Smiting down with strokes of power Burning fragments from the tower.
Then the gazing crowd beneath Broke the painful pause of breath;
Brave men cheered from street to street, With home's ashes at their feet;
Houseless women kerchiefs waved: "Thank the Lord! St. Michael's saved!"
II.
In the heart of Boston town Stands the church of old renown,
From whose walls the impulse went Which set free a continent;
From whose pulpit's oracle Prophecies of freedom fell;
And whose steeple-rocking din Rang the nation's birth-day in!
Standing at this very hour Perilled like St. Michael's tower,
Held not in the clasp of flame, But by mammon's grasping claim.
Shall it be of Boston said She is shamed by Marblehead?
City of our pride! as there, Hast thou none to do and dare?
Life was risked for Michael's shrine; Shall not wealth be staked for thine?
Woe to thee, when men shall search Vainly for the Old South Church;
When from Neck to Boston Stone, All thy pride of place is gone;
When from Bay and railroad car, Stretched before them wide and far,
Men shall only see a great Wilderness of brick and slate,
Every holy spot o'erlaid By the commonplace of trade!
City of our love': to thee Duty is but destiny.
True to all thy record saith, Keep with thy traditions faith;
Ere occasion's overpast, Hold its flowing forelock fast;
Honor still the precedents Of a grand munificence;
In thy old historic way Give, as thou didst yesterday
At the South-land's call, or on Need's demand from fired St. John.
Set thy Church's muffled bell Free the generous deed to tell.
Let thy loyal hearts rejoice In the glad, sonorous voice,
Ringing from the brazen mouth Of the bell of the Old South,--
Ringing clearly, with a will, "What she was is Boston still!"
1879
GARDEN
The American Horticultural Society, 1882.
O painter of the fruits and flowers, We own wise design, Where these human hands of ours May share work of Thine!
Apart from Thee we plant in vain The root and sow the seed; Thy early and Thy later rain, Thy sun and dew we need.
Our toil is sweet with thankfulness, Our burden is our boon; The curse of Earth's gray morning is The blessing of its noon.
Why search the wide world everywhere For Eden's unknown ground?
That garden of the primal pair May nevermore be found.
But, blest by Thee, our patient toil May right the ancient wrong, And give to every clime and soil The beauty lost so long.
Our homestead flowers and fruited trees May Eden's orchard shame; We taste the tempting sweets of these Like Eve, without her blame.
And, North and South and East and West, The pride of every zone, The fairest, rarest, and the best May all be made our own.
Its earliest shrines the young world sought In hill-groves and in bowers, The fittest offerings thither brought Were Thy own fruits and flowers.
And still with reverent hands we cull Thy gifts each year renewed; The good is always beautiful, The beautiful is good.
A GREETING
Read at Harriet Beecher Stowe's seventieth anniversary, June 14, 1882, at a garden party at ex-Governor Claflin's in Newtonville, Mass.
Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers And golden-fruited orange bowers To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!
To her who, in our evil time, Dragged into light the nation's crime With strength beyond the strength of men, And, mightier than their swords, her pen!
To her who world-wide entrance gave To the log-cabin of the slave; Made all his wrongs and sorrows known, And all earth's languages his own,-- North, South, and East and West, made all The common air electrical, Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven Blazed down, and every chain was riven!
Welcome from each and all to her Whose Wooing of the Minister Revealed the warm heart of the man Beneath the creed-bound Puritan, And taught the kinship of the love Of man below and God above; To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks; Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way, With old New England's flavor rife, Waifs from her rude idyllic life, Are racy as the legends old By Chaucer or Boccaccio told; To her who keeps, through change of place And time, her native strength and grace, Alike where warm Sorrento smiles, Or where, by birchen-shaded isles, Whose summer winds have shivered o'er The icy drift of Labrador, She lifts to light the priceless Pearl Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl!
To her at threescore years and ten Be tributes of the tongue and pen; Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given, The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!