Again he felt the western breeze, With scent of flowers and crisping hay;

And down again through wind-stirred

trees

He saw the quivering sunlight play.
An angel in home's vine-hung door,
He saw his sister smile once more;
Once more the truant's brown-locked
head

Upon his mother's knees was laid,
And sweetly lulled to slumber there,
With evening's holy hymn and prayer!

II.

He woke. At once on heart and bram
The present Terror rushed again, —
Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain!
He woke, to hear the church-tower tell
Time's footfall on the conscious bell.
And, shuddering, feel that clanging din
His life's LAST HOUR had ushered in ;
To see within his prison-yard,
Through the small window, iron barr,
The gallows shadow rising dim
Between the sunrise heaven and him,
A horror in God's blessed air,

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, With its hoarse murmur," Blood for Blood!"

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.

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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 By murder at that Law's command; New reverence for the gallows-rope, 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 abov

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

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 broker,
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 ey
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 inadness;
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!

Still through each change of fortune strange,.

Racked nerve, and brain all burning, His loving faith in Mother-land

Knew never shade of turning;
By Britain's lakes, by Neva's wave,
Whatever sky was o'er him,
He heard her rivers' rushing sound,
Her blue peaks rose before him.

He held his slaves, yet made withal
No false and vain pretences,
Nor paid a lying priest to seek
For Scriptural defences.
His harshest words of proud rebuke,
His bitterest taunt and scorning,
Fell fire-like on the Northern brow
That bent to him in fawning.

He held his slaves; yet kept the while
His reverence for the Human:
In the dark vassals of his will

He saw but Man and Woman!
No hunter of God's outraged poor
His Roanoke valley entered;
No trader in the souls of men

Across his threshold ventured.

And when the old and wearied man
Lay down for his last sleeping,
And at his side, a slave no more,

His brother-man stood weeping,
His latest thought, his latest breath,
To Freedom's duty giving,
With failing tongue and trembling hand
The dying blest the living.

O, never bore his ancient State
A truer son or braver !

None trampling with a calmer scorn
On foreign hate or favor.

He knew her faults, yet never stooped
His proud and manly feeling
To poor excuses of the wrong
Or meanness of concealing.

But none beheld with clearer eye

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The plague-spot o'er her spreading, None heard more sure the steps of Doom Along her future treading.

For her as for himself he spake,
When, his gaunt frame upbracing,
Hetraced with dying hand "REMORSE!"
And perished in the tracing.

As from the grave where Henry sleeps,
From Vernon's weeping willow,
And from the grassy pall which hides
The Sage of Monticello,

So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone
Of Randolph's lowly dwelling,
Virginia! o'er thy land of slaves
A warning voice is swelling!

And hark! from thy deserted fields
Are sadder warnings spoken,
From quenched hearths, where thy ex-
iled sons

Their household gods have broken. The curse is on thee, wolves for men, And briers for corn-sheaves giving! O, more than all thy dead renown Were now one hero living!

In holy words which cannot die,
In thoughts which angels leaned to
know,
Proclaimed thy message from on high,-
Thy mission to a world of woe.

That voice's echo hath not died!
From the blue lake of Galilee,
And Tabor's lonely mountain-side,
It calls a struggling world to thee.

Thy name and watchword o'er this land
I hear in every breeze that stirs,
And round a thousand altars stand
Thy banded party worshippers.

Not to these altars of a day,

At party's call, my gift I bring; But on thy olden shrine I lay

A freeman's dearest offering:

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 Father

land.

Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of

all,

Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall