The interests of the rich man and the poor Are one and same, inseparable evermore; And, when scant wage or labor fail to give Food, shelter, raiment, wherewithal to live, Need has its rights, necessity its claim.
Yea, even self-wrought misery and shame Test well the charity suffering long and kind.
The home-pressed question of the age can find No answer in the catch-words of the blind Leaders of blind. Solution there is none Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone.
1877.
OUR COUNTRY.
Read at Woodstock, Conn., July 4,1883.
WE give thy natal day to hope, O Country of our love and prayer I Thy way is down no fatal slope, But up to freer sun and air.
Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet By God's grace only stronger made, In future tasks before thee set Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid.
The fathers sleep, but men remain As wise, as true, and brave as they; Why count the loss and not the gain?
The best is that we have to-day.
Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime, Within thy mighty bounds transpires, With speed defying space and time Comes to us on the accusing wires;
While of thy wealth of noble deeds, Thy homes of peace, thy votes unsold, The love that pleads for human needs, The wrong redressed, but half is told!
We read each felon's chronicle, His acts, his words, his gallows-mood; We know the single sinner well And not the nine and ninety good.
Yet if, on daily scandals fed, We seem at times to doubt thy worth, We know thee still, when all is said, The best and dearest spot on earth.
From the warm Mexic Gulf, or where Belted with flowers Los Angeles Basks in the semi-tropic air, To where Katahdin's cedar trees
Are dwarfed and bent by Northern winds, Thy plenty's horn is yearly filled; Alone, the rounding century finds Thy liberal soil by free hands tilled.
A refuge for the wronged and poor, Thy generous heart has borne the blame That, with them, through thy open door, The old world's evil outcasts came.
But, with thy just and equal rule, And labor's need and breadth of lands, Free press and rostrum, church and school, Thy sure, if slow, transforming hands
Shall mould even them to thy design, Making a blessing of the ban; And Freedom's chemistry combine The alien elements of man.
The power that broke their prison bar And set the dusky millions free, And welded in the flame of war The Union fast to Liberty,
Shall it not deal with other ills, Redress the red man's grievance, break The Circean cup which shames and kills, And Labor full requital make?
Alone to such as fitly bear Thy civic honors bid them fall?
And call thy daughters forth to share The rights and duties pledged to all?
Give every child his right of school, Merge private greed in public good, And spare a treasury overfull The tax upon a poor man's food?
No lack was in thy primal stock, No weakling founders builded here; Thine were the men of Plymouth Rock, The Huguenot and Cavalier;
And they whose firm endurance gained The freedom of the souls of men, Whose hands, unstained with blood, maintained The swordless commonwealth of Penn.
And thine shall be the power of all To do the work which duty bids, And make the people's council hall As lasting as the Pyramids!
Well have thy later years made good Thy brave-said word a century back, The pledge of human brotherhood, The equal claim of white and black.
That word still echoes round the world, And all who hear it turn to thee, And read upon thy flag unfurled The prophecies of destiny.
Thy great world-lesson all shall learn, The nations in thy school shall sit, Earth's farthest mountain-tops shall burn With watch-fires from thy own uplit.
Great without seeking to be great By fraud or conquest, rich in gold, But richer in the large estate Of virtue which thy children hold,
With peace that comes of purity And strength to simple justice due, So runs our loyal dream of thee; God of our fathers! make it true.
O Land of lands! to thee we give Our prayers, our hopes, our service free; For thee thy sons shall nobly live, And at thy need shall die for thee!
ON THE BIG HORN.
In the disastrous battle on the Big Horn River, in which General Custer and his entire force were slain, the chief Rain-in-the-Face was one of the fiercest leaders of the Indians. In Longfellow's poem on the massacre, these lines will be remembered:--
"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face, "Revenge upon all the race Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high From their crags reechoed the cry Of his anger and despair.
He is now a man of peace; and the agent at Standing Rock, Dakota, writes, September 28, 1886: "Rain-in-the-Face is very anxious to go to Hampton. I fear he is too old, but he desires very much to go." The Southern Workman, the organ of General Armstrong's Industrial School at Hampton, Va., says in a late number:--
"Rain-in-the-Face has applied before to come to Hampton, but his age would exclude him from the school as an ordinary student. He has shown himself very much in earnest about it, and is anxious, all say, to learn the better ways of life. It is as unusual as it is striking to see a man of his age, and one who has had such an experience, willing to give up the old way, and put himself in the position of a boy and a student."
THE years are but half a score, And the war-whoop sounds no more With the blast of bugles, where Straight into a slaughter pen, With his doomed three hundred men, Rode the chief with the yellow hair.
O Hampton, down by the sea!
What voice is beseeching thee For the scholar's lowliest place?
Can this be the voice of him Who fought on the Big Horn's rim?
Can this be Rain-in-the-Face?
His war-paint is washed away, His hands have forgotten to slay; He seeks for himself and his race The arts of peace and the lore That give to the skilled hand more Than the spoils of war and chase.
O chief of the Christ-like school!
Can the zeal of thy heart grow cool When the victor scarred with fight Like a child for thy guidance craves, And the faces of hunters and braves Are turning to thee for light?
The hatchet lies overgrown With grass by the Yellowstone, Wind River and Paw of Bear; And, in sign that foes are friends, Each lodge like a peace-pipe sends Its smoke in the quiet air.
The hands that have done the wrong To right the wronged are strong, And the voice of a nation saith "Enough of the war of swords, Enough of the lying words And shame of a broken faith!"
The hills that have watched afar The valleys ablaze with war Shall look on the tasselled corn; And the dust of the grinded grain, Instead of the blood of the slain, Shall sprinkle thy banks, Big Horn!
The Ute and the wandering Crow Shall know as the white men know, And fare as the white men fare; The pale and the red shall be brothers, One's rights shall be as another's, Home, School, and House of Prayer!