- When a deed is done for Freedom, through the
broad earth’s aching breast
- Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to
west,
- And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels the soul
within him climb
- To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
- Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of
Time.
- Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the
instantaneous throe,
- When the travail of the Ages wrings earth’s systems
to and fro;
- At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
- Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips
apart,
- And glad Truth’s yet mightier man-child leaps beneath
the Future’s heart.
- So the Evil’s triumph sendeth, with a
terror and a chill,
- Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,
- And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels his
sympathies with God
- In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the
sod,
- Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler
clod.
- For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct
bears along,
- Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flash of
right or wrong;
- Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast
frame
- Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or
shame;—
- In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal
claim.
- Once to every man and nation comes the moment to
decide,
- In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil
side;
- Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each
the bloom or blight,
- Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the
right,
- And the choice goes by forever ’twixt that darkness
and that light.
- Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party
thou shalt stand,
- Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against
our land?
- Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet ’t is Truth
alone is strong,
- And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
- Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all
wrong.
- Backward look across the ages and the
beacon-moments see,
- That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through
Oblivion’s sea;
- Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
- Of those Crises, God’s stern winnowers, from whose
feet earth’s chaff must fly;
- Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath
passed by.
- Careless seems the great Avenger;
history’s pages but record
- One death-grapple in the darkness ’twixt old systems
and the Word;
- Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the
throne,—
- Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim
unknown,
- Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his
own.
- We see dimly in the Present what is small and
what is great,
- Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn this iron helm of
fate,
- But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s
din,
- List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave
within,—
- “They enslave their children’s children who
make compromise with sin.”
- Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the
giant brood,
- Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the
earth with blood,
- Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,
- Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable
prey;—
- Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children
play?
- Then to side with Truth is noble when we share
her wretched crust,
- Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’t is
prosperous to be just;
- Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands
aside,
- Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
- And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.
- Count me o’er the earth’s chosen
heroes,— they were souls that stood alone,
- While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious
stone,
- Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam
incline
- To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith
divine,
- By one man’s plain truth to manhood and to
God’s supreme design.
- By the light of burning heretics Christ’s
bleeding feet I track,
- Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not
back,
- And these mounts of anguish number how each generation
learned
- One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts
hath burned
- Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to
heaven upturned.
- For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the
martyr stands,
- On the morrow, crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;
- Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling
fagots burn,
- While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
- To glean up the scattered ashes into History’s golden
urn.
- ’Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the
idle slaves
- Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father’s
graves,
- Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a
crime;—
- Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men
behind their time?
- Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth
Rock sublime?
- They were men of present valor, stalwart old
iconoclasts,
- Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the
Past’s;
- But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath
made us free,
- Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits
flee
- The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them
across the sea.
- They have rights who dare maintain them; we are
traitors to our sires,
- Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom’s new-lit
altar-fires;
- Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our
haste to slay,
- From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps
away
- To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophet of to-day?
- New occasions teach new duties; Time makes
ancient good uncouth;
- They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast
of Truth;
- Lo, before us gleam her campfires? We ourselves must
Pilgrims be,
- Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the
desperate winter sea,
- Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s
blood-rusted key.
