Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE EVE OF ELECTION.

In its pale fire

The village spire

Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance;

The painted walls
Whereon it falls

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
The moulds of fate

That shape the State,

And make or mar the common weal.
Around I see

The powers that 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
The laugh runs loud,

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

Are hearts of prayer,

And foreheads bowed in reverent fear!

95

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;
The regal right

We boast to-night

Is ours through costlier sacrifice:

The blood of Vane,

His prison pain

Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod,
And hers whose faith

Drew strength from death,

And prayed her Russell up to God!

Our hearts grow cold,

We lightly hold

A right which brave men died to gain;

The stake, the cord,

The axe, the sword,

Grim nurses at its birth of pain.

The shadow rend,

And o'er us bend,

--

O martyrs, with your crowns and palms, — Breathe through these throngs

Your battle songs,

Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms!

Look from the sky,

Like God's great eye,

Thou solemn moon, with searching beam;

Till in the sight

Of thy pure light

Our mean self-seekings meaner seem.

LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.

Shame from our hearts
Unworthy arts,

The fraud designed, the purpose dark;

And smite away

The hands we lay

Profanely on the sacred ark.

[blocks in formation]

97

The foul human vultures
Have feasted and fled;
The wolves of the Border
Have crept from the dead.

From the hearths of their cabins,
The fields of their corn,
Unwarned and unweaponed,
The victims were torn,
By the whirlwind of murder
Swooped up and swept on
To the low, reedy fen-lands,
The Marsh of the Swan.

With a vain plea for mercy

No stout knee was crooked;
In the mouths of the rifles
Right manly they looked.
How paled the May sunshine,
O Marais du Cygne!
On death for the strong life,
On red grass for green!

In the homes of their rearing,
Yet warm with their lives,
Ye wait the dead only,

Poor children and wives!
Put out the red forge-fire,

The smith shall not come;

Unyoke the brown oxen,

The ploughman lies dumb.

Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh,

O dreary death-train,

With pressed lips as bloodless

As lips of the slain !

Kiss down the young eyelids,

Smooth down the gray hairs;

Let tears quench the curses

That burn through your prayers.

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »