With its hoarse murmur, "Blood for
Blood 1"

Between him and the pitying Heaven!

III.

Low on his dungeon floor he knelt, And smote his breast, and on his chain,

Whose iron clasp he always felt,

His hot tears fell like rain; And near him, with the cold, calm look And tone of one whose formal part, Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart, Is measured out by rule and book, With placid lip and tranquil blood, The hangman's ghostly ally stood, Blessing with solemn text and word The gallows-drop and strangling cord; Lending the sacred Gospel's awe And sanction to the crime of Law.

IV.

He saw the victim's tortured brow,
The sweat of anguish starting there,
The record of a nameless woe

In the dim eye's imploring stare,
Seen hideous through the long, damp
hair,

Fingers of ghastly skin and bone
Working and writhing on the stone!
And heard, by mortal terror wrung
From heaving breast and stiffened tongue,
The choking sob and low hoarse prayer;
As o'er his half-crazed fancy came
A vision of the eternal flame,
Its smoking cloud of agonies,
Its demon-worm that never dies,
The everlasting rise and fall

Of fire-waves round the infernal wall;
While high above that dark red flood,
Black, giant-like, the gallows stood;
Two busy fiends attending there :
One with cold mocking rite and prayer,
The other with impatient grasp,
Tightening the death-rope's strangling
clasp.

| Whate'er revealed the keen excess Of man's extremest wretchedness: And who in that dark anguish saw

103

An earnest of the victim's fate, The vengeful terrors of God's law, The kindlings of Eternal hate, The first drops of that fiery rain Which beats the dark red realm of pain, Did he uplift his earnest cries

Against the crime of Law, which gave His brother to that fearful grave, Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies,

And Faith's white blossoms never wave To the soft breath of Memory's sighs; Which sent a spirit marred and stained, By fiends of sin possessed, profaned, In madness and in blindness stark, Into the silent, unknown dark? No, from the wild and shrinking dread With which he saw the victim led

Beneath the dark veil which divides Ever the living from the dead,

And Nature's solemn secret hides,
The man of prayer can only draw
New reasons for his bloody law;
New faith in staying Murder's hand
New reverence for the gallows-rope,
By murder at that Law's command;
As human nature's latest hope;
Last relic of the good old time,
When Power found license for its crime,
And held a writhing world in check
By that fell cord about its neck;
Stifled Sedition's rising shout,
Choked the young breath of Freedom out,
And timely checked the words which
sprung

From Heresy's forbidden tongue;
While in its noose of terror bound,
The Church its cherished union found,
Conforming, on the Moslem plan,
The motley-colored mind of man,
Not by the Koran and the Sword,
But by the Bible and the Cord!

VI.

O Thou! at whose rebuke the grave
Back to warm life its sleeper gave,
Beneath whose sad and tearful glance
The cold and changed countenance
Broke the still horror of its trance,
And, waking, saw with joy above,
A brother's face of tenderest love;
Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,
The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,
And from thy very garment's hem
Drew life and healing unto them,

The burden of thy holy faith

Was love and life, not hate and death,
Man's demon ministers of pain,

The fiends of his revenge were sent
From thy pure Gospel's element
To their dark home again.
Thy name is Love!

What, then, is he, Who in that name the gallows rears, An awful altar built to thee,

With sacrifice of blood and tears? O, once again thy healing lay

On the blind eyes which knew thee not, And let the light of thy pure day

Melt in upon his darkened thought. Soften his hard, cold heart, and show The power which in forbearance lies, And let him feel that mercy now Is better than old sacrifice!

VII.

As on the White Sea's charmed shore,
The Parsee sees his holy hill
With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained
o'er,

Yet knows beneath them, evermore,

The low, pale fire is quivering still; So, underneath its clouds of sin,

The heart of man retaineth yet Gleams of its holy origin;

And half-quenched stars that never set, Dim colors of its faded bow,

And early beauty, linger there,
And o'er its wasted desert blow
Faint breathings of its morning air,
O, never yet upon the scroll
Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul,
Hath Heaven inscribed "DESPAIR!"
Cast not the clouded gem away,
Quench not the dim but living ray,
My brother man, Beware!
With that deep voice which from the
skies

Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,
God's angel cries, FORBEAR!

RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.

O MOTHER EARTH! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
Fold softly in thy long embrace

That heart so worn and broken, And cool its pulse of fire beneath Thy shadows old and oaken.

Shut out from him the bitter word And serpent hiss of scorning; Nor let the storms of yesterday Disturb his quiet morning. Breathe over him forgetfulness

Of all save deeds of kindness, And, save to smiles of grateful eyes, Press down his lids in blindness.

There, where with living ear and eye
He heard Potomac's flowing,
And, through his tall ancestral trees,
Saw autumn's sunset glowing,
He sleeps, still looking to the west,
Beneath the dark wood shadow,
As if he still would see the sun
Sink down on wave and meadow.

Bard, Sage, and Tribune! - in himself
All moods of mind contrasting, —
The tenderest wail of human woe,

The scorn-like lightning blasting;
The pathos which from rival eyes

Unwilling tears could summon,
The stinging taunt, the fiery burst
Of hatred scarcely human!

Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower,
From lips of life-long sadness;
Clear picturings of majestic thought
Upon a ground of madness;
And over all Romance and Song

A classic beauty throwing,
And laurelled Clio at his side
Her storied pages showing.

All parties feared him each in turn
Beheld its schemes disjointed,
As right or left his fatal glance

And spectral finger pointed.
Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down
With trenchant wit unsparing,
And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand
The robe Pretence was wearing.

Too honest or too proud to feign
A love he never cherished,
Beyond Virginia's border line
His patriotism perished.
While others hailed in distant skies
Our eagle's dusky pinion,
He only saw the mountain bird
Stoop o'er his Old Dominion!

The voiceless utterance of his will,

His pledge to Freedom and to Truth, That manhood's heart remembers still The homage of his generous youth. Election Day, 1843.

TO RONGE.

STRIKE home, strong-hearted man! Down to the root

Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel. Thy work is to hew down. In God's name then

Put nerve into thy task. Let other men Plant, as they may, that better tree whose fruit

The wounded bosom of the Church shall heal.

Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy blows

Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand, On crown or crosier, which shall inter

pose

Between thee and the weal of Fatherland.

Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of all,

Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall

Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart monk.

Fight not with ghosts and shadows. Let us hear

The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened ear

Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the light

Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell of night.

Be faithful to both worlds; nor think to feed

Earth's starving millions with the husks of creed.

Servant of Him whose mission high and holy

Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and the lowly,

Thrust not his Eden promise from our sphere,

Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's

When the roused Teuton dashes from his

limb

The rusted chain of ages, help to bind His hands for whom thou claim'st the freedom of the mind!

CHALKLEY HALL.89

seas,

Weary and worn,

He came to meet his children and to bless

The Giver of all good in thankfulness
And praise for his return.

And here his neighbors gathered in to greet Their friend again,

this breeze

gales,

Which reap untimely green Bermuda's

vales,

And vex the Carib main.

To hear the good man tell of simple truth, Sown in an hour

men throng

The marble floor