CALEF IN BOSTON.
1692.
IN the solemn days of old, Two men met in Boston town, One a tradesman frank and bold, One a preacher of renown.
Cried the last, in bitter tone: "Poisoner of the wells of truth Satan's hireling, thou hast sown With his tares the heart of youth!"
Spake the simple tradesman then, "God be judge 'twixt thee and me; All thou knowed of truth hath been Once a lie to men like thee.
"Falsehoods which we spurn to-day Were the truths of long ago; Let the dead boughs fall away, Fresher shall the living grow.
"God is good and God is light, In this faith I rest secure; Evil can but serve the right, Over all shall love endure.
"Of your spectral puppet play I have traced the cunning wires; Come what will, I needs must say, God is true, and ye are liars."
When the thought of man is free, Error fears its lightest tones; So the priest cried, "Sadducee!"
And the people took up stones.
In the ancient burying-ground, Side by side the twain now lie; One with humble grassy mound, One with marbles pale and high.
But the Lord hath blest the seed Which that tradesman scattered then, And the preacher's spectral creed Chills no more the blood of men.
Let us trust, to one is known Perfect love which casts out fear, While the other's joys atone For the wrong he suffered here.
1849.
OUR STATE.
THE South-land boasts its teeming cane, The prairied West its heavy grain, And sunset's radiant gates unfold On rising marts and sands of gold.
Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State Is scant of soil, of limits strait; Her yellow sands are sands alone, Her only mines are ice and stone!
From Autumn frost to April rain, Too long her winter woods complain; From budding flower to falling leaf, Her summer time is all too brief.
Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands, And wintry hills, the school-house stands, And what her rugged soil denies, The harvest of the mind supplies.
The riches of the Commonwealth Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health; And more to her than gold or grain, The cunning hand and cultured brain.
For well she keeps her ancient stock, The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock; And still maintains, with milder laws, And clearer light, the Good Old Cause.
Nor heeds the skeptic's puny hands, While near her school the church-spire stands; Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule, While near her church-spire stands the school.
1849.
THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES.
I HAVE been thinking of the victims bound In Naples, dying for the lack of air And sunshine, in their close, damp cells of pain, Where hope is not, and innocence in vain Appeals against the torture and the chain!
Unfortunates! whose crime it was to share Our common love of freedom, and to dare, In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple-crowned, And her base pander, the most hateful thing Who upon Christian or on Pagan ground Makes vile the old heroic name of king.
O God most merciful! Father just and kind Whom man hath bound let thy right hand unbind.
Or, if thy purposes of good behind Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers find Strong consolations; leave them not to doubt Thy providential care, nor yet without The hope which all thy attributes inspire, That not in vain the martyr's robe of fire Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting chain; Since all who suffer for thy truth send forth, Electrical, with every throb of pain, Unquenchable sparks, thy own baptismal rain Of fire and spirit over all the earth, Making the dead in slavery live again.
Let this great hope be with them, as they lie Shut from the light, the greenness, and the sky; From the cool waters and the pleasant breeze, The smell of flowers, and shade of summer trees; Bound with the felon lepers, whom disease And sins abhorred make loathsome; let them share Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear Years of unutterable torment, stern and still, As the chained Titan victor through his will!
Comfort them with thy future; let them see The day-dawn of Italian liberty; For that, with all good things, is hid with Thee, And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its time to be.
I, who have spoken for freedom at the cost Of some weak friendships, or some paltry prize Of name or place, and more than I have lost Have gained in wider reach of sympathies, And free communion with the good and wise; May God forbid that I should ever boast Such easy self-denial, or repine That the strong pulse of health no more is mine; That, overworn at noonday, I must yield To other hands the gleaning of the field; A tired on-looker through the day's decline.
For blest beyond deserving still, and knowing That kindly Providence its care is showing In the withdrawal as in the bestowing, Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray.
Beautiful yet for me this autumn day Melts on its sunset hills; and, far away, For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm, To me the pine-woods whisper; and for me Yon river, winding through its vales of calm, By greenest banks, with asters purple-starred, And gentian bloom and golden-rod made gay, Flows down in silent gladness to the sea, Like a pure spirit to its great reward!
Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near and dear, Whose love is round me like this atmosphere, Warm, soft, and golden. For such gifts to me What shall I render, O my God, to thee?
Let me not dwell upon my lighter share Of pain and ill that human life must bear; Save me from selfish pining; let my heart, Drawn from itself in sympathy, forget The bitter longings of a vain regret, The anguish of its own peculiar smart.
Remembering others, as I have to-day, In their great sorrows, let me live alway Not for myself alone, but have a part, Such as a frail and erring spirit may, In love which is of Thee, and which indeed Thou art!
1851.
THE PEACE OF EUROPE.
"GREAT peace in Europe! Order reigns From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains!"
So say her kings and priests; so say The lying prophets of our day.
Go lay to earth a listening ear; The tramp of measured marches hear; The rolling of the cannon's wheel, The shotted musket's murderous peal, The night alarm, the sentry's call, The quick-eared spy in hut and hall!
From Polar sea and tropic fen The dying-groans of exiled men!
The bolted cell, the galley's chains, The scaffold smoking with its stains!
Order, the hush of brooding slaves Peace, in the dungeon-vaults and graves!
O Fisher! of the world-wide net, With meshes in all waters set, Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell, And open wide the banquet-hall, Where kings and priests hold carnival!
Weak vassal tricked in royal guise, Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies; Base gambler for Napoleon's crown, Barnacle on his dead renown!
Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan, Crowned scandal, loathed of God and man And thou, fell Spider of the North!
Stretching thy giant feelers forth, Within whose web the freedom dies Of nations eaten up like flies!
Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and Czar I If this be Peace, pray what is War?
White Angel of the Lord! unmeet That soil accursed for thy pure feet.
Never in Slavery's desert flows The fountain of thy charmed repose; No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves Of lilies and of olive-leaves; Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell, Thus saith the Eternal Oracle; Thy home is with the pure and free!
Stern herald of thy better day, Before thee, to prepare thy way, The Baptist Shade of Liberty, Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, must press With bleeding feet the wilderness!
Oh that its voice might pierces the ear Of princes, trembling while they hear A cry as of the Hebrew seer Repent! God's kingdom draweth near!
1852.