Catching gleams of temple spires, Hearing notes of angel choirs, Where, as yet unseen of them, Comes the New Jerusalem!
Like the seer of Patmos gazing, On the glory downward blazing; Till upon Earth's grateful sod Rests the City of our God!
1848.
PAEAN.
This poem indicates the exultation of the anti-slavery party in view of the revolt of the friends of Martin Van Buren in New York, from the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1848.
Now, joy and thanks forevermore!
The dreary night has wellnigh passed, The slumbers of the North are o'er, The Giant stands erect at last!
More than we hoped in that dark time When, faint with watching, few and worn, We saw no welcome day-star climb The cold gray pathway of the morn!
O weary hours! O night of years!
What storms our darkling pathway swept, Where, beating back our thronging fears, By Faith alone our march we kept.
How jeered the scoffing crowd behind, How mocked before the tyrant train, As, one by one, the true and kind Fell fainting in our path of pain!
They died, their brave hearts breaking slow, But, self-forgetful to the last, In words of cheer and bugle blow Their breath upon the darkness passed.
A mighty host, on either hand, Stood waiting for the dawn of day To crush like reeds our feeble band; The morn has come, and where are they?
Troop after troop their line forsakes; With peace-white banners waving free, And from our own the glad shout breaks, Of Freedom and Fraternity!
Like mist before the growing light, The hostile cohorts melt away; Our frowning foemen of the night Are brothers at the dawn of day.
As unto these repentant ones We open wide our toil-worn ranks, Along our line a murmur runs Of song, and praise, and grateful thanks.
Sound for the onset! Blast on blast!
Till Slavery's minions cower and quail; One charge of fire shall drive them fast Like chaff before our Northern gale!
O prisoners in your house of pain, Dumb, toiling millions, bound and sold, Look! stretched o'er Southern vale and plain, The Lord's delivering hand behold!
Above the tyrant's pride of power, His iron gates and guarded wall, The bolts which shattered Shinar's tower Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall.
Awake! awake! my Fatherland!
It is thy Northern light that shines; This stirring march of Freedom's band The storm-song of thy mountain pines.
Wake, dwellers where the day expires!
And hear, in winds that sweep your lakes And fan your prairies' roaring fires, The signal-call that Freedom makes!
1848.
THE CRISIS.
Written on learning the terms of the treaty with Mexico.
ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's drouth and sand, The circles of our empire touch the western ocean's strand; From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and free, Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to California's sea; And from the mountains of the east, to Santa Rosa's shore, The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air no more.
O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple children weep; Close watch about their holy fire let maids of Pecos keep; Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines, And Santa Barbara toll her bells amidst her corn and vines; For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with eager eyes of gain, Wide scattering, like the bison herds on broad Salada's plain.
Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what sound the winds bring down Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold Nevada's crown!
Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with rein of travel slack, And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the sunrise at his back; By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and pine, On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires shine.
O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and plain, Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with grain; Of mountains white with winter, looking downward, cold, serene, On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped in softest green; Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er many a sunny vale, Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's dusty trail!
Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes whose mystic shores The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Saxon oars; Great herds that wander all unwatched, wild steeds that none have tamed, Strange fish in unknown streams, and birds the Saxon never named; Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, where Nature's chemic powers Work out the Great Designer's will; all these ye say are ours!
Forever ours! for good or ill, on us the burden lies; God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across the skies.
Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn the poised and trembling scale?
Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber Wrong prevail?
Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry splendor waves, Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread of slaves?
The day is breaking in the East of which the prophets told, And brightens up the sky of Time the Christian Age of Gold; Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to clerkly pen, Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her serfs stand up as men;
The isles rejoice together, in a day are nations born, And the slave walks free in Tunis, and by Stamboul's Golden Horn!
Is this, O countrymen of mine! a day for us to sow The soil of new-gained empire with slavery's seeds of woe?
To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old World's cast-off crime, Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, from the tired lap of Time?
To run anew the evil race the old lost nations ran, And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong of man?
Great Heaven! Is this our mission? End in this the prayers and tears, The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger, better years?
Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall ours in shadow turn, A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through outer darkness borne?
Where the far nations looked for light, a black- ness in the air?
Where for words of hope they listened, the long wail of despair?
The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands, With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands!
This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin; This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin; Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown, We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down!
By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame; By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came; By the Future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast Their faint and trembling beams across the black- ness of the Past; And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died, O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.
So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way; To wed Penobseot's waters to San Francisco's bay; To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain; And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea, And mountain unto mountain call, Praise God, for we are free
1845.
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