love.
I dimly guess from blessings known
Of greater out of sight,
And with the chastened Psalmist, own
His judgments too are right.
I long for household voices gone,
For vanished smiles I long;
But God hath led my dear ones on,
And he can do no wrong.
I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.
And if my heart and flesh are weak
To bear an untried pain,
The bruised reed he will not break,
But strengthen and sustain.
No offering of my own I have,
Nor works my faith to prove;
I can but give the gifts he gave,
And plead his love for love.
And so beside the Silent Sea
I wait the muffled oar;
No harm from him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where his islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond his love and care.
## p. 15930 (#270) ##########################################
15930
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
ICHABOD!
S°
O FALLEN! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!
Revile him not, - the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!
Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven ?
Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains, –
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from tho great eyes
The soul has filed:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame:
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!
## p. 15931 (#271) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15931
THE BAREFOOT BOY
B
LESSINGS on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,-
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, – the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools:
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl, and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the groundnut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans ! -
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
## p. 15932 (#272) ##########################################
;5932
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy, -
Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel-pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread, -
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch; pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
## p. 15933 (#273) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15933
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat.
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
THE FAREWELL
OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTH-
ERN BONDAGE
G
ONE, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air ;-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash,
## p. 15934 (#274) ##########################################
15934
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, gone, - sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters,-
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone, - sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go,
Faint with toil, and racked with pain,
To their cheerless homes again,
There no brother's voice shall greet them,-
There no father's welcome meet them.
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
From the tree whose shadow lay
On their childhood's place of play,
From the cool spring where they drank,
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank,-
From the solemn house of prayer,
And the holy counsels there, -
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
Toiling through the weary day,
And at night the spoiler's prey.
Oh that they had earlier died,
Sleeping calmly, side by side,
Where the tyrant's power is o'er
And the fetter galls no more!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
## p. 15935 (#275) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15935 .
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
By the holy love He beareth,-
By the bruised reed He spareth,-
Oh, may He to whom alone
All their cruel wrongs are known,
Still their hope and refuge prove,
With a more than mother's love.
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
BARCLAY OF URY
P ,
U By the kirk and college green,
Rode the Laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.
Yet, with calm and stately mien,
Up the streets of Aberdeen
Came he slowly riding;
And to all he saw and heard
Answering not with bitter word,
Turning not for chiding.
Came a troop with broadswords swinging,
Bits and bridles sharply ringing,
Loose and free and froward;
Quoth the foremost, «Ride him down!
Push him! prick him! through the town
Drive the Quaker coward!
(
## p. 15936 (#276) ##########################################
15936
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
But from out the thickening crowd
Cried a sudden voice and loud,
Barclay! ho! a Barclay! ”
And the old man at his side
Saw a comrade, battle-tried,
Scarred and sunburned darkly,
Who with ready weapon bare,
Fronting to the troopers there,
Cried aloud, “God save us!
Call ye coward him who stood
Ankle-deep in Lützen's blood,
With the brave Gustavus ? »
"Nay, I do not need thy sword,
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;
“Put it up, I pray thee:
Passive to his holy will,
Trust I in my Master still,
Even though he slay me.
Pledges of thy love and faith,
Proved on many a field of death,
Not by me are needed. ”
Marveled much that henchman bold
That his laird, so stout of old,
Now so meekly pleaded.
«Woe's the day! ” he sadly said,
With a slowly shaking head
And a look of pity:
“Ury's honest lord reviled,
Mock of knave and sport of child,
In his own good city!
“Speak the word, and master mine,
As we charged on Tilly's line
And his Walloon lancers,
Smiting through their midst we'll teach
Civil look and decent speech
To these boyish prancers! ”
“Marvel not, mine ancient friend:
Like beginning, like the end,”
Quoth the Laird of Ury:
## p. 15937 (#277) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15937
(
“Is the sinful servant more
Than his gracious Lord who bore
Bonds and stripes in Jewry?
“Give me joy that in his name
I can bear, with patient frame,
All these vain ones offer:
While for them he suffereth long,
Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
Scoffing with the scoffer?
“Happier I, with loss of all,
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
With few friends to greet me,
Than when reeve and squire were seen,
Riding out from Aberdeen,
With bared heads to meet me;
“When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
Blessed me as I passed her door;
And the snooded daughter,
Through her casement glancing down,
Smiled on him who bore renown
From red fields of slaughter.
«Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
Hard the old friend's falling off,
Hard to learn forgiving;
But the Lord his own rewards,
And his love with theirs accords,
Warm and fresh and living.
« Through this dark and stormy night
Faith beholds a feeble light
Up the blackness streaking;
Knowing God's own time is best,
In a patient hope I rest
For the full day-breaking! ”
So the Laird of Ury said,
Turning slow his horse's head
Towards the Tolbooth prison,
Where, through iron grates, he heard
Poor disciples of the Word
Preach of Christ arisen!
XXVII-997
## p. 15938 (#278) ##########################################
15938
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Not in vain, Confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told
Of thy day of trial :
Every age on him who strays
From its broad and beaten ways
Pours its sevenfold vial.
Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,
O'er the rabble's laughter;
And while hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter:
Knowing this, that never yet
Share of truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow.
Thus, with somewhat of the seer,
Must the moral pioneer
From the future borrow:
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And on midnight's sky of rain
Paint the golden morrow!
CENTENNIAL HYMN
0
UR father's God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and thee;
To thank thee for the era done,
And trust thee for the opening one.
Here, where of old, by thy design,
The fathers spake that word of thine,
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.
## p. 15939 (#279) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15939
Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
Thou who hast here in concord furled
The war-flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfill
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.
For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank thee; but withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,–
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold!
Oh make thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of thy righteous law;
And, cast in some diviner mold,
Let the new cycle shame the old !
-
WINTER IN-DOORS
From (Snow-Bound)
A
T LAST the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow;
The bull's-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
## p. 15940 (#280) ##########################################
15940
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love's contentment more than wealth;
With simple wishes (not the weak
Vain prayers which no fulfillment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.
Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed with the cider mug their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks wrestling rolled :
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine.
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed
## p. 15941 (#281) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15941
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defense
Against the snow-ball's compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells sound;
And following where the teamsters led,
The wise old doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say -
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at duty's call,
Was free to urge her claim on all —
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother's aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer's sight
The Quaker matron's inward light,
The doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!
So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The almanac we studied o'er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score:
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid ;
And poetry — or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
## p. 15942 (#282) ##########################################
15942
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread;
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
And daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding-bell and dirge of death;
Jest, anecdote, and lovelorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!
CHILD-SONGS
ST
TILL linger in our noon of time
And on our Saxon tongue
The echoes of the home-born hymns
The Aryan mothers sung.
And childhood had its litanies
In every age and clime;
The earliest cradles of the race
Were rocked to poet's rhyme.
Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,
Nor green earth's virgin sod,
So moved the singer's heart of old
As these small ones of God.
## p. 15943 (#283) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15943
The mystery of unfolding life
Was more than dawning morn,
Than opening flower or crescent moon
The human soul new-born!
And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
. From lisping voices learns, —
The voices loved of him who sang
Where Tweed and Teviot glide,
That sound to-day on all the winds
That blow from Rydal-side, -
Heard in the Teuton's household songs
And folk-lore of the Finn,
Where'er to holy Christmas hearths
The Christ Child enters in!
Before life's sweetest mystery still
The heart in reverence kneels;
The wonder of the primal birth
The latest mother feels.
We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God hath his small interpreters:
The child must teach the man.
We wander wide through evil years,
Our eyes of faith grow dim;
But he is freshest from His hands
And nearest unto Him!
And haply, pleading long with Him
For sin-sick hearts and cold,
The angels of our childhood still
The Father's face behold.
Of such the kingdom! — Teach thou us,
0 Master most divine,
To feel the deep significance
Of these wise words of thine!
The haughty eye shall seek in vain
What innocence beholds;
## p. 15944 (#284) ##########################################
15944
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
No cunning finds the key of heaven,
No strength its gate unfolds.
Alone to guilelessness and love
That gate shall open fall;
The mind of pride is nothingness,
The childlike heart is all!
THE YANKEE GIRL
S**
HE sings by her wheel at that low cottage-door,
Which the long evening shadow is stretching before,
With a music as sweet as the music which seems
Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams!
How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,
Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!
And lightly and freely her dark tresses play
O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!
Who comes in his pride to that low cottage-door,-
The haughty and rich to the humble and poor?
'Tis the great Southern planter,— the master who waves
His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of slaves.
“Nay, Ellen, - for shame! Let those Yankee fools spin,
Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin;
Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!
“But thou art too lovely and precious a gem
To be bound to their burdens and sullied by them,-
For shame, Ellen, shame! - cast thy bondage aside,
And away to the South, as my blessing and pride.
« Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong,
But where flowers are blossoming all the year long;
Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,
And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!
“Oh, come to my home, where my servants shall all
Depart at thy bidding and come'at thy call;
They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe,
And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law. ”
»
Oh, could ye have seen her that pride of our girls –
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,
## p. 15945 (#285) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15945
With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel,
And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!
“Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of gold
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold;
Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear
The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!
“And the sky of thy South may be brighter than ours,
And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy flowers;
But dearer the blast round our mountains which raves,
Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves!
« Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel;
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be
In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee! »
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA
SPEA
PEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away,
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array,
Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they far or come they
near ?
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear.
“Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls:
Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy on their souls! ”
Who is losing ? who is winning ? —“Over hill and over plain,
I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain rain. "
Holy mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena, look once more. -
“Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before,
Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, foot and horse,
Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountain
course. ”
Look forth once more, Ximena! —“Ah! the smoke has rolled away;
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray.
Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels;
There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels.
“Jesu, pity! how it thickens! now retreat and now advance!
Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance!
## p. 15946 (#286) ##########################################
15946
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together
fall:
Like a plowshare in the fallow, through them plows the Northern
ball. )
>>
Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on.
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost and who has
won ? -
"Alas! alas! I know not: friend and foe together fall,
O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all!
с
"Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting — Blessed Mother, save my
brain !
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of slain.
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they fall, and strive to
rise :
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our eyes!
“O my heart's love! O my dear one! lay thy poor head on my
knee:
Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me ?
canst thou see?
O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal, look once more
On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy! mercy! all is o'er! ”
Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest;
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon his breast;
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said :
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy aid.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay,
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away;
But as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt,
She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-belt.
With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head;
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead:
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath
of pain,
And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly
smiled:
Was that pitying face his mother's ? did she watch beside her child ?
All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied:
With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother! ” murmured he, and died!
## p. 15947 (#287) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15947
>>
"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth,
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping lonely in the North!
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.
Look forth once more, Ximena! — Like a cloud before the wind
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death
behind:
Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive:
Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive! )
Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool gray shadows
fall:
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all!
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle
rolled;
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.
But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lack-
ing food;
Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung,
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern
tongue.
Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours:
Upward, through its smoke and ashes, spring afresh the Eden
flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air !
THE SEER
I
HEAR the far-off voyager's horn,
I see the Yankee's trail;
His foot on every mountain pass,
On every stream his sail.
He's whittling round St. Mary's Falls,
Upon his loaded wain;
He's leaving on the pictured rocks
His fresh tobacco stain.
I hear the mattock in the mine,
The axe-stroke in the dell,
## p. 15948 (#288) ##########################################
15948
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
The clamor from the Indian lodge,
The Jesuit's chapel bell.
I see the swarthy trappers come
From Mississippi's springs;
The war-chiefs with their painted bows,
And crest of eagle wings.
Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe
The steamer smokes and raves;
And city lots are staked for sale
Above old Indian graves.
By forest, lake, and waterfall,
I see the peddler's show,-
The mighty mingling with the mean,
The lofty with the low.
I hear the tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash of waves that soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm;
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form.
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find -
The raw material of a State,
Its music and its mind.
And, westering still, the star which leads
The New World in its train,
Has tipped with fire the icy spears
Of many a mountain chain. .
The snowy cones of Oregon
Are kindled on its way;
And California's golden sands
Gleam brighter in its ray.
## p. 15949 (#289) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15949
BURNS
(ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM)
N°
MORE these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover:
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of, live together.
Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
The moorland flower and peasant!
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!
The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning, -
The dews that washed the dust and soil
From off the wings of pleasure,
The sky that flecked the ground of toil
With golden threads of leisure.
I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
I hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying;
And like the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow!
