The power given by our loving Father
To show the body's dross, the spirit's worth.
Awake! great spirit of the ages olden !
Shiver the mists that hide thy starry lyre,
And let man's soul be yet again beholden
To thee for wings to soar to her desire.
O, prophesy no more to-morrow's splendor,
Be no more shame-faced to speak out for Truth,
Lay on her altar all the gushings tender,
The hope, the fire, the loving faith of youth!
O, prophesy no more the Maker's coming,
Say not his on ward footsteps thou canst hear In the dim void, like to the awful humming
Of the great wings of some new-lighted sphere! O, prophesy no more, but be the Poet!
This longing was but granted unto thee
That, when all beauty thou couldst feel and know it,
That beauty in its highest thou couldst be.
O, thou who moanest tost with sealike longings
Who dimly hearest voices call on thee,
Whose soul is overfilled with mighty throngings
Of love, and fear, and glorious agony,
Thou of the toil-strung hands and iron sinews
And soul by Mother Earth with freedom fed,
In whom the hero-spirit yet continues,
The old free nature is not chained or dead,
Arouse! let thy soul break in music-thunder,
Let loose the ocean that is in thee pent,
Pour forth thy hope, thy fear, thy love, thy wonder,
And tell the age what all its signs have meant,
Where'er thy wildered crowd of brethren jostles,
Where'er there lingers but a shade of wrong,
There still is need of martyrs and apostles,
There still are texts for never-dying song:
From age to age man's still aspiring spirit
Finds wider scope and sees with clearer eyes,
And thou in larger measure dost inherit
What made thy great forerunners free and wise. Sit thou enthroned where the Poet's mountain Above the thunder lifts its silent peak,
And roll thy songs down like a gathering fountain,
That all may drink and find the rest they seek.
Sing! there shall silence grow in earth and heaven,
A silence of deep awe and wondering;
For, listening gladly, bend the angels, even,
To hear a mortal like an angel sing.
Among the toil-worn poor my soul is seeking
For one to bring the Maker's name to light,
To be the voice of that almighty speaking
Which every age demands to do it right.
Proprieties our silken bards environ;
He who would be the tongue of this wide land
Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron
And strike it with a toil-embrowned hand;
One who hath dwelt with Nature well-attended,
Who hath learnt wisdom from her mystic books,
Whose soul with all her countless lives hath
blended,
So that all beauty awes us in his looks;
Who not with body's waste his soul hath pampered,
Who as the clear northwestern wind is free,
Who walks with Form's observances unhampered,
And follows the One Will obediently;
Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy summit,
Control a lovely prospect every way;
Who doth not sound God's sea with earthly plummet,
And find a bottom still of worthless clay; Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working, Knowing that one sure wind blows on above, And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking,
One God-built shrine of reverence and love; Who sees all stars that wheel their shining marches Around the centre fixed of Destiny,
Where the encircling soul serene o'erarches
The moving globe of being like a sky;
Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are
Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh, Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer Than that of all his brethren, low or high; Who to the Right can feel himself the truer For being gently patient with the wrong, Who sees a brother in the evildoer,
And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his song;
This, this is he for whom the world is waiting
To sing the beatings of its mighty heart,
Too long hath it been patient with the grating
Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed Art.
To him the smiling soul of man shall listen
Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside,
And once again in every eye shall glisten
The glory of a nature satisfied.
His verse shall have a great, commanding motion,
Heaving and swelling with a melody
Learnt of the sky, the river, and the ocean,
And all the pure, majestic things that be.
Awake, then, thou! we pine for thy great presence
To make us feel the soul once more sublime,
We are of far too infinite an essence
To rest contented with the lies of Time.
Speak out! and, lo! a hush of deepest wonder
Shall sink o'er all this many-voiced scene,
As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder
Shatters the blueness of a sky serene.
WHERE is the true man's fatherland?
Is it where he by chance is born?
Doth not the yearning spirit scorn
In such scant borders to be spanned?
O, yes! his fatherland must be
As the blue heaven wide and free!
Is it alone where freedom is,
Where God is God and man is man? Doth he not claim a broader span For the soul's love of home than this? O, yes! his fatherland must be
As the blue heaven wide and free!
Where'er a human heart doth wear
Joy's myrtle-wreath or sorrow's gyves,
Where'er a human spirit strives
After a life more true and fair,
There is the true man's birthplace grand,
His is a world-wide fatherland!
Where'er a single slave doth pine,
Where'er one man may help another,Thank God for such a birthright, brother,— That spot of earth is thine and mine! There is the true man's birthplace grand, His is a world-wide fatherland!
THE night is dark, the stinging sleet,
Swept by the bitter gusts of air,
Drives whistling down the lonely street,
And stiffens on the pavement bare.
The street-lamps flare and struggle dim
Through the white sleet-clouds as they pass,
Or, governed by a boisterous whim,
Drop down and rattle on the glass.
One poor, heart-broken, outcast girl
Faces the east-wind's searching flaws,
And, as about her heart they whirl,
Her tattered cloak more tightly draws.
The flat brick walls look cold and bleak,
Her bare feet to the sidewalk freeze;
Yet dares she not a shelter seek,
Though faint with hunger and disease.
The sharp storm cuts her forehead bare, And, piercing through her garments thin, Beats on her shrunken breast, and there Makes colder the cold heart within.
She lingers where a ruddy glow
Streams outward through an open shutter, Adding more bitterness to woe,
More loneness to desertion utter.
One half the cold she had not felt,
Until she saw this gush of light
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