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 brain
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 d,
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 hi
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.

The vengeful terrors of God's law,

1

129

The kindlings of Eternal hate, The first drops of that fiery rain Which beats the dark red realm of pain,

Did he uplift his earnest cries

Against the crime of Law, which

gave

His brother to that fearful grave, Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies, And Faith's white blossoms never

wave

To the soft breath of Memory's sighs;-
Which sent a spirit marred and stained,
By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,
In madness and in blindness stark,
Into the silent, unknown dark?
No, -

- from the wild and shrinking
dread

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 above,

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

not

And let the light of thy pure day

Melt in upon his darkened thought. Soften his hard, cold heart, and show The power which in forbearance lies,

And let him feel that mercy now
Is better than old sacrifice!

VII.

As on the White Sea's charmed shore,
The Parsee sees his holy hill
With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained
o'er,

Yet knows beneath them, evermore,
The low, pale fire is quivering still;
So, underneath its clouds of sin,

The heart of man retaineth yet Gleams of its holy origin; And half-quenched stars that never set,

Dim colors of its faded bow,

And early beauty, linger there, And o'er its wasted desert blow Faint breathings of its morning air, O, never yet upon the scroll Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul, Hath Heaven inscribed "DESPAIR!" Cast not the clouded gem away, Quench not the dim but living ray, — My brother man, Beware! With that deep voice which from the skies

Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,

God's angel cries, FORBEAR!

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 madness;
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

131

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,
He traced 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!

O, idea of my boyhood's time!

The faith in which my father stood, Even when the sons of Lust and Crime Had stained thy peaceful courts with blood!

Still to those courts my footsteps turn, For through the mists which darken there,

I see the flame of Freedom burn, —
The Kebla of the patriot's prayer!

The generous feeling, pure and warm,
Which owns the rights of all divine,-
The pitying heart,-the helping arm,
The prompt self-sacrifice, -
-are thine.

Beneath thy broad, impartial eye,

How fade the lines of caste and birth! How equal in their suffering lie

The groaning multitudes of earth!

Still to a stricken brother true,

Whatever clime hath nurtured him; As stooped to heal the wounded Jew The worshipper of Gerizim.

By misery unrepelled, unawed

By pomp or power, thou seest a MAN In prince or peasant, - slave or lord, Pale priest, or swarthy artisan.

-

Through all disguise, form, place, or

name,

Beneath the flaunting robes of sin, Through poverty and squalid shame, Thou lookest on the man within.

On man, as man, retaining yet, Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim, The crown upon his forehead set, The immortal gift of God to him.

And there is reverence in thy look;

For that frail form which mortals wear The Spirit of the Holiest took,

And veiled his perfect brightness there.

Not from the shallow babbling fount
Of vain philosophy thou art;
He who of old on Syria's mount
Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the lis-
tener's heart,

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: