Long be it ere the tide of trade Shall break with harsh-resounding din The quiet of thy banks of shade, And hills that fold thee in.
Still let thy woodlands hide the hare, The shy loon sound his trumpet-note, Wing-weary from his fields of air, The wild-goose on thee float.
Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir, Thy beauty our deforming strife; Thy woods and waters minister The healing of their life.
And sinless Mirth, from care released, Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky, Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast The Master's loving eye.
And when the summer day grows dim, And light mists walk thy mimic sea, Revive in us the thought of Him Who walked on Galilee!
FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL
The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more; The woven wreaths of oak and pine Are dust along the Isthmian shore.
But beauty hath its homage still, And nature holds us still in debt; And woman's grace and household skill, And manhood's toil, are honored yet.
And we, to-day, amidst our flowers And fruits, have come to own again The blessings of the summer hours, The early and the latter rain;
To see our Father's hand once more Reverse for us the plenteous horn Of autumn, filled and running o'er With fruit, and flower, and golden corn!
Once more the liberal year laughs out O'er richer stores than gems or gold; Once more with harvest-song and shout Is Nature's bloodless triumph told.
Our common mother rests and sings, Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves; Her lap is full of goodly things, Her brow is bright with autumn leaves.
Oh, favors every year made new!
Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent The bounty overruns our due, The fulness shames our discontent.
We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on; We murmur, but the corn-ears fill, We choose the shadow, but the sun That casts it shines behind us still.
God gives us with our rugged soil The power to make it Eden-fair, And richer fruits to crown our toil Than summer-wedded islands bear.
Who murmurs at his lot to-day?
Who scorns his native fruit and bloom?
Or sighs for dainties far away, Beside the bounteous board of home?
Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's arm Can change a rocky soil to gold,-- That brave and generous lives can warm A clime with northern ices cold.
And let these altars, wreathed with flowers And piled with fruits, awake again Thanksgivings for the golden hours, The early and the latter rain!
1859
THE QUAKER ALUMNI.
Read at the Friends' School Anniversary, Providence, R. I., 6th mo., 1860.
From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of Maine, Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again; And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool, Play over the old game of going to school.
All your strifes and vexations, your whims and complaints, (You were not saints yourselves, if the children of saints!) All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done, Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as one!
How widely soe'er you have strayed from the fold, Though your "thee" has grown "you," and your drab blue and gold, To the old friendly speech and the garb's sober form, Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm.
But, the first greetings over, you glance round the hall; Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all Through the turf green above them the dead cannot hear; Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear!
In love, let us trust, they were summoned so soon rom the morning of life, while we toil through its noon; They were frail like ourselves, they had needs like our own, And they rest as we rest in God's mercy alone.
Unchanged by our changes of spirit and frame, Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is the same; Though we sink in the darkness, His arms break our fall, And in death as in life, He is Father of all!
We are older: our footsteps, so light in the play Of the far-away school-time, move slower to-day;-- Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shining crown, And beneath the cap's border gray mingles with brown.
But faith should be cheerful, and trust should be glad, And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad.
Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet grows prim, And the face grow in length as the hat grows in brim?
Life is brief, duty grave; but, with rain-folded wings, Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful heart sings; And we, of all others, have reason to pay The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our way;
For the counsels that turned from the follies of youth; For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of truth; For the wounds of rebuke, when love tempered its edge; For the household's restraint, and the discipline's hedge;
For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed to the least Of the creatures of God, whether human or beast, Bringing hope to the poor, lending strength to the frail, In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, and jail;
For a womanhood higher and holier, by all Her knowledge of good, than was Eve ere her fall,-- Whose task-work of duty moves lightly as play, Serene as the moonlight and warm as the day;
And, yet more, for the faith which embraces the whole, Of the creeds of the ages the life and the soul, Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run, And man has not severed what God has made one!
For a sense of the Goodness revealed everywhere, As sunshine impartial, and free as the air; For a trust in humanity, Heathen or Jew, And a hope for all darkness the Light shineth through.
Who scoffs at our birthright?--the words of the seers, And the songs of the bards in the twilight of years, All the foregleams of wisdom in santon and sage, In prophet and priest, are our true heritage.
The Word which the reason of Plato discerned; The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-fire burned; The soul of the world which the Stoic but guessed, In the Light Universal the Quaker confessed!
No honors of war to our worthies belong; Their plain stem of life never flowered into song; But the fountains they opened still gush by the way, And the world for their healing is better to-day.
He who lies where the minster's groined arches curve down To the tomb-crowded transept of England's renown, The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned, Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned,--
Who through the world's pantheon walked in his pride, Setting new statues up, thrusting old ones aside, And in fiction the pencils of history dipped, To gild o'er or blacken each saint in his crypt,--
How vainly he labored to sully with blame The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame!
Self-will is self-wounding, perversity blind On himself fell the stain for the Quaker designed!
For the sake of his true-hearted father before him; For the sake of the dear Quaker mother that bore him; For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive him, And his brave words for freedom, we freely forgive him!
There are those who take note that our numbers are small,-- New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall; But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of His own, And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have sown.
The last of the sect to his fathers may go, Leaving only his coat for some Barnum to show; But the truth will outlive him, and broaden with years, Till the false dies away, and the wrong disappears.