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THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS

 
I hear, from many a little throat,
A warble interrupted long;
I hear the robin's flute-like note,
The bluebird's slenderer song.
 
 
Brown meadows and the russet hill,
Not yet the haunt of grazing herds,
And thickets by the glimmering rill,
Are all alive with birds.
 
 
Oh choir of spring, why come so soon?
On leafless grove and herbless lawn
Warm lie the yellow beams of moon;
Yet winter is not gone.
 
 
For frost shall sheet the pools again;
Again the blustering East shall blow —
Whirl a white tempest through the glen,
And load the pines with snow.
 
 
Yet, haply, from the region where,
Waked by an earlier spring than here,
The blossomed wild-plum scents the air,
Ye come in haste and fear.
 
 
For there is heard the bugle-blast,
The booming gun, the jarring drum,
And on their chargers, spurring fast,
Armed warriors go and come.
 
 
There mighty hosts have pitched the camp
In valleys that were yours till then,
And Earth has shuddered to the tramp
Of half a million men!
 
 
In groves where once ye used to sing,
In orchards where ye had your birth,
A thousand glittering axes swing
To smite the trees to earth.
 
 
Ye love the fields by ploughmen trod;
But there, when sprouts the beechen spray,
The soldier only breaks the sod
To hide the slain away.
 
 
Stay, then, beneath our ruder sky;
Heed not the storm-clouds rising black,
Nor yelling winds that with them fly;
Nor let them fright you back, —
 
 
Back to the stifling battle-cloud,
To burning towns that blot the day,
And trains of mounting dust that shroud
The armies on their way.
 
 
Stay, for a tint of green shall creep
Soon o'er the orchard's grassy floor,
And from its bed the crocus peep
Beside the housewife's door.
 
 
Here build, and dread no harsher sound,
To scare you from the sheltering tree,
Than winds that stir the branches round,
And murmur of the bee.
 
 
And we will pray that, ere again
The flowers of autumn bloom and die,
Our generals and their strong-armed men
May lay their weapons by.
 
 
Then may ye warble, unafraid,
Where hands, that wear the fetter now,
Free as your wings shall ply the spade,
And guide the peaceful plough.
 
 
Then, as our conquering hosts return,
What shouts of jubilee shall break
From placid vale and mountain stern,
And shore of mighty lake!
 
 
And midland plain and ocean-strand
Shall thunder: "Glory to the brave,
Peace to the torn and bleeding land,
And freedom to the slave!"
 

March, 1864.

"HE HATH PUT ALL THINGS UNDER HIS FEET."

 
O North, with all thy vales of green!
O South, with all thy palms!
From peopled towns and fields between
Uplift the voice of psalms;
Raise, ancient East, the anthem high,
And let the youthful West reply.
 
 
Lo! in the clouds of heaven appears
God's well-belovèd Son;
He brings a train of brighter years:
His kingdom is begun.
He comes, a guilty world to bless
With mercy, truth, and righteousness.
 
 
Oh, Father! haste the promised hour
When, at His feet, shall lie
All rule, authority, and power,
Beneath the ample sky;
When He shall reign from pole to pole,
The lord of every human soul;
 
 
When all shall heed the words He said
Amid their daily cares,
And, by the loving life He led,
Shall seek to pattern theirs;
And He, who conquered Death, shall win
The nobler conquest over Sin.
 

MY AUTUMN WALK

 
On woodlands ruddy with autumn
The amber sunshine lies;
I look on the beauty round me,
And tears come into my eyes.
 
 
For the wind that sweeps the meadows
Blows out of the far Southwest,
Where our gallant men are fighting,
And the gallant dead are at rest.
 
 
The golden-rod is leaning,
And the purple aster waves
In a breeze from the land of battles,
A breath from the land of graves.
 
 
Full fast the leaves are dropping
Before that wandering breath;
As fast, on the field of battle,
Our brethren fall in death.
 
 
Beautiful over my pathway
The forest spoils are shed;
They are spotting the grassy hillocks
With purple and gold and red.
 
 
Beautiful is the death-sleep
Of those who bravely fight
In their country's holy quarrel,
And perish for the Right.
 
 
But who shall comfort the living,
The light of whose homes is gone:
The bride that, early widowed,
Lives broken-hearted on;
 
 
The matron whose sons are lying
In graves on a distant shore;
The maiden, whose promised husband
Comes back from the war no more?
 
 
I look on the peaceful dwellings
Whose windows glimmer in sight,
With croft and garden and orchard,
That bask in the mellow light;
 
 
And I know that, when our couriers
With news of victory come,
They will bring a bitter message
Of hopeless grief to some.
 
 
Again I turn to the woodlands,
And shudder as I see
The mock-grape's blood-red banner⁴²
Hung out on the cedar-tree;
 
 
And I think of days of slaughter,
And the night-sky red with flames,
On the Chattahoochee's meadows,
And the wasted banks of the James.
 
 
Oh, for the fresh spring-season,
When the groves are in their prime;
And far away in the future
Is the frosty autumn-time!
 
 
Oh, for that better season,
When the pride of the foe shall yield,
And the hosts of God and Freedom
March back from the well-won field;
 
 
And the matron shall clasp her first-born
With tears of joy and pride;
And the scarred and war-worn lover
Shall claim his promised bride!
 
 
The leaves are swept from the branches;
But the living buds are there,
With folded flower and foliage,
To sprout in a kinder air.
 

October, 1864.

DANTE

 
Who, mid the grasses of the field
That spring beneath our careless feet,
First found the shining stems that yield
The grains of life-sustaining wheat:
 
 
Who first, upon the furrowed land,
Strewed the bright grains to sprout, and grow,
And ripen for the reaper's hand —
We know not, and we cannot know.
 
 
But well we know the hand that brought
And scattered, far as sight can reach,
The seeds of free and living thought
On the broad field of modern speech.
 
 
Mid the white hills that round us lie,
We cherish that Great Sower's fame,
And, as we pile the sheaves on high,
With awe we utter Dante's name.
 
 
Six centuries, since the poet's birth,
Have come and flitted o'er our sphere:
The richest harvest reaped on earth
Crowns the last century's closing year.
 

1865.

THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

 
Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear
The sword of power, a nation's trust!
 
 
In sorrow by thy bier we stand,
Amid the awe that hushes all,
And speak the anguish of a land
That shook with horror at thy fall.
 
 
Thy task is done; the bond are free:
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose proudest monument shall be
The broken fetters of the slave.
 
 
Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Hath placed thee with the sons of light,
Among the noble host of those
Who perished in the cause of Right.
 

April, 1865.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY

 
O thou great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield
The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
And turn a stony gaze on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is o'er;
Thy bondmen crouch no more
In terror at the menace of thine eye;
For He who marks the bounds of guilty power,
Long-suffering, hath heard the captive's cry,
And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,
And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled
Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.
 
 
A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;
Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
Send up hosannas to the firmament!
Fields where the bondman's toil
No more shall trench the soil,
Seem now to bask in a serener day;
The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs
Of heaven with more caressing softness play,
Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.
A glory clothes the land from sea to sea,
For the great land and all its coasts are free.
 
 
Within that land wert thou enthroned of late,
And they by whom the nation's laws were made,
And they who filled its judgment-seats obeyed
Thy mandate, rigid as the will of Fate.
Fierce men at thy right hand,
With gesture of command,
Gave forth the word that none might dare gainsay;
And grave and reverend ones, who loved thee not,
Shrank from thy presence, and in blank dismay
Choked down, unuttered, the rebellious thought;
While meaner cowards, mingling with thy train,
Proved, from the book of God, thy right to reign.
 
 
Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to shore,
The wrath of Heaven o'ertook thee in thy pride;
Thou sitt'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side
Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evermore.
And they who quailed but now
Before thy lowering brow,
Devote thy memory to scorn and shame,
And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art.
And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
Subdued, and standing sullenly apart,
Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign,
And shattered at a blow the prisoner's chain.
 
 
Well was thy doom deserved; thou didst not spare
Life's tenderest ties, but cruelly didst part
Husband and wife, and from the mother's heart
Didst wrest her children, deaf to shriek and prayer;
Thy inner lair became
The haunt of guilty shame;
Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side,
Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due.
Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide,
A harvest of uncounted miseries grew,
Until the measure of thy sins at last
Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast!
 
 
Go now, accursed of God, and take thy place
With hateful memories of the elder time,
With many a wasting plague, and nameless crime,
And bloody war that thinned the human race;
With the Black Death, whose way
Through wailing cities lay,
Worship of Moloch, tyrannies that built
The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught
To avenge a fancied guilt by deeper guilt —
Death at the stake to those that held them not.
Lo! the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom
Of the flown ages, part to yield thee room.
 
 
I see the better years that hasten by
Carry thee back into that shadowy past,
Where, in the dusty spaces, void and vast,
The graves of those whom thou hast murdered lie.
The slave-pen, through whose door
Thy victims pass no more,
Is there, and there shall the grim block remain
At which the slave was sold; while at thy feet
Scourges and engines of restraint and pain
Moulder and rust by thine eternal seat.
There, mid the symbols that proclaim thy crimes,
Dwell thou, a warning to the coming times.
 

May, 1866.

"RECEIVE THY SIGHT."

 
When the blind suppliant in the way,
By friendly hands to Jesus led,
Prayed to behold the light of day,
"Receive thy sight," the Saviour said.
 
 
At once he saw the pleasant rays
That lit the glorious firmament;
And, with firm step and words of praise,
He followed where the Master went.
 
 
Look down in pity, Lord, we pray,
On eyes oppressed by moral night,
And touch the darkened lids and say
The gracious words, "Receive thy sight."
 
 
Then, in clear daylight, shall we see
Where walked the sinless Son of God;
And, aided by new strength from Thee,
Press onward in the path He trod.
 

A BRIGHTER DAY.⁴³

FROM THE SPANISH

 
Harness the impatient Years,
O Time! and yoke them to the imperial car;
For, through a mist of tears,
The brighter day appears,
Whose early blushes tinge the hills afar.
 
 
A brighter day for thee,
O realm! whose glorious fields are spread between
The dark-blue Midland Sea
And that immensity
Of Western waters which once hailed thee queen!
 
 
The fiery coursers fling
Their necks aloft, and snuff the morning wind,
Till the fleet moments bring
The expected sign to spring
Along their path, and leave these glooms behind.
 
 
Yoke them, and yield the reins
To Spain, and lead her to the lofty seat;
But, ere she mount, the chains
Whose cruel strength constrains
Her limbs must fall in fragments at her feet.
 
 
A tyrant brood have wound
About her helpless limbs the steely braid,
And toward a gulf profound
They drag her, gagged and bound,
Down among dead men's bones, and frost and shade.
 
 
O Spain! thou wert of yore
The wonder of the realms; in prouder years
Thy haughty forehead wore,
What it shall wear no more,
The diadem of both the hemispheres.
 
 
To thee the ancient Deep
Revealed his pleasant, undiscovered lands;
From mines where jewels sleep,
Tilled plain and vine-clad steep,
Earth's richest spoil was offered to thy hands.
 
 
Yet thou, when land and sea
Sent thee their tribute with each rolling wave,
And kingdoms crouched to thee,
Wert false to Liberty,
And therefore art thou now a shackled slave.
 
 
Wilt thou not, yet again,
Put forth the sleeping strength that in thee lies,
And snap the shameful chain,
And force that tyrant train
To flee before the anger in thine eyes?
 
 
Then shall the harnessed Years
Sweep onward with thee to that glorious height
Which even now appears
Bright through the mist of tears,
The dwelling-place of Liberty and Light.
 

October, 1867.

AMONG THE TREES

 
Oh ye who love to overhang the springs,
And stand by running waters, ye whose boughs
Make beautiful the rocks o'er which they play,
Who pile with foliage the great hills, and rear
A paradise upon the lonely plain,
Trees of the forest, and the open field!
Have ye no sense of being? Does the air,
The pure air, which I breathe with gladness, pass
In gushes o'er your delicate lungs, your leaves,
All unenjoyed? When on your winter's sleep
The sun shines warm, have ye no dreams of spring?
And when the glorious spring-time comes at last,
Have ye no joy of all your bursting buds,
And fragrant blooms, and melody of birds
To which your young leaves shiver? Do ye strive
And wrestle with the wind, yet know it not?
Feel ye no glory in your strength when he,
The exhausted Blusterer, flies beyond the hills,
And leaves you stronger yet? Or have ye not
A sense of loss when he has stripped your leaves,
Yet tender, and has splintered your fair boughs?
Does the loud bolt that smites you from the cloud
And rends you, fall unfelt? Do there not run
Strange shudderings through your fibres when the axe
Is raised against you, and the shining blade
Deals blow on blow, until, with all their boughs,
Your summits waver and ye fall to earth?
Know ye no sadness when the hurricane
Has swept the wood and snapped its sturdy stems
Asunder, or has wrenched, from out the soil,
The mightiest with their circles of strong roots,
And piled the ruin all along his path?
 
 
Nay, doubt we not that under the rough rind,
In the green veins of these fair growths of earth,
There dwells a nature that receives delight
From all the gentle processes of life,
And shrinks from loss of being. Dim and faint
May be the sense of pleasure and of pain,
As in our dreams; but, haply, real still.
 
 
Our sorrows touch you not. We watch beside
The beds of those who languish or who die,
And minister in sadness, while our hearts
Offer perpetual prayer for life and ease
And health to the belovèd sufferers.
But ye, while anxious fear and fainting hope
Are in our chambers, ye rejoice without.
The funeral goes forth; a silent train
Moves slowly from the desolate home; our hearts
Are breaking as we lay away the loved,
Whom we shall see no more, in their last rest,
Their little cells within the burial-place.
Ye have no part in this distress; for still
The February sunshine steeps your boughs
And tints the buds and swells the leaves within;
While the song-sparrow, warbling from her perch,
Tells you that spring is near. The wind of May
Is sweet with breath of orchards, in whose boughs
The bees and every insect of the air
Make a perpetual murmur of delight,
And by whose flowers the humming-bird hangs poised
In air, and draws their sweets and darts away.
The linden, in the fervors of July,
Hums with a louder concert. When the wind
Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime,
As when some master-hand exulting sweeps
The keys of some great organ, ye give forth
The music of the woodland depths, a hymn
Of gladness and of thanks. The hermit-thrush
Pipes his sweet note to make your arches ring;
The faithful robin, from the wayside elm,
Carols all day to cheer his sitting mate;
And when the autumn comes, the kings of earth,
In all their majesty, are not arrayed
As ye are, clothing the broad mountain-side
And spotting the smooth vales with red and gold;
While, swaying to the sudden breeze, ye fling
Your nuts to earth, and the brisk squirrel comes
To gather them, and barks with childish glee,
And scampers with them to his hollow oak.
 
 
Thus, as the seasons pass, ye keep alive
The cheerfulness of Nature, till in time
The constant misery which wrings the heart
Relents, and we rejoice with you again,
And glory in your beauty; till once more
We look with pleasure on your varnished leaves,
That gayly glance in sunshine, and can hear,
Delighted, the soft answer which your boughs
Utter in whispers to the babbling brook.
 
 
Ye have no history. I cannot know
Who, when the hillside trees were hewn away,
Haply two centuries since, bade spare this oak,
Leaning to shade, with his irregular arms,
Low-bent and long, the fount that from his roots
Slips through a bed of cresses toward the bay —
I know not who, but thank him that he left
The tree to flourish where the acorn fell,
And join these later days to that far time
While yet the Indian hunter drew the bow
In the dim woods, and the white woodman first
Opened these fields to sunshine, turned the soil
And strewed the wheat. An unremembered Past
Broods, like a presence, mid the long gray boughs
Of this old tree, which has outlived so long
The flitting generations of mankind.
 
 
Ye have no history. I ask in vain
Who planted on the slope this lofty group
Of ancient pear-trees that with spring-time burst
Into such breadth of bloom. One bears a scar
Where the quick lightning scored its trunk, yet still
It feels the breath of Spring, and every May
Is white with blossoms. Who it was that laid
Their infant roots in earth, and tenderly
Cherished the delicate sprays, I ask in vain,
Yet bless the unknown hand to which I owe
This annual festival of bees, these songs
Of birds within their leafy screen, these shouts
Of joy from children gathering up the fruit
Shaken in August from the willing boughs.
Ye that my hands have planted, or have spared,
Beside the way, or in the orchard-ground,
Or in the open meadow, ye whose boughs
With every summer spread a wider shade,
Whose herd in coming years shall lie at rest
Beneath your noontide shelter? who shall pluck
Your ripened fruit? who grave, as was the wont
Of simple pastoral ages, on the rind
Of my smooth beeches some beloved name?
Idly I ask; yet may the eyes that look
Upon you, in your later, nobler growth,
Look also on a nobler age than ours;
An age when, in the eternal strife between
Evil and Good, the Power of Good shall win
A grander mastery; when kings no more
Shall summon millions from the plough to learn
The trade of slaughter, and of populous realms
Make camps of war; when in our younger land
The hand of ruffian Violence, that now
Is insolently raised to smite, shall fall
Unnerved before the calm rebuke of Law,
And Fraud, his sly confederate, shrink, in shame,
Back to his covert, and forego his prey.
 

MAY EVENING

 
The breath of Spring-time at this twilight hour
Comes through the gathering glooms,
And bears the stolen sweets of many a flower
Into my silent rooms.
 
 
Where hast thou wandered, gentle gale, to find
The perfumes thou dost bring?
By brooks, that through the wakening meadows wind,
Or brink of rushy spring?
 
 
Or woodside, where, in little companies,
The early wild-flowers rise,
Or sheltered lawn, where, mid encircling trees,
May's warmest sunshine lies?
 
 
Now sleeps the humming-bird, that, in the sun,
Wandered from bloom to bloom;
Now, too, the weary bee, his day's work done,
Rests in his waxen room.
 
 
Now every hovering insect to his place
Beneath the leaves hath flown;
And, through the long night hours, the flowery race
Are left to thee alone.
 
 
O'er the pale blossoms of the sassafras
And o'er the spice-bush spray,
Among the opening buds, thy breathings pass,
And come embalmed away.
 
 
Yet there is sadness in thy soft caress,
Wind of the blooming year!
The gentle presence, that was wont to bless
Thy coming, is not here.
 
 
Go, then; and yet I bid thee not repair,
Thy gathered sweets to shed,
Where pine and willow, in the evening air,
Sigh o'er the buried dead.
 
 
Pass on to homes where cheerful voices sound,
And cheerful looks are cast,
And where thou wakest, in thine airy round,
No sorrow of the past.
 
 
Refresh the languid student pausing o'er
The learned page apart,
And he shall turn to con his task once more
With an encouraged heart.
 
 
Bear thou a promise, from the fragrant sward,
To him who tills the land,
Of springing harvests that shall yet reward
The labors of his hand.
 
 
And whisper, everywhere, that Earth renews
Her beautiful array,
Amid the darkness and the gathering dews,
For the return of day.
 

OCTOBER, 1866

 
'Twas when the earth in summer glory lay,
We bore thee to thy grave; a sudden cloud
Had shed its shower and passed, and every spray
And tender herb with pearly moisture bowed.
 
 
How laughed the fields, and how, before our door,
Danced the bright waters! – from his perch on high
The hang-bird sang his ditty o'er and o'er,
And the song-sparrow from the shrubberies nigh.
 
 
Yet was the home where thou wert lying dead
Mournfully still, save when, at times, was heard,
From room to room, some softly-moving tread,
Or murmur of some softly-uttered word.
 
 
Feared they to break thy slumber? As we threw
A look on that bright bay and glorious shore,
Our hearts were wrung with anguish, for we knew
Those sleeping eyes would look on them no more.
 
 
Autumn is here; we cull his lingering flowers
And bring them to the spot where thou art laid;
The late-born offspring of his balmier hours,
Spared by the frost, upon thy grave to fade.
 
 
The sweet calm sunshine of October, now
Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mould
The purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough
Drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold.
 
 
And gorgeous as the morn, a tall array
Of woodland shelters the smooth fields around;
And guarded by its headlands, far away
Sail-spotted, blue and lake-like, sleeps the sound.
 
 
I gaze in sadness; it delights me not
To look on beauty which thou canst not see;
And, wert thou by my side, the dreariest spot
Were, oh, how far more beautiful to me!
 
 
In what fair region dost thou now abide?
Hath God, in the transparent deeps of space,
Through which the planets in their journey glide,
Prepared, for souls like thine, a dwelling-place?
 
 
Fields of unwithering bloom, to mortal eye
Invisible, though mortal eye were near,
Musical groves, and bright streams murmuring by,
Heard only by the spiritual ear?
 
 
Nay, let us deem that thou dost not withdraw
From the dear places where thy lot was cast,
And where thy heart, in love's most holy law,
Was schooled by all the memories of the past.
 
 
Here on this earth, where once, among mankind,
Walked God's belovèd Son, thine eyes may see
Beauty to which our dimmer sense is blind
And glory that may make it heaven to thee.
 
 
May we not think that near us thou dost stand
With loving ministrations, for we know
Thy heart was never happy when thy hand
Was forced its tasks of mercy to forego!
 
 
Mayst thou not prompt, with every coming day,
The generous aim and act, and gently win
Our restless, wandering thoughts to turn away
From every treacherous path that ends in sin!