225

No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; 25 She chooses men for her august abodes,

Building them fair and fronting to the dawn;

Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few

Light footprints, leading morn-ward through the dew:

Before the day had risen, she was gone.

And we must follow: swiftly runs she on,
And, if our steps should slacken in despair,

Half turns her face, half smiles through golden hair,
Forever yielding, never wholly won :

That is not love which pauses in the race

Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace ;
Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours;
Men gather but dry seeds of last year's flowers;
Still there's a charm ungranted, still a grace,
Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained,
Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall;
'Tis but a fragment of ourselves is gained,
The Future brings us more, but never all.

And, as the finder of some unknown realm,
Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see
On either side of him the imprisoning sea,
Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm
The valley-land, peak after snowy peak
Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm
Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak,
And what he thought an island finds to be
A continent to him first oped, — so we
Can from our height of Freedom look along
A boundless future, ours if we be strong;

30

35

40

Or if we shrink, better remount our ships
And, fleeing God's express design, trace back
The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track
To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse.1

STANZAS ON FREEDOM

55

Sung at the anti-slavery picnic in Dedham, on the anniversary of West Indian Emancipation, August 1, 1843.

MEN! whose boast it is that ye
Come of fathers brave and free,
If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed?

* See Lowell's Letters, ii, 36, for the last part of this poem

as originally written, and for Lowell's comment.

No! true Freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free!

They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak ;

They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink

From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.

BIBLIOLATRES

BOWING thyself in dust before a Book,
And thinking the great God is thine alone,
O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook

What gods the heathen carves in wood and stone,
As if the Shepherd who from outer cold
Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure fold
Were careful for the fashion of His crook.

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31

5

10

There is no broken reed so poor and base,
No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue,
But He therewith the ravening wolf can chase,
And guide His flock to springs and pastures new ;
Through ways unlooked for, and through many lands,
Far from the rich folds built with human hands,
The gracious footprints of His love I trace.

And what art thou, own brother of the clod,

That from His hand the crook would'st snatch away

15

And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod,
To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day?
Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew,
That with thy idol-volume's covers two
Would'st make a jail to coop the living God?

20

Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-tones
By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught,
Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains
Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought, 25
Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire,
Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire
To weld anew the spirit's broken chains.

God is not dumb, that He should speak no more;
If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness
And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor;
There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less,
Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends,
Intent on manna still and mortal ends,
Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,

30

3.5

And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it,
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan.

39

While swings the sea, while mists the mountains

shroud,

While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud,

Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.

THE PRESENT CRISIS

In the year 1844, which is the date of the following poem, the question of the annexation of Texas was pending, and it was made an issue of the presidential campaign then taking place. The anti-slavery party feared and opposed annexation, on account of the added strength which it would give to slavery, and the South desired it for the same reason.]

WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instan taneous throe,

5

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips

apart,

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

10

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God