TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER. Draw the mouths of bigots down, Plague ambition's dream, and sit Heavy on the hypocrite, 173 Haunt the rich man's door, and ride I, the urchin unto whom, I, the man of middle years, In whose sable locks appears Many a warning fleck of gray, Looking back to that far day, And thy primal lessons, feel Grateful smiles my lips unseal, As, remembering thee, I blend Olden teacher, present friend, Wise with antiquarian search, In the scrolls of State and Church: Named on history's title-page, Parish-clerk and justice sage; For the ferule's wholesome awe Wielding now the sword of law. Threshing Time's neglected sheaves, Gathering up the scattered leaves Which the wrinkled sibyl cast Careless from her as she passed, Twofold citizen art thou, Freeman of the past and now. He who bore thy name of old Midway in the heavens did hold Over Gibeon moon and sun; Thou hast bidden them backward run; Let the busy ones deride Dabbling, in their noisy way, In the puddles of to-day, Little know they of that vast Solemn ocean of the past, - On whose margin, wreck-bespread, On that shore, with fowler's tact, Or the flip that wellnigh made Doubtful, puritanic saint; Touched their beards December's frost. Time is hastening on, and we Well, whatever lot be mine, THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed A dubious light on every upturned head, On locks like those of Absalom the fair, On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair, On blank indifference and on curious stare; On the pale Showman reading from his stage The hieroglyphics of that facial page; Half sad, half scornful, listening to the bruit Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot, And the shrill call, across the general din, "Roll up your curtain! Let the show begin! At length a murmur like the winds that break Into green waves the prairie's grassy lake, Deepened and swelled to music clear and loud, And, as the west-wind lifts a summer cloud, The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far A green land stretching to the evening star, Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees And flowers hummed over by the desert bees, Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of greenness show Fantastic outcrops of the rock below, The slow result of patient Nature's pains, And plastic fingering of her sun and rains, Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely windowed hall, And long escarpment of half-crumbled wall, Huger than those which, from steep hills of vine, Stare through their loopholes on the travelled Rhine; Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West. Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells "Is the new Canaan of our Israel, The land of promise to the swarming North, Which, hive-like, sends its annual surplus forth, To the poor Southron on his worn-out soil, Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil; To Europe's exiles seeking home and rest, And the lank nomads of the wandering West, Who, asking neither, in their love of change And the free bison's amplitude of range, Rear the log-hut, for present shelter meant, Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent." Then spake a shrewd on-looker, "Sir," said he, "I like your picture, but I fain would see A sketch of what your promised land will be When, with electric nerve, and fierybrained, With Nature's forces to its chariot chained, The future grasping, by the past obeyed, The twentieth century rounds a new decade." we sow; That present time is but the mould wherein We cast the shapes of holiness and sin. A painful watcher of the passing hour, Its lust of gold, its strife for place and power; Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, truth, Wise-thoughted age, and generoushearted youth; Nor yet unmindful of each better sign, The low, far lights, which on th' horizon shine, Like those which sometimes tremble on the rim Of clouded skies when day is closing dim, Flashing athwart the purple spears of rain The hope of sunshine on the hills again: I need no prophet's word, nor shapes that pass Like clouding shadows o'er a magic glass; For now, as ever, passionless and cold, Doth the dread angel of the future hold Evil and good before us, with no voice Or warning look to guide us in our choice; With spectral hands outreaching through the gloom The shadowy contrasts of the coming doom. Transferred from these, it now remains to give The sun and shade of Fate's alternative.” The woodman's hail along the river | As if the revellers at a masquerade Heard in the distance funeral marches shores, shrinking girlhood up to graybeard sin; Sell all the virtues with his human stock, The Christian graces on his auctionblock, And coolly count on shrewdest bargains driven In hearts regenerate, and in souls forgiven ! Look once again! The moving canvas shows A slave plantation's slovenly repose, Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds, The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds; |