In its unseen sheath the Future

Hides the avenging sword of fate,

And its lightning blade shall pierce thee,
Come it early, come it late.

But the heart whose aspiration
Seeketh for the good of all,
And would ask that every nation
Join in Truth's great festival,
Shudders at the chains of slavery,
At the fraud and reckless strife,
At the cursed thirst for money,
That corrodes this Nation's life.

Yours the task to plead for Justice,
For the holy law of Peace, -
Yours to win the words and mercy,
That shall give the slave release,
Yours to help each struggling brother
In his efforts to be free,

And to wed all men and nations
In one great Humanity.

June 7, 1846.

I SEE THEE STILL..

BY CHARLES SPRAGUE.

I see thee still;

Remembrance, faithful to her trust,

Calls thee in beauty from the dust;
Thou comest in the morning light,
Thou 'rt with me through the gloomy night;
In dreams I meet thee as of old;
Then thy soft arms my neck enfold,
And thy sweet voice is in my ear;
In every scene to memory dear,
I see thee still.

I see thee still,

In every hallowed token round;
This little ring thy finger bound,
This lock of hair thy forehead shaded,
This silken chain by thee was braided,
These flowers, all withered now, like thee,
Sweet SISTER, thou didst cull for me;

This book was thine; here didst thou read;
This picture ah! yes, here, indeed,
I see thee still.

I see thee still;

Here was thy summer noon's retreat,
Here was thy favorite fireside seat;
This was thy chamber — here, each day,
I sat and watched thy sad decay;

That good old man his honest blood Alike we fondly claim.

We in one mother's arms were locked

Long be her love repaid;

In the same cradle we were rocked,
Round the same hearth we played.

Our boyish sports were all the same,
Each little joy and woe ; ·
Let manhood keep alive the flame,
Lit up so long ago.

WE ARE BUT TWO- be that the band

To hold us till we die;

Shoulder to shoulder let us stand,

Till side by side we lie.

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

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the

sod,

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler

clod.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom

or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the

right,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that

light.

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt

stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is

strong,

And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea;

Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgement hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the

Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, — Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim un

known,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within: “They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."