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.

shielded ruffians slay

The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day!

Are we pledged to craven silence? O, fling it to the wind,

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!

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.

creed 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.

THE GHOST-SEER.

YE who, passing graves by night,
Glance not to the left nor right,
Lest a spirit should arise,
Cold and white, to freeze your eyes,
Some weak phantom, which your doubt
Shapes upon the dark without
From the dark within, a guess
At the spirit's deathlessness,
Which ye entertain with fear
In your self-built dungeon here,
Where ye sell your God-given lives
Just for gold to buy you gyves, -
Ye without a shudder meet
In the city's noonday street,
Spirits sadder and more dread
Than from out the clay have fled,
Buried, beyond hope of light,
In the body's haunted night!

See ye not that woman pale?
There are bloodhounds on her trail!
Bloodhounds two, all gaunt and lean,
(For the soul their scent is keen,)
Want and Sin, and Sin is last,
They have followed far and fast;
Want gave tongue, and, at her howl,
Sin awakened with a growl.
Ah, poor girl! she had a right
To a blessing from the light;
Title-deeds to sky and earth
God gave to her at her birth;
But, before they were enjoyed,
Poverty had made them void,
And had drunk the sunshine up
From all nature's ample cup,
Leaving her a first-born's share
In the dregs of darkness there.
Often, on the sidewalk bleak,
Hungry, all alone, and weak,
She has seen, in night and storm,
Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm,
Which, outside the window-glass,
Doubled all the cold, alas!
Till each ray that on her fell
Stabbed her like an icicle,
And she almost loved the wail
Of the bloodhounds on her trail.
Till the floor becomes her bier,
She shall feel their pantings near,
Close upon her very heels,
Spite of all the din of wheels;
Shivering on her pallet poor,
She shall hear them at the door
Whine and scratch to be let in,
Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin!

Hark! that rustle of a dress, Stiff with lavish costliness!

Writhing in its fiendish bliss; All night long he sees its eyes

flush

But to have her garment brush
'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin
Wove the weary broidery in,
Bending backward from her toil,
Lest her tears the silk might soil,
And, in midnights chill and murk,
Stitched her life into the work,
Shaping from her bitter thought
Heart's-ease and forget-me-not,
Satirizing her despair

With the emblems woven there.
Little doth the wearer heed
Of the heart-break in the brede;
A hyena by her side

Skulks, down-looking,—it is Pride.
He digs for her in the earth,
Where lie all her claims of birth,
With his foul paws rooting o'er
Some long-buried ancestor,
Who, perhaps, a statue won
By the ill deeds he had done,
By the innocent blood he shed,
By the desolation spread
Over happy villages,
Blotting out the smile of peace.

There walks Judas, he who sold
Yesterday his Lord for gold,
Sold God's presence in his heart
For a proud step in the mart;
He hath dealt in flesh and blood;
At the bank his name is good;
At the bank, and only there,
"T is a marketable ware.
In his eyes that stealthy gleam
Was not learned of sky or stream,
But it has the cold, hard glint
Of new dollars from the mint.
Open now your spirit's eyes,
Look through that poor clay disguise
Which has thickened, day by day,
Till it keeps all light at bay,
And his soul in pitchy gloom
Gropes about its narrow tomb,
From whose dank and slimy walls
Drop by drop the horror falls.
Look! a serpent lank and cold
Hugs his spirit fold on fold;
From his heart, all day and night,
It doth suck God's blessed light.
Drink it will, and drink it must,
Till the cup holds naught but dust;
All day long he hears it hiss,

As the spirit ebbs away Into the absorbing clay.

Who is he that skulks, afraid
Of the trust he has betrayed,
Shuddering if perchance a gleam
Of old nobleness should stream
Through the pent, unwholesome room,
Where his shrunk soul
cowers in

gloom,

Spirit sad beyond the rest By more instinct for the best? 'T is a poet who was sent For a bad world's punishment, By compelling it to see Golden glimpses of To Be, By compelling it to hear Songs that prove the angels near; Who was sent to be the tongue Of the weak and spirit-wrung, Whence the fiery-winged Despair In men's shrinking eyes might flare. 'T is our hope doth fashion us To base use or glorious : He who might have been a lark Of Truth's morning, from the dark Raining down melodious hope Of a freer, broader scope, Aspirations, prophecies, Of the spirit's full sunrise, Chose to be a bird of night, That, with eyes refusing light, Hooted from some hollow tree Of the world's idolatry. "T is his punishment to hear Flutterings of pinions near, And his own vain wings to feel Drooping downward to his heel, All their grace and import lost, Burdening his weary ghost: Ever walking by his side He must see his angel guide, Who at intervals doth turn Looks on him so sadly stern, With such ever-new surprise Of hushed anguish in her eyes, That it seems the light of day From around him shrinks away, Or drops blunted from the wall Built around him by his fall. Then the mountains, whose white peaks Catch the morning's earliest streaks, He must see, where prophets sit, Turning east their faces lit,

Whence, with footsteps beautiful,
To the earth, yet dim and dull,
They the gladsome tidings bring
Of the sunlight's hastening:
Never can these hills of bliss
Be o'erclimbed by feet like his !

But enough! O, do not dare
From the next the veil to tear,
Woven of station, trade, or dress,
More obscene than nakedness,
Wherewith plausible culture drapes
Fallen Nature's myriad shapes!
Let us rather love to mark
How the unextinguished spark
Will shine through the thin disguise
Of our customs, pomps, and lies,
And, not seldom blown to flame,
Vindicate its ancient claim.

HEAR him but speak, and you will feel The shadows of the Portico

Over your tranquil spirit steal,

To modulate all joy and woe

To one subdued, subduing glow; Above our squabbling business-hours, Like Phidian Jove's, his beauty lowers, His nature satirizes ours;

A form and front of Attic grace,

He shames the higgling market-place, And dwarfs our more mechanic powers.

What throbbing verse can fitly render That face so pure, so trembling-tender?

Sensation glimmers through its rest, It speaks unmanacled by words,

As full of motion as a nest That palpitates with unfledged birds; 'T is likest to Bethesda's stream, Forewarned through all its thrilling springs,

White with the angel's coming gleam, And rippled with his fanning wings.

Hear him unfold his plots and plans,
And larger destinies seem man's;
You conjure from his glowing face
The omen of a fairer race;
With one grand trope he boldly spans
The gulf wherein so many fall,
'Twixt possible and actual;
His first swift word, talaria-shod,
Exuberant with conscious God,