Chapter I: HAVE come from the heart of all natural things, (3)

THE TRIUMPH OF FREEDOM.

REJOICE! O blood-stained Nation, in darkness wandering long,
For Freedom is triumphant, and Right hath conquered Wrong.
To-day, the glorious birthright the patriot Fathers gave,
Makes, through Eternal Justice, a freeman of the slave.

And swift the glorious tidings, which rolls majestic on,
Thrills from old Massachusetts to the shores of Oregon.
The gray old mountain-echoes shout it loudly to the sea,
And the wild winds join the chorus in the “anthem of the free.”

For this, the God of nations sealed this land as sacred soil,
And thenceforth made it holy, with blood, and sweat, and toil.
For this, the lonely Mayflower spread her white wings to the breeze,
And bore the Pilgrim Fathers across the stormy seas.

For this, the blood of patriots baptized old Bunker Hill,
And Lexington and Concord made known the _people’s will_.
For this, both Saratoga and Yorktown’s fields were won,
And Fame’s unfading laurels wreathed the brow of Washington.

For this, your glorious Channing plead on the “weaker side,”
And Parker, brave and fearless, sought to stem Oppression’s tide.
For this, the lips of Phillips burned with Athenian fire,
Till every flaming sentence leapt forth in righteous ire.

And Garrison, the dauntless, declared, “I will be heard!”
O thou sturdy, war-worn veteran! well hast thou kept thy word!
Thou hast sent the foul Hyena howling fiercely to his den,
And thy battle-cry was “Freedom!” till the cannon said, “Amen!”

For this, like royal Cæsar, within the Senate Hall,
On the noble head of Sumner did the blows of Slavery fall;
For this, that band of heroes, with their Spartan chief, John Brown,
As a sacrifice to Freedom, their precious lives laid down.

And for this you bore and suffered, “till forbearance ceased to be
A virtue,” and High Heaven called on you to be free.
Then, once more, the blood of heroes leaped like fire within each vein,
And the long-slumbering Lion rose, and, wrathful, shook his mane.

O! the page of future history shall, with truthful record, tell
How you met the fearful issue, how bravely and how well;
How you gave uncounted treasure from out your toil-won hoard,
And how, as free as water, heroic blood was poured;--

How Grant, with stern persistence, smote the foe-*men day by day;
How Sheridan and Sherman urged their victorious way;
How Farragut and Porter swept triumphant o’er the sea,
And how the gallant Winslow won _his_ glorious victory;--

And alas! how noble Ellsworth fell in his youthful pride,
And Winthrop, Baker, Lyon, for Freedom bled and died;
And true, brave hearts unnumbered, before the cannon’s breath,
On the wild, red sea of slaughter, swept down the tide of death;--

And how, amid the tumult, in every battle pause,
Was heard the cry for “Justice to the bondman and his cause.”
O! your fathers’ slumbering ashes cried, “Amen!” from out each grave,
When your grand old Constitution gave freedom to the slave.

And, as the glorious tidings upon the nation fell,
Satan, with all his legions, went howling down to Hell.
Of crime and blood no longer could he freely drink his fill,
For the curséd demon, Slavery, had best performed his will.

Let words of deep thanksgiving blend with the tears you shed
For the hosts of noble martyrs who in Freedom’s cause have bled.
Though they fell before the sickle which reaps the battle-plain,
Yet, to-day, they know in heaven, that they perished not in vain.

Your nation’s glorious Eagle, with an unfaltering flight,
Hath perched at length, in triumph, on Freedom’s loftiest height;
The stars upon your banner burn with a fairer flame,
And the radiant stripes no longer are emblems of your shame.

The slave, made like his master, “in the image of his God,”
Shall bare his back no longer to the oppressor’s rod;
His night of pain and anguish, of want and woe, has past,
And Freedom’s radiant morning has dawned on him at last.

O thou Recording Angel! turn to that page whereon
Is traced, in undimmed brightness, the name of Washington,
And, with thy pen immortal, in characters of flame,
To stand henceforth and ever, write also Lincoln’s name!

The first hurled back the tyrant, in the country’s hour of need,
The last, divinely guided, hath made her free indeed.
Let a nation’s grateful tribute to each, alike, be given,
While the kingdom, power and glory are ascribed alone to Heaven.

“Ethiopia no longer stretcheth forth her hands” in vain;
On the demon of oppression she hath left her servile chain;
Then swell the shout of triumph, till the nations hear afar;
Three cheers--three cheers for Freedom! Huzzä! Huzzä! Huzzä!

OUR SOLDIERS’ GRAVES.

SONS of the nation to glory restored,
Strew with fresh laurels the patriot’s grave--
Heed the libation to Liberty poured--
Honor the blood of the fearless and brave.

When the red bolts of destruction were hurled,
Bursting in tempests of fury and flame,
Faithful to Freedom, the hope of the world,
Swift to the rescue each patriot came.

Breasting the waves of the battle’s wild sea,
Facing, unflinching, the cannon’s hot breath,
Hail to the brave! who marched fearless and free,
Down to the valley and shadow of Death.

Trace it in marble as white as the snows,
Chisel in granite the record sublime,
Sacred to Freedom--and teaching our foes
Lessons of wisdom as lasting as time.

Bright as the stars in the firmament shine,
Still may they watch o’er this land from on high,
Teaching our hearts, as their names we enshrine,
Faithful to Freedom to live and to die.

OUTWARD BOUND.

IT was midnight dark, when I launched my bark
On a wild, tempestuous sea;
The lightnings flashed, and the white waves dashed
Like steeds from the rein set free.
’Twas a fearful night, and no beacon-light
O’er the waste of waters shone;
On the wide, wide sweep of the angry deep,
Alas! I was all alone.

I had left behind the faithful and kind,
The gentle and true of heart;
O God above! from their clinging love,
It was hard, it was hard to part.
O, why did I leave such hearts to grieve,
And haste from my home away?
’Twas the chosen hour of a mighty power,
Whose summons I must obey.

I had heard the call which must come to all,
And I felt, by my quickened breath,
I must leave that shore to return no more,
For the name of that sea was Death.
Thus Outward Bound, with a dizzy sound
Like waves in my troubled brain,
I drifted away like a soul astray,
For I felt that to strive was vain.

Like the brooding wing of some grewsome thing,
The darkness around me spread;
The wild winds roared, and the tempests poured
Their fury upon my head.
Anon through the night, like serpents bright,
The quivering lightnings came,
Or an instant coiled where the white waves boiled,
To moisten their tongues of flame.

In the giddy whirl, in the greedy swirl,
I felt I was sinking fast,
When an arm, as white as the opal bright,
Was firmly around me cast.
And a well-known voice made my heart rejoice--
“Fear not! for the strife is o’er;
To your resting-place in my warm embrace,
Do I welcome you back once more.”

’Twas my mother dear spake those words of cheer,
Whom I met with a glad surprise,
For I thought she slept where the willows wept,
Till the day when the dead should rise.
I had passed away from my form of clay,
But not to a distant sphere;
Like a troubled dream did the struggle seem,
For my spirit still lingered here.

I had weathered the storm, but my mortal form
Like a wreck in my presence lay;
They said I was dead when my spirit fled,
And with weeping they turned away.
Then the dearest came, and she sobbed my name;
But how could those pale lips speak?
She bent o’er my form like a reed in the storm,
As she kissed my clay-cold cheek.

I was with her there, and with tender care
I folded her close to my breast,
Till the heart’s wild throb, and the bursting sob,
Were silenced and soothed to rest.
O human love! there is nought above,
That ever will rudely part
The sacred tie, or the union high,
Of those who are one in heart.

A bridge leads o’er from the heavenly shore,
Where the happy spirits pass,
And the angels that stand with the harp in the hand,
On the “sea, as it were, of glass,”
Play so soft and clear that the human ear,
And the spirits who love the Lord,
Can catch the sound through the space profound,
And join in the sweet accord.

O, what is death? ’Tis a fleeting breath--
A simple but blesséd change--
’Tis rending a chain, that the soul may gain
A higher and broader range.
Unbounded space is its dwelling-place,
Where no human foot hath trod,
But everywhere doth it feel the care
And the changeless love of God.

O, then, though you weep when your loved ones sleep,
When the rose on the cheek grows pale,
Yet their forms of light, just concealed from sight,
Are only behind the vail.
With their faces fair, and their shining hair
With blossoms of beauty crowned,
They will also stand, with a helping hand,
When you shall be Outward Bound.

THE WANDERER’S WELCOME HOME.

A WOMAN, with weary heart and hand,
Wasted and worn by the rude world’s strife,
Prayed for the peace of the better land,
And the mansions fair of the higher life.
She prayed at night in the churchyard lone,
Resting her brow on a cold, white stone.

All of that day in the public street,
She had played on her harp and patiently sung,
Till the cold wind palsied her weary feet,
And chilled the words on her faltering tongue.
And but one penny to meet her need
Had the cold world spared from its selfish greed.

O, the mocking words of “Home, sweet home,”
Had she sung for that paltry, pitiful fee,
She who thus lonely was doomed to roam,
While never a home on earth had she;
But often the lips must perform a part
That is foreign and false to the aching heart.

At night, by her sorrowful longings led,
She had turned from the dwellings of men away,
And sought the place of the sleeping dead,
In silence and darkness alone to pray.
While her harp, as it sighed in the wintry air,
Seemed to echo the tone of her lone heart’s prayer.

Her face was white as the drifted snows,
And her eyes were fixed in a dull despair,
As if the chilling tide of her woes
Had swelled from her heart, and had frozen there.
She lifted her hands to the wintry sky,
And prayed in her anguish, “Lord, let me die!”

Then soft and clear to her quickened sense
A vision of heavenly beauty came;
Her spirit thrilled with a joy intense,
And her heart grew warm with a heavenly flame.
Sweet voices were singing, “No longer roam,
But haste to the joys of thy ‘home, sweet home.’”

The stars looked down from the wintry skies
In solemn beauty, undimmed and clear,
But the vision that greeted her eager eyes
Was unto her spirit both warm and near.
Again those voices poured forth the lay,
“To thy ‘home, sweet home,’ O, haste away.”

She seized her harp, and her white hand swept
With a full accord o’er its trembling strings,
Waking the echoes that round her slept,
Like the swan, which in dying so sweetly sings,
As she answered them back, “No more to roam,
Lo! I come, I come to my ‘home, sweet home.’”

The watchman who went on his lonely round
Felt his stout heart thrill with a sense of dread,
When he heard that strange and unwonted sound
Come forth from the place of the silent dead.
He listened, and breathed a fervent prayer
For the rest of the dreamless sleepers there.

The watchman who went on his lonely round
Remembered that sound at break of day,
And he turned aside to the hallowed ground,
Where the dead in their quiet slumbers lay.
And there he found, by the cold, white stone,
The lifeless form whence the soul had flown.

With white lips parted, and eyes upraised,
And her hands to the harp-strings frozen cold,
The warm blood chilled in his veins as he gazed,
And he thought of the weight of her woes untold.
“Great God!” he said, “is our faith a lie,
That thus, unheeded, thy children die!”

“Hush, murmuring spirit!” the Truth replied;
“Loss ever walks hand in hand with gain;
Life hath its sunny and shady side,
Its major, as well as its minor strain.
And she who thus lonely was doomed to roam
Now rests at peace in her ‘home, sweet home.’”

“The pilgrims of earth, in their homeward way,
Full often in danger and doubt must stand;
But out of the darkness shall come the day,
And strength and healing from God’s right hand.
And the scales of life, as they rise and fall,
Full measures of justice shall mete to all.”

LABOR AND WAIT.

ALL green, and bitter, and hard, and sour,
The fruit on the Tree of Life is growing;
But the genial sunshine, with quickening power,
Will sweeten its juices like nectar flowing.
For the full, fair growth of its perfect state
There is only needed the right condition.
Then labor and wait, both early and late,
Till the ripening future shall bring fruition.

Far out in the harvest fields of Time,
The grain for the reaper is standing ready,
And they who come to the work sublime
Must toil with a patience calm and steady.
Truth never was subject to Chance or Fate--
Its sickle, so sharp, cuts clean and even.
Then labor and wait, both early and late,
For the seed-field of Earth yields the harvest of Heaven.

In their quiet graves, on the green hill-side,
The sacred dust of your loved is sleeping;
And the homes where the light of their smile has died
Are filled with the sorrowful sounds of weeping.
But over the gloomy clouds of Fate,
The light of the better land is shining;
Then labor and wait, both early and late,
For the cloud of Death has a silver lining.

There are fair, sweet faces, and gentle eyes,
That look through the shadows and mists above you;
And the fond affection that never dies,
Still speaks from the lips of the blest who love you.
They call you up from your low estate,
To the boundless bliss of the life supernal.
Then labor and wait, both early and late,
For Time is short, but Life is Eternal.

FRAE RHYMING ROBIN.

The following poem was given under the inspiration of Robert Burns,
at the close of a lecture on “The Immaculate Conception.”

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