Not vainly on thy gentle shrine,
Where Love, and Mirth, and Friendship twine Their varied gifts, I offer mine.
Now, joy and thanks forevermore !
The dreary night has wellnigh passed,
The slumbers of the North are o'er-
The Giant stands erect at last!
More than we hoped in that dark time, When, faint with watching, few and worn,
We saw no welcome day-star climb
The cold gray pathway of the morn!
O weary hours! O night of years !
What storms our darkling pathway swept,
Where, beating back our thronging fears,
By Faith alone our march we kept.
How jeered the scoffing crowd behind,
How mocked before the tyrant train,
As, one by one, the true and kind
Fell fainting in our path of pain
They died—their brave hearts breaking slowBut, self-forgetful to the last,
In words of cheer and bugle blow
Their breath upon the darkness passed.
A mighty host, on either hand,
Stood waiting for the dawn of day
To crush like reeds our feeble band;
The morn has come--and where are they?
Troop after troop their line forsakes ;
With peace-white banners waving free,
And from our own the glad shout breaks,
Of Freedom and Fraternity!
Like mist before the growing light,
The hostile cohorts melt away;
Our frowning foemen of the night
Are brothers at the dawn of day!
As unto these repentant ones
We open wide our toil-worn ranks,
Along our line a murmur runs
Of song, and praise, and grateful thanks.
Sound for the onset!-Blast on blast!
Till Slavery's minions cower and quail;
One charge of fire shall drive them fast
Like chaff before our Northern gale!
O, prisoners in your house of pain,
Dumb, toiling millions, bound and sold,
Look! stretched o'er Southern vale and plain,
The Lord's delivering hand behold!
Above the tyrant's pride of power,
His iron gates and guarded wall,
The bolts which shattered Shinar's tower,
Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall.
Awake! awake! my Father-land!
It is thy Northern light that shines;
This stirring march of Freedom's band
The storm-song of thy mountain pines.
Wake, dwellers where the day expires!
And hear, in winds that sweep your lakes
And fan your prairies' roaring fires,
The signal-call that Freedom makes!
TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS SHIPLEY,
GONE to thy Heavenly Father's rest!
The flowers of Eden round thee blowing,
And on thine ear the murmurs blest
Of Siloa's waters softly flowing!
Beneath that Tree of Life which gives
To all the earth its healing leaves
In the white robe of angels clad,
And wandering by that sacred river,
Whose streams of holiness make glad
The city of our God forever!
Gentlest of spirits!-not for thee
Our tears are shed, our sighs are given:
Why mourn to know thou art a free
Partaker of the joys of Heaven?
Finished thy work, and kept thy faith
In Christian firmness unto death:
And beautiful as sky and earth,
When Autumn's sun is downward going
The blessed memory of thy worth
Around thy place of slumber glowing!
But woe for us! who linger still
With feebler strength and hearts less lowly, And minds less steadfast to the will
Of Him whose every work is holy.
For not like thine, is crucified
The spirit of our human pride:
And at the bondman's tale of woe,
And for the outcast and forsaken,
Not warm like thine, but cold and slow,
Our weaker sympathies awaken.
Darkly upon our struggling way
The storm of human hate is sweeping;
Hunted and branded, and a prey,
Our watch amidst the darkness keeping,
Oh! for that hidden strength which can
Nerve unto death the inner man!
Oh! for thy spirit, tried and true,
And constant in the hour of trial,
Prepared to suffer, or to do,
In meekness and in self-denial.
Oh! for that spirit, meek and mild,
Derided, spurned, yet uncomplaining—
By man deserted and reviled,
Yet faithful to its trust remaining.
Still prompt and resolute to save
From scourge and chain the hunted slave!
Unwavering in the Truth's defence,
Even where the fires of Hate were burning, Th' unquailing eye of innocence
Alone upon th' oppressor turning!
O loved of thousands! to thy grave, Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore thee The poor man and the rescued slave
Wept as the broken earth closed o'er thee; And grateful tears, like summer rain, Quickened its dying grass again! And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine, Shall come the outcast and the lowly, Of gentle deeds and words of thine Recalling memories sweet and holy!
Oh! for the death the righteous die!
An end, like Autumn's day declining,
On human hearts, as on the sky,
With holier, tenderer beauty shining;
As to the parting soul were given
The radiance of an opening Heaven!
As if that pure and blessed light,
From off th' Eternal altar flowing,
Were bathing, in its upward flight,
The spirit to its worship going!
Is this thy voice, whose treble notes of fear
Wail in the wind? And dost thou shake to hear,
Acteon-like, the bay of thine own hounds,
Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their bounds?
Sore-baffled statesman! when thy eager hand,
With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack,
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land,
Hadst thou no fear, that, ere long, doubling back,
These dogs of thine might snuff on Slavery's track?
Where's now the boast, which even thy guarded
tongue,
Cold, calm and proud, in the teeth o' the Senate flung,
O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan,
Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man? How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting,
And pointing to the lurid heaven afar,
Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting,
Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star !
The Fates are just; they give us but our own;
Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.
There is an Eastern story, not unknown,
Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skill
Called demons up his water-jars to fill;
Deftly and silently, they did his will,
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