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WHAT THE VOICE SAID.

O'er the rabble's laughter;
And, while Hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter.

Knowing this, that never yet
Share of Truth was vainly set

In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow.

Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,
Must the moral pioneer

From the Future borrow;

Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And, on midnight's sky of rain,
Paint the golden morrow!

35

WHAT THE VOICE SAID.

Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil, "Lord!" I cried in sudden ire,

"From thy right hand, clothed with thunder, Shake the bolted fire!

"Love is lost, and Faith is dying;
With the brute the man is sold;
And the dropping blood of labor
Hardens into gold.

"Here the dying wail of Famine,
There the battle's groan of pain;
And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon
Reaping men like grain.

"Where is God, that we should fear Him"
Thus the earth-born Titans ṣay;
'God! if thou art living, hear us!
Thus the weak ones pray.

"Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding,"
Spake a solemn Voice within;
"Weary of our Lord's forbearance,
Art thou free from sin ?

"Fearless brow to Him uplifting,
Canst thou for his thunders call,
Knowing that to guilt's attraction
Evermore they fall?

"Know'st thou not all germs of evil
In thy heart await their time?
Not thyself, but God's restraining,
Stays their growth of crime.

"Could'st thou boast, oh child of weakness!
O'er the sons of wrong and strife,
Were their strong temptations planted
In thy path of life?

"Thou hast seen two streamlets gushing
From one fountain, clear and free,
But by widely varying channels
Searching for the sea.

“Glideth one through greenest valleys,
Kissing them with lips still sweet;
One, mad roaring down the mountains,
Stagnates at their feet.

"Is it choice whereby the Parsee
Kneels before his mother's fire?
In his black tent did the Tartar
Choose his wandering sire?

WHAT THE VOICE SAID.

"He alone, whose hand is bounding
Human power and human will,
Looking through each soul's surrounding.
Knows its good or ill.

"For thyself, while wrong and sorrow Make to thee their strong appeal, Coward wert thou not to utter

What the heart must feel.

"Earnest words must needs be spoken

When the warm heart bleeds or burns

With its scorn of wrong, or pity
For the wronged, by turns.

"But, by all thy nature's weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,

Conscious of thine own.

"Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty
To thy lips her trumpet set,
But with harsher blasts shall mingle
Wailings of regret."

Cease not, Voice of holy speaking,
Teacher sent of God, be near,
Whispering through the day's cool silence,
Let my spirit hear!

So, when thoughts of evil doers
Waken scorn or hatred move,
Shall a mournful fellow-feeling
Temper all with love.

37

TO DELAWARE.

IVRITTEN during the discussion in the Legislature of that State in the winter of 1846-7, of a bill for the abolition of Slavery.

THRICE welcome to thy sisters of the East,
To the strong tillers of a rugged home,
With spray-wet locks to Northern winds released,
And hardy feet o'er-swept by ocean's foam;
And to the young nymphs of the golden West,
Whose harvest mantles, fringed with prairi
bloom,

Trail in the sunset,-oh, redeemed and blest,
To the warm welcome of thy sisters come!
Broad Pennsylvania, down her sail-white bay
Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from her plains,
And the great lakes, where echo free alway

Moaned never shoreward with the clank of chains,

Shall weave new sun-bows in their tossing spray,
And all their waves keep grateful holiday.
And, smiling on thee through her mountain rains,
Vermont shall bless thee; and the Granite peaks,
And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, shall wear
Their snow-crowns brighter in the cold keen air;
And Massachusetts, with her rugged cheeks
O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn to thee,
When, at thy bidding, the electric wire

Shall tremble northward with its words of fire: Glory and praise to God! another State is free !

WORSHIP.

39

WORSHIP.

PURE religion, and undefiled, before God and the Father, is this: To visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."-James i. 27.]

THE Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken,
And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moan
Round fane and altar overthrown and broken,
O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of stone.

Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places,
The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's wood,
With mothers' offering, to the Fiend's embraces,
Bone of their bone, and blood of their own blood.

Red altars, kindling through that night of error,
Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel eye
Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror,
Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky;

Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting
All heaven above, and blighting earth below,
The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with fast-
ing,

And man's oblation was his fear and woe!

Then through great temples swelled the dismal

moaning

Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer; Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning, Swung their white censers in the burdened air:

As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor

Of gums and spices could the Unseen One please;

As if his ear could bend, with childish favor,

To the poor flattery of the organ keys!

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