That hellish foes confederate for his harm Can wind around him, but he casts it off Of nature; and though poor, perhaps, compared And by an emphasis of interest his, Whose eyes they fill with tears of holy joy, Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love That planned and built, and still upholds, a world So clothed with beauty for rebellious man? No nook so narrow but he spreads them there WILLIAM COWPER. THE EVE OF ELECTION. FROM gold to gray Our mild sweet day Of Indian summer fades too soon; But tenderly Above the sea Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's moon. In its pale fire, The village spire Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance: Transfigured stand in marble trance ! O'er fallen leaves The west-wind grieves, Yet comes a seed-time round again; And morn shall see The State sown free With baleful tares or healthful grain. Along the street The shadows meet Of Destiny, whose hands conceal That shape the State, And make or mar the common weal. Around I sec The powers chat be; I stand by Empire's primal springs; And princes meet In every street, And hear the tread of uncrowned kings! Hark! through the crowd Beneath the sad, rebuking moon. God save the land A careless hand May shake or swerve ere morrow's noon! No jest is this; One cast amiss May blast the hope of Freedom's year. O, take me where And foreheads bowed in reverent fear! Not lightly fall Beyond recall The written scrolls a breath can float; The crowning fact The kingliest act Of Freedom is the freeman's vote! For pearls that gem A diadem The diver in the deep sea dies; We boast to-night Is ours through costlier sacrifice; The blood of Vane, His prison pain Swifter than light it flies from pole to pole, And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes. It leaps from mount to mount; from vale to vale It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers; It visits home to hear the fireside tale And in sweet converse pass the joyous hours; 'Tis up before the sun, roaming afar, And in its watches wearies every star. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM. HERE are old trees, tall oaks and gnarlèd pines, That stream with gray-green mosses; here the ground Was never trenched by spade, and flowers spring up Unsown, and die ungathered. It is sweet That shake the leaves, and scatter, as they pass, shades Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old - O FREEDOM! thou art not, as poets dream, Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee; They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven. Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, bound, The links are shivered, and the prison walls Thy birthright was not given by human hands: Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields, While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with him, To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars, Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse of years, But he shall fade into a feebler age; Feebler, yet subtler. He shall weave his snares, That grow to fetters; or bind down thy arms thou rest Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. LAUS DEO! [On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery.] IT is done! Clang of bell and roar of gun Send the tidings up and down. How the belfries rock and reel ! How the great guns, peal on peal, Fling the joy from town to town! Ring, O bells! Every stroke exulting tells Of the burial hour of crime. To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat circling camps; They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps : His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel : "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal ; Let the Hero, born of woinan, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart, He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall That parts us are emancipate and loosed. never call retreat; Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs He is sifting out the hearts of men before his Receive our air, that moment they are free; judgment-seat: They touch our country, and their shackles fall. O, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud my feet! Our God is marching on. FROM "THE TIMEPIECE." O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness, Might never reach me more! My ear is pained, Not colored like his own, and, having power And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then, |