THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN "Spare," Art implored, "yon holy pile; 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. With that deep insight which detects He walked by faith and not by sight, That grand, old, time-worn turret spare"; And fresher life the world shall draw O, backward-looking son of time! 99 So wisely taught the Indian seer; Destroying Seva, forming Brahm, Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear, Are one, the same. Idly as thou, in that old day Thou mournest, did thy sire repine; So, in his time, thy child grown gray Shall sigh for thine. But life shall on and upward go; Th' eternal step of Progress beats To that great anthem, calm and slow, Which God repeats. Take heart!- the Waster builds again, A charmed life old Goodness hath ; The tares may perish, but the grain Is not for death. God works in all things; all obey His first propulsion from the night: Wake thou and watch!- the world is gray With morning light! THE PRISONER FOR DEBT. Look on him!-through his dungeon grate Feebly and cold, the morning light Comes stealing round him, dim and late, As if it loathed the sight. Reclining on his strawy bed, His hand upholds his drooping head, His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard, Unshorn his gray, neglected beard; And o'er his bony fingers flow His long, dishevelled locks of snow. No grateful fire before him glows, And yet the winter's breath is chill; And o'er his half-clad person goes The frequent ague thrill! 50402 And so, for such a place of rest, Old prisoner, dropped thy blood as rain On Concord's field, and Bunker's crest, Look forth, thou man of many scars, Go, ring the bells and fire the guns, And fling the starry banner out; Shout Freedom!" till your lisping Think ye that prisoner's aged ear Down with the LAW that binds him thus ! Unworthy freemen, let it find No refuge from the withering curse Of God and human kind! Open the prison's living tomb, And usher from its brooding gloom The victims of your savage code To the free sun and air of God; No longer dare as crime to brand The chastening of the Almighty's hand. The water which Samaria's outcast drew, Hath now his temples upon every shore, Altar and shrine and priest, and in - cense dim Evermore rising, with low prayer and hymn, From lips which press the temple's marble floor, Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread Cross He bore. He woke. At once on heart and brain A blackness in his morning light, Like some foul devil-altar there Built up by demon hands at night. And, maddened by that evil sight, Dark, horrible, confused, and strange, A chaos of wild, weltering change, All power of check and guidance gone, Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on. In vain he strove to breathe a prayer, In vain he turned the Holy Book, He only heard the gallows-stair Creak as the wind its timbers shook. No dream for him of sin forgiven, While still that baleful spectre stood, |