Fierce tyrants drop the scourges wherewith blindly Their own souls they were scarring; conquerors see With horror in their hands the accursed spear The beauty of man's soul to man revealing; Pierce Error's guilty heart, but only pierce for healing. O, whither, whither, glory-winged dreams, Shut, gates of Fancy, on your golden gleams,- A charm against the present sorrow The ancestral buckler calls, In the high temple of the soul; Where are most sorrows, there the poet's sphere is, To feed the soul with patience, To heal its desolations With words of unshorn truth, with love that never wearies. HEBE. I SAW the twinkle of white feet, As, in bare fields, the searching bees Those Graces were that seemed grim Fates; I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp Thrilling with godhood; like a lover sprang the proffered life to clasp ;— The beaker fell; the luck was over. I The Earth has drunk the vintage up; What boots it patch the goblet's splinters? Can Summer fill the icy cup, Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's? O spendthrift, haste! await the Gods; Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, And shuns the hands would seize upon her; Follow thy life, and she will sue To pour for thee the cup of honour. THE SEARCH. I WENT to seek for Christ, That first the woods and fields my youth enticed, The temple I forsook, And to the solitude Allegiance paid; but Winter came and shook Back to the world I turned, For Christ, I said, is King; So the cramped alley and the hut I spurned, Prizing it more than Christ's own living heart. So from my feet the dust Of the proud World I shook; Then came dear Love and shared with me his crust, And half my sorrow's burden took. After the World's soft bed, Its rich and dainty fare, Like down seemed Love's coarse pillow to my head, His cheap food seemed as manna rare ; Fresh-trodden prints of bare and bleeding feet, Turned to the heedless city whence I came, Hardby I saw, and springs of worship sweet Gushed from my cleft heart smitten by the same; Love looked me in the face and spake no words, But straight I knew those foot-prints were the Lord's. I followed where they led And in a hovel rude, With naught to fence the weather from his head, And Clung round his gracious knee, a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled To bless the smile that set him free; New miracles I saw his presence do, No more I knew the hovel bare and poor, The gathered chips into a woodpile grew, The broken morsel swelled to goodly store; I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek, His throne is with the outcast and the weak. THE PRESENT CRISIS. 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 instantaneous throe, 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. 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 |