For sweetly here upon thee grew
The lesson which that beauty gave,
The ideal of the Pure and True
In earth and sky and gliding wave.
And it may be that all which lends
The soul an upward impulse here,
With a diviner beauty blends,
And greets us in a holier sphere.
Through groves where blighting never fell
The humbler flowers of earth may twine;
And simple draughts from childhood's well
Blend with the angel-tasted wine.
But be the prying vision veiled,
And let the seeking lips be dumb,— Where even seraph eyes have failed Shall mortal blindness seek to come?
We only know that thou hast gone,
And that the same returnless tide Which bore thee from us still glides on, And we who mourn thee with it glide.
On all thou lookest we shall look,
And to our gaze ere long shall turn
That page of God's mysterious book
We so much wish, yet dread to learn.
With Him, before whose awful power
Thy spirit bent its trembling knee ;—
Who, in the silent greeting flower,
And forest leaf, looked out on thee,
We leave thee, with a trust serene,
Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can move, While with thy childlike faith we lear
On Him whose dearest name is Love!
TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND
God bless ye, brothers!-in the fight
Ye're waging now, ye cannot fail,
For better is your sense of right
Than king-craft's triple mail.
Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban
More mighty is your simplest word;
The free heart of an honest man
Than crosier or the sword.
Go-let your bloated Church rehearse
The lesson it has learned so well;
It moves not with its prayer or curse
The gates of Heaven or hell.
Let the State scaffold rise again-
Did Freedom die when Russel died?
Forget ye how the blood of Vane
From earth's green bosom cried?
The great hearts of your olden time
Are beating with you, full and strong
All holy memories and sublime
And glorious round ye throng.
The bluff, bold men of Runnymede
Are with ye still in times like these;
The shades of England's mighty dead,
Your cloud of witnesses!
The truths ye urge are borne abroad
By every wind and every tide;
The voice of Nature and of God
Speaks out upon your side.
The weapons which your hands have found
Are those which Heaven itself has wrought,
Light, Truth, and Love ;-your battle ground
The free, broad field of Thought.
No partial, selfish purpose breaks
The simple beauty of your plan,
Nor lie from throne or altar shakes
Your steady faith in man.
The languid pulse of England starts
And bounds beneath your words of power,
The beating of her million hearts
Is with you at this hour!
Oh, ye who, with undoubting eyes,
Through present cloud and gathering storm, Behold the span of Freedom's skies, And sunshine soft and warm,—
Press bravely onward!-not in vain
Your generous trust in human kind;
The good which bloodshed could not gain
Your peaceful zeal shall find.
Press on the triumph shall be won
Of common rights and equal laws,
The glorious dream of Harrington,
And Sidney's good old cause.
Blessing the cotter and the crown,
Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup,
And, plucking not the highest down,
Lifting the lowest up.
Press on !—and we who may not share
'The toil or glory of your fight,
May ask, at least, in earnest prayer,
God's blessing on the right!
THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME
THE Quaker of the olden time !—
How calm and firm and true,
Unspotted by its wrong and crime,
He walked the dark earth through
The lust of power, the love of gain,
The thousand lures of sin
Around him, had no power to stain
The purity within.
With that deep insight which detects
All great things in the small,
And knows how each man's life affects
The spiritual life of all,
He walked by faith and not by sight,
By love and not by law;
The presence of the wrong or right
He rather felt than saw.
He felt that wrong with wrong partakes,
That nothing stands alone,
That whoso gives the motive, makes
His brother's sin his own.
And, pausing not for doubtful choice
Of evils great or small,
He listened to that inward voice
Which called away from all.
Oh! Spirit of that early day,
So pure and strong and true,
Be with us in the narrow way
Our faithful fathers knew.
Give strength the evil to forsake,
The cross of Truth to bear,
And love and reverent fear to make
Our daily lives a prayer!
ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path.
The Church beneath her trembling dome
Essayed in vain her ghostly charm:
Wealth shook within his gilded home
With strange alarm.
Fraud from his secret chambers fled
Before the sunlight bursting in:
Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head
To drown the din.
"Spare," Art, implored, "yon holy pile; That grand, old, time-worn turret spare; Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle, Cried out, "Forbear!"
Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,
Groped for his old accustomed stone,
Leaned on his staff, and wept, to find
His seat o'erthrown.
Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes, O'erhung with paly locks of gold: "Why smite," he asked in sad surprise, "The fair, the old ?”
Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke,
Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam;
Shuddering and sick of heart I woke,
As from a dream.
|