Then came dear Love and shared with me his

crust,

And half my sorrow's burden took.

After the World's soft bed,

Its rich and dainty fare,

Like down seemed Love's coarse pillow to my head,

His cheap food seemed as manna rare ; Fresh-trodden prints of bare and bleeding feet, Turned to the heedless city whence I came, Hardby I saw, and springs of worship sweet Gushed from my cleft heart smitten by the same; Love looked me in the face and spake no words, But straight I knew those foot-prints were the Lord's.

I followed where they led

And in a hovel rude,

With naught to fence the weather from his head,
The King I sought for meekly stood
A naked, hungry child

Clung round his gracious knee,
And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled
To bless the smile that set him free;
New miracles I saw his presence do,—

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor, The gathered chips into a woodpile grew,

The broken morsel swelled to goodly store; I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek, His throne is with the outcast and the weak.

THE PRESENT CRISIS.

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 'tis 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 the 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,

66

They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.”

[brood, Slavery, the earthborn Cyclops, fellest of the giant Suns 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 'tis 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 cruci

fied,

And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

Count me o'er 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.