What doth the poor man's son inherit? To make the outcast bless his door; O rich man's son! there is a toil But only whiten, soft white hands,This is the best crop from thy lands; A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being rich to hold in fee. poor man's son! scorn not thy state; There is worse weariness than thine In merely being rich and great: Toil only gives the soul to shine, And makes rest fragrant and benign, A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being poor to hold in fee. Both, heirs to some six feet of sod, A heritage, it seems to me, A PRAYER BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL God! do not let my loved one die, Enough to enter thy pure clime; O, let her stay! She is by birth What I through death must learn to be, We need her more on our poor earth, Than thou canst need in heaven with thee: She hath her wings already, I Must burst this earth-shell ere I fly. Then, God, take me! We shall be near, More near than ever, each to each: A REQUIEM BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Ay, pale and silent maiden, The wildest and most wayward, Into the eternal shadow That girds our life around, Into the infinite silence Wherewith Death's shore is bound, Thou hast gone forth, beloved! Thou liest low and silent, Thy heart is cold and still, We strove, and he was stronger, And I have never wept. Let him possess thy body, Thy soul is still with me, More sunny and more gladsome Than it was wont to be: Thy body was a fetter That bound me to the flesh, Thank God that it is broken, And now I live afresh! Now I can see thee clearly; I saw its bright wings growing, Now I can love thee truly, The senses and the spirit, The silence bursts apart, THE PRESENT CRISIS BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 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 flush 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. |