While, faithful to the Higher Cause,
We keep our fealty to the laws
Through patient pain.

The levelled gun, the battle-brand,
We may not take:
But, calmly loyal, we can stand
And suffer with our suffering land
For conscience' sake.

Why ask for ease where all is pain?
Shall we alone

Be left to add our gain to gain,
When over Armageddon's plain
The trump is blown?

To suffer well is well to serve ;
Safe in our Lord

The rigid lines of law shall curve
To spare us; from our heads shall swerve
Its smiting sword.

And light is mingled with the gloom,
And joy with grief;
Divinest compensations come,
Through thorns of judgment mercies
bloom

In sweet relief.

Thanks for our privilege to bless,

By word and deed,

The widow in her keen distress,
The childless and the fatherless,
The hearts that bleed !

For fields of duty, opening wide,
Where all our powers
Are tasked the eager steps to guide
Of millions on a path untried:

THE SLAVE IS OURS!

Ours by traditions dear and old,
Which make the race
Our wards to cherish and uphold,
And cast their freedom in the mould
Of Christian grace.

And we may tread the sick-bed floors
Where strong men pine,

And, down the groaning corridors,
Pour freely from our liberal stores
The oil and wine.

Who murmurs that in these dark days His lot is cast?

God's hand within the shadow lays The stones whereon His gates of praise Shall rise at last.

Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand! Nor stint, nor stay;

The years have never dropped their sand

On mortal issue vast and grand
As ours to-day.

Already, on the sable ground
Of man's despair

Is Freedom's glorious picture found,
With all its dusky hands unbound
Upraised in prayer.

O, small shall seem all sacrifice
And pain and loss,

When God shall wipe the weeping eyes,
For suffering give the victor's prize,
The crown for cross!

AT PORT ROYAL.

THE tent-lights glimmer on the land,
The ship-lights on the sea;

The night-wind smooths with drifting sand

Our track on lone Tybee.

At last our grating keels outslide,
Our good boats forward swing;
And while we ride the land-locked tide,
Our negroes row and sing.

For dear the bondman holds his gifts
Of music and of song:
The gold that kindly Nature sifts
Among his sands of wrong;

The power to make his toiling days

And poor home-comforts please; The quaint relief of mirth that plays With sorrow's minor keys.

Another glow than sunset's fire

Has filled the West with light, Where field and garner, barn and byre, Are blazing through the night.

The land is wild with fear and hate,

The rout runs mad and fast; From hand to hand, from gate to gate The flaming brand is passed.

The lurid glow falls strong across

Dark faces broad with smiles : Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss That fire yon blazing piles.

With oar-strokes timing to their song,
They weave in simple lays
The pathos of remembered wrong,
The hope of better days,

The triumph-note that Miriam sung, The joy of uncaged birds : Softening with Afric's mellow tongue Their broken Saxon words.

SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN.

O, praise an' tanks! De Lord he come
To set de people free;
An' massa tink it day ob doom,
An' we ob jubilee.

De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves
He jus’ as ’trong as den ;

He say de word: we las' night slaves;
To-day, de Lord's freemen.

De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
We'll hab de rice an' corn;

O nebber you fear, if nebber you
hear

De driver blow his horn!

So like de 'postles in de jail,
We waited for de Lord :
An' now he open ebery door,
An' trow away de key;
He tink we lub him so before,
We lub him better free.

269

De yam will grow, de cotton blow, He'll gib de rice an' corn;

O nebber you fear, if nebber you hear

De driver blow his horn!

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.

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.

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.
All day long through Frederick street
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 warm 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!

The tales that haunt the Brocken And whisper down the Rhine.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,

The swift stream wound away, Through birches and scarlet maples Flashing in foam and spray,

Down on the sharp-horned ledges Plunging in steep cascade, Tossing its white-maned waters Against the hemlock's shade.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,

East and west and north and south; Only the village of fishers

Down at the river's mouth;

Only here and there a clearing,

With its farm-house rude and new, And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, Where the scanty harvest grew.

No shout of home-bound reapers,
No vintage-song he heard,
And on the green no dancing feet
The merry violin stirred.

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For the merry grape-stained maidens, And the pleasant songs they sung! "O for the breath of vineyards,

Of apples and nuts and wine! For an oar to row and a breeze to blow Down the grand old river Rhine!"

A tear in his blue eye glistened, And dropped on his beard so gray. "Old, old am I," said Keezar,

"And the Rhine flows far away!"

But a cunning man was the cobbler;

He could call the birds from the trees, Charm the black snake out of the ledges,

And bring back the swarming bees.

All the virtues of herbs and metals,

All the lore of the woods, he knew, And the arts of the Old World mingled With the marvels of the New.

zar,

"When Nature herself is glad, And the painted woods are laughing At the faces so sour and sad?"

Small heed had the careless cobbler
What sorrow of heart was theirs
Who travailed in pain with the births
of God,

And planted a state with prayers,
Hunting of witches and warlocks,
Smiting the heathen horde,
One hand on the mason's trowel,
And one on the soldier's sword!

But give him his ale and cider,

Give him his pipe and song, Little he cared for Church or State,

Or the balance of right and wrong.

""Tis work, work, work," he muttered,

"And for rest a snuffle of psalms!" He smote on his leathern apron With his brown and waxen palms.

"O for the purple harvests

Of the days when I was young!

Wrought it with spell and rhyme From a fragment of mystic moonstone In the tower of Nettesheim.

To a cobbler Minnesinger

-

The marvellous stone gave he,
And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar,
Who brought it over the sea.

He held up that mystic lapstone,
He held it up like a lens,
And he counted the long years coming
By twenties and by tens.

"One hundred years," quoth Keezar, "And fifty have I told :

Now open the new before me,

And shut me out the old!"

Like a cloud of mist, the blackness
Rolled from the magic stone,
And a marvellous picture mingled
The unknown and the known.

Still ran the stream to the river,
And river and ocean joined;
And there were the bluffs and the blue
sea-line,

And cold north hills behind.

But the mighty forest was broken

By many a steepled town, By many a white-walled farm-house, And many a garner brown.

Turning a score of mill-wheels,

The stream no more ran free; White sails on the winding river, White sails on the far-off sea.

Below in the noisy village
The flags were floating gay,
And shone on a thousand faces
The light of a holiday.

Swiftly the rival ploughmen

Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking,

Nor mopes, nor fools, are they.

"Here's pleasure without regretting,
And good without abuse,
The holiday and the bridal
Of beauty and of use.

"Here's a priest and there is a Quaker,

Do the cat and dog agree?

Have they burned the stocks for ovenwood?

Have they cut down the gallows-tree?

The magic stone lies still, Under the leaning willows

In the shadow of the hill.

But oft the idle fisher

Sits on the shadowy bank, And his dreams make marvellous pic

tures

Where the wizard's lapstone sank.

And still, in the summer twilights,
When the river seems to run
Out from the inner glory,
Warm with the melted sun,

The weary mill-girl lingers

Beside the charméd stream, And the sky and the golden water Shape and color her dream.

Fair wave the sunset gardens,

The rosy signals fly;

Her homestead beckons from the cloud, And love goes sailing by!