And the dread, like mist in sunshine, "Once my love, my love forever, As from Holy Land I came. "On a green spot in the desert, Gleaning like an emerald star, "There thou 'lt find the humble postern Surely will not say thee no." Slept again the aspen silence, But her loneliness was o'er ; Round her soul a motherly patience Clasped its arms forevermore; From her heart ebbed back the sorrow, Leaving smooth the golden shore. Donned she now the pilgrim scallop, Took the pilgrim staff in hand; Like a cloud-shade, flitting eastward, Wandered she o'er sea and land; And her footsteps in the desert Fell like cool rain on the sand. Soon, beneath the palm-tree's shadow, There she saw no surly warder With an eye like bolt and bar; Through her soul a sense of music Throbbed, and, like a guardian Lar, On the threshold stood an angel, Bright and silent as a star. Fairest seemed he of God's seraphs, The soul once of some tremulous inland river, Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever! While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine, Holds up its leaves in happy, happy stillness, Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence. On the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping round thy slim white stem, whose shadow Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Naiad. Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, | For, as that saved of bird and beast dences; And furnished half the nation. Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats; I offer to all bores this perch, See golden ages rising, My wonder, then, was not unmixed Now even such men as Nature forms Who knows, thought I, but he has come, Behind my wainscot buried? About that garb outlandish Just then the ghost drew up his chair And said, "My name is Standish. "I come from Plymouth, deadly bored With toasts, and songs, and speeches, As long and flat as my old sword, As threadbare as my breeches : They understand us Pilgrims! they, Smooth men with rosy faces, Strength's knots and gnarls all pared "No, Freedom, no! blood should not "T is shame to see such painted sticks Drag humbly in the traces, "We forefathers to such a rout! No, by my faith in God's word!” Half rose the ghost, and half drew out The ghost of his old broadsword, Then thrust it slowly back again, And said, with reverent gesture, stain The hem of thy white vesture. "I feel the soul in me draw near The streaks of first forewarning, "Child of our travail and our woe, I hear great steps, that through the shade And voices call like that which bade I looked, no form mine' eyes could find, A dismal tune was blowing; While we look coldly on and see law- | Out from the land of bondage 't is de shielded ruffians slay The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day! Are we pledged to craven silence? fling it to the wind, 0, The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind, That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest, While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast! God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free With parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or sea. Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will, From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill. Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart, With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart: When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay State's iron shore, The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more. THE GHOST-SEER. YE who, passing graves by night, See ye not that woman pale? |