And to each in his mercy hath God allowed His several pillar of fire and cloud."

The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal
And holy wrath for the young man's weal:
"Believest thou then, most wretched
youth,"

Cried he, "a dividual essence in Truth?
I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin
To take the Lord in his glory in."

Now there bubbled beside them where they stood

A fountain of waters sweet and good;
The youth to the streamlet's brink drew

near

Saying, "Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here!"

Six vases of crystal then he took,
And set them along the edge of the brook.

"As into these vessels the water I pour, There shall one hold less, another more, And the water unchanged, in every case, Shall put on the figure of the vase;

O thou, who wouldst unity make through strife,

Canst thou fit this sign to the Water of Life?"

When Ambrose looked up, he stood alone, The youth and the stream and the vases were gone;

But he knew, by a sense of humbled grace,
He had talked with an angel face to face,
And felt his heart change inwardly,
As he fell on his knees beneath the tree.

ABOVE AND BELOW

I

O DWELLERS in the valley-land,
Who in deep twilight grope and cower,
Till the slow mountain's dial-hand

Shorten to noon's triumphal hour,
While ye sit idle, do ye think

The Lord's great work sits idle too? That light dare not o'erleap the brink Of morn, because 't is dark with you?

Though yet your valleys skulk in night,
In God's ripe fields the day is cried,
And reapers, with their sickles bright,

Troop, singing, down the mountain-side:

Come up, and feel what health there is
In the frank Dawn's delighted eyes,
As, bending with a pitying kiss,

The night-shed tears of Earth she dries!

The Lord wants reapers: oh, mount up, Before night comes, and says, "Too late!"

Stay not for taking scrip or cup,

The Master hungers while ye wait;
"T is from these heights alone your eyes
The advancing spears of day can see,
That o'er the eastern hill-tops rise,
To break your long captivity.

II

Lone watcher on the mountain-height,
It is right precious to behold
The first long surf of climbing light
Flood all the thirsty east with gold;
But we, who in the shadow sit,

Know also when the day is nigh,
Seeing thy shining forehead lit
With his inspiring prophecy.

Thou hast thine office; we have ours;
God lacks not early service here,
But what are thine eleventh hours
He counts with us for morning cheer;
Our day, for Him, is long enough,

And when He giveth work to do,
The bruised reed is amply tough

To pierce the shield of error through.

But not the less do thou aspire

Light's earlier messages to preach; Keep back no syllable of fire,

Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech. Yet God deems not thine aeried sight More worthy than our twilight dim; For meek Obedience, too, is Light, And following that is finding Him.

THE CAPTIVE

It was past the hour of trysting,
But she lingered for him still;
Like a child, the eager streamlet
Leaped and laughed adown the hill,
Happy to be free at twilight

From its toiling at the mill.

Then the great moon on a sudden Ominous, and red as blood,

Startling as a new creation,
O'er the eastern hilltop stood,
Casting deep and deeper shadows
Through the mystery of the wood.

Dread closed vast and vague about her, And her thoughts turned fearfully To her heart, if there some shelter

From the silence there might be, Like bare cedars leaning inland

From the blighting of the sea.

Yet he came not, and the stillness
Dampened round her like a tomb;
She could feel cold eyes of spirits
Looking on her through the gloom,
She could hear the groping footsteps
Of some blind, gigantic doom.
Suddenly the silence wavered

Like a light mist in the wind,
For a voice broke gently through it,
Felt like sunshine by the blind,
And the dread, like mist in sunshine,
Furled serenely from her mind.

"Once my love, my love forever,

Flesh or spirit, still the same, If I failed at time of trysting, Deem thou not my faith to blame; I, alas, was made a captive,

As from Holy Land I came.

"On a green spot in the desert,

Gleaming like an emerald star, Where a palm-tree, in lone silence, Yearning for its mate afar, Droops above a silver runnel, Slender as a scimitar,

"There thou 'lt find the humble postern To the castle of my foe;

If thy love burn clear and faithful, Strike the gateway, green and low, Ask to enter, and the warder

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;

A figure grim and rusty,
Whose doublet plain and plainer hose
Were something worn and dusty.

Now even such men as Nature forms
Merely to fill the street with,
Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms,
Are serious things to meet with;
Your penitent spirits are no jokes,
And, though I'm not averse to
A quiet shade, even they are folks
One cares not to speak first to.

Who knows, thought I, but he has come,
By Charon kindly ferried,
To tell me of a mighty sum
Behind my wainscot buried?
There is a buccaneerish air

About that garb outlandish
Just then the ghost drew up his chair
And said, "My name is Standish.

66

"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 away,
And varnish in their places!

"We had some toughness in our grain,
The eye to rightly see us is
Not just the one that lights the brain
Of drawing-room Tyrtæuses:
They talk about their Pilgrim blood,
Their birthright high and holy !
A mountain-stream that ends in mud
Methinks is melancholy.

"He had stiff knees, the Puritan,
That were not good at bending;
The homespun dignity of man

He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten.

"These loud ancestral boasts of yours,

How can they else than vex us? Where were your dinner orators When slavery grasped at Texas? Dumb on his knees was every one That now is bold as Cæsar;

Mere pegs to hang an office on

Such stalwart men as these are."

"Good sir," I said, "you seem much stirred;

The sacred compromises

"Now God confound the dastard word!
My gall thereat arises:
Northward it hath this sense alone,

That you, your conscience blinding,
Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone,
When slavery feels like grinding.

""T is shame to see such painted sticks
In Vane's and Winthrop's places,
To see your spirit of Seventy-six
Drag humbly in the traces,
With slavery's lash upon her back,
And herds of office-holders
To shout applause, as, with a crack,
It peels her patient shoulders.

"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,

"No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain The hem of thy white vesture.

"I feel the soul in me draw near
The mount of prophesying;
In this bleak wilderness I hear
A John the Baptist crying;
Far in the east I see upleap

The streaks of first forewarning,
And they who sowed the light shall reap
The golden sheaves of morning.

"Child of our travail and our woe,
Light in our day of sorrow,
Through my rapt spirit I foreknow
The glory of thy morrow;

I hear great steps, that through the shade
Draw nigher still and nigher,

And voices call like that which bade
The prophet come up higher."

I looked, no form mine eyes could find,
I heard the red cock crowing,
And through my window-chinks the wind
A dismal tune was blowing;

Thought I, My neighbor Buckingham
Hath somewhat in him gritty,

Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham, And he will print my ditty.

ON THE CAPTURE OF FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON

In a letter to Edward M. Davis written from Elmwood July 24, 1845, Lowell says: "I blew another dolorous and jarring blast' in the Courier the other day, which you will probably see in the Liberator of this week or next. I was impelled to write by the account of the poor fugitives who were taken near Washington. I think it has done some good. At any rate, it has set two gentlemen together by the ears about Dissolution, and they are hammering away at each other in the Courier." The blast was the following stanzas.

LOOK on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can,

The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man;

Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these!

Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first;

The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed;

Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,

Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God!

We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more,

To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core;

Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then

Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.

He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done,

To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun,

That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base,

Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race.

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.

Out from the land of bondage 't is decreed our slaves shall go,

And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh ;

If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore,

Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore.