The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier

He forgot his own soul for others,

Himself to his neighbor lending;

He found the Lord in his suffering brothers,

And not in the clouds descending.

So the bed was sweet to die on,

Whence he saw the doors wide swung Against whose bolted iron

The strength of his life was flung.

And he saw ere his eye was darkened The sheaves of the harvest-bringing, And knew while his ear yet hearkened The voice of the reapers singing.

Ah, well! The world is discreet;

There are plenty to pause and wait; But here was a man who set his feet Sometimes in advance of fate,

Plucked off the old bark when the inner Was slow to renew it,

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LINES ON A FLY-LEAF.

Who, with the pencil of the Northern | Has saintly ease no pitying care?

star,

Wrote freedom on his land.

And he whose grave is holy by our calm

And prairied Sangamon, From his gaunt hand shall drop the martyr's palm

To greet thee with "Well done!"

And thou, O Earth, with smiles thy
face make sweet,

And let thy wail be stilled,
To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat
Her promise half fulfilled.

The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks
still,

No sound thereof hath died;

Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal will

Shall yet be satisfied.

339

Has faith no work, and love no prayer! While sin remains, and souls in darkness dwell,

Can heaven itself be heaven, and look unmoved on hell?"

Then through the Gates of Pain, I dream,
A wind of heaven blows coolly in;
Fainter the awful discords seem,

The smoke of torment grows more thin, Tears quench the burning soil, and thence

Spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence; And through the dreary realm of man's despair,

Star-crowned an angel walks, and lo!
God's hope is there!

Is it a dream? Is heaven so high
That pity cannot breathe its air?

The years are slow, the vision tarrieth Its happy eyes forever dry,

LONG since, a dream of heaven I had,
And still the vision haunts me oft;
I see the saints in white robes clad,
The martyrs with their palms aloft;
But hearing still, in middle song,

The ceaseless dissonance of wrong; And shrinking, with hid faces, from the strain

Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse and pain.

The glad song falters to a wail,

The harping sinks to low lament; Before the still uplifted veil

I see the crownéd foreheads bent, Making more sweet the heavenly air, With breathings of unselfish prayer; And a Voice saith: "O Pity which is pain,

O Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings which remain !

"Shall souls redeemed by me refuse
To share my sorrow in their turn?
Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse
Of peace with selfish unconcern?

Its holy lips without a prayer!
My God! my God! if thither led
By thy free grace unmerited,
No crown nor palm be mine, but let me
keep

A heart that still can feel, and eyes that
still can weep.

LINES ON A FLY-LEAF.

I NEED not ask thee, for my sake,
To read a book which well may make
Its way by native force of wit
Without my manual sign to it.
Its piquant writer needs from me
No gravely masculine guaranty,
And well might laugh her merriest laugh
At broken spears in her behalf;
Yet, spite of all the critics tell,
I frankly own I like her well.
It may be that she wields a pen
Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned

men,

That her keen arrows search and try
The armor joints of dignity,
And, though alone for error meant,
Sing through the air irreverent.
I blame her not, the young athlete
Who plants her woman's tiny feet,
And dares the chances of debate
Where bearded men might hesitate,
Who, deeply earnest, seeing well
The ludicrous and laughable,
Mingling in eloquent excess

Give me the wine of thought whose THOU dwellest not, O Lord of all!

bead

Sparkles along the page I read. Electric words in which I find The tonic of the northwest wind, The wisdom which itself allies To sweet and pure humanities,

In temples which thy children raise; Our work to thine is mean and small, And brief to thy eternal days.

Forgive the weakness and the pride,
If marred thereby our gift may be,

Where scorn of meanness, hate of For love, at least, has sanctified

wrong,

Are underlaid by love as strong;
The genial play of mirth that lights
Grave themes of thought, as, when on
nights

Of summer-time, the harmless blaze
Of thunderless heat-lightning plays,
And tree and hill-top resting dim
And doubtful on the sky's vague rim,
Touched by that soft and lambent gleam,
Start sharply outlined from their dream.

Talk not to me of woman's sphere,
Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer,
Nor wrong the manliest saint of all
By doubt, if he were here, that Paul
Would own the heroines who have lent
Grace to truth's stern arbitrament,
Foregone the praise to woman sweet,
And cast their crowns at Duty's feet;
Like her, who by her strong Appeal
Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel,
Who, earliest summoned to withstand
The color-madness of the land,
Counted her life-long losses gain,
And made her own her sisters' pain;
Or her who, in her greenwood shade,
Heard the sharp call that Freedom
made,

The altar that we rear to thee.

The heart and not the hand has wrought
From sunken base to tower above

The image of a tender thought,
The memory of a deathless love!

And though should never sound of speech

Or organ echo from its wall,
Its stones would pious lessons teach,

Its shade in benedictions fall.

Here should the dove of peace be found, And blessings and not curses given; Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound,

The mingled loves of earth and heaven.

Thou, who didst soothe with dying breath

The dear one watching by thy cross, Forgetful of the pains of death

In sorrow for her mighty loss,

In memory of that tender claim,

O Mother-born, the offering take, And make it worthy of thy name,

And bless it for a mother's sake!

MIRIAM.

341

MIRIAM,

AND OTHER POEMS.

TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD.

THE years are many since, in youth and hope,

Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars.

Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed with scars

From life's hard battle, meeting once again,

We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain ;

Knowing, at last, that it is not in man Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan His permanent house of life. Alike we loved

The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved

To measures of old song.

How since that day Our feet have parted from the path that lay

So fair before us! Rich, from lifelong search

Of truth, within thy Academic porch
Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact,
Thy servitors the sciences exact;
Still listening with thy hand on Na-
ture's keys,

To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies And rhythm of law. I called from dream and song,

Thank God! so early to a strife so long, That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair

Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare On manhood's temples, now at sunsetchime

Tread with fond feet the path of morn

ing time.

And if perchance too late I linger where The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare,

Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely blame

The friend who shields his folly with thy name. AMESBURY, 10th mo., 1870.

MIRIAM.

ONE Sabbath day my friend and I
After the meeting, quietly
Passed from the crowded village lanes,
White with dry dust for lack of rains,
And climbed the neighboring slope,
with feet

Slackened and heavy from the heat,
Although the day was wellnigh done,
And the low angle of the sun
Along the naked hillside cast
Our shadows as of giants vast.
We reached, at length, the topmost
swell,

Whence, either way, the green turf fell

In terraces of nature down

To fruit-hung orchards, and the town
With white, pretenceless houses, tall
Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all,
Huge mills whose windows had the
look

Of eager eyes that ill could brook
The Sabbath rest. We traced the track
Of the sea-seeking river back
Glistening for miles above its mouth,
Through the long valley to the south,
And, looking eastward, cool to view,
Stretched the illimitable blue
Of ocean, from its curved coast-line;
Sombred and still, the warm sunshine
Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach
Of slumberous woods from hill to
beach,

Slanted on walls of thronged retreats
From city toil and dusty streets,
On grassy bluff, and dune of sand,
And rocky islands miles from land;
Touched the far-glancing sails, and
showed

White lines of foam where long waves flowed

Dumb in the distance. In the north, Dim through their misty hair, looked forth

So, sitting on that green hill-slope,
We talked of human life, its hope
And fear, and unsolved doubts,
what

It might have been, and yet was not.
And, when at last the evening air
Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer
Ringing in steeples far below,

and

We watched the people churchward go,
Each to his place, as if thereon
The true shekinah only shone;
And my friend queried how it came

To pass that they who owned the same
Great Master still could not agree
To worship Him in company.

We trace it not by school-boy maps,
Free as the sun and air it is
Of latitudes and boundaries.
In Vedic verse, in dull Korán,
Are messages of good to man;
The angels to our Aryan sires
Talked by the earliest household fires;
The prophets of the elder day,
The slant-eyed sages of Cathay,
Read not the riddle all amiss
Of higher life evolved from this.

"Nor doth it lessen what He taught,
Or make the gospel Jesus brought
Less precious, that His lips retold

Then, broadening in his thought, he Some portion of that truth of old ;

ran

Over the whole vast field of man,
The varying forms of faith and creed
That somehow served the holders'
need ;

In which, unquestioned, undenied,
Uncounted millions lived and died;
The bibles of the ancient folk,
Through which the heart of nations
spoke ;

The old moralities which lent
To home its sweetness and content,
And rendered possible to bear
The life of peoples everywhere:
And asked if we, who boast of light,
Claim not a too exclusive right
To truths which must for all be meant,
Like rain and sunshine freely sent.
In bondage to the letter still,

We give it power to cramp and kill,
To tax God's fulness with a scheme
Narrower than Peter's house-top dream,
His wisdom and his love with plans
Poor and inadequate as man's.
It must be that He witnesses
Somehow to all men that He is :
That something of His saving grace
Reaches the lowest of the race,
Who, through strange creed and rite,
may draw

The hints of a diviner law.

Denying not the proven seers,
The tested wisdom of the years;
Confirming with his own impress
The common law of righteousness.
We search the world for truth; we cull
The good, the pure, the beautiful,
From graven stone and written scroll,
From all old flower-fields of the soul;
And, weary seekers of the best,
We come back laden from our quest,
To find that all the sages said
Is in the Book our mothers read,
And all our treasure of old thought
In His harmonious fulness wrought
Who gathers in one sheaf complete
The scattered blades of God's sown
wheat,

The common growth that maketh good
His all-embracing Fatherhood.

"Wherever through the ages rise
The altars of self-sacrifice,
Where love its arms has opened wide,
Or man for man has calmly died,
I see the same white wings outspread
That hovered o'er the Master's head!
Up from undated time they come,
The martyr souls of heathendom,
And to His cross and passion bring
Their fellowship of suffering.

I trace His presence in the blind
Pathetic gropings of my kind, -
In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung,
In cradle-hymns of life they sung,
Each, in its measure, but a part
Of the unmeasured Over-Heart;
And with a stronger faith confess
The greater that it owns the less.
Good cause it is for thankfulness
That the world-blessing of His life
With the long past is not at strife;

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