Till the slow mountain's dial-hand

Shortens 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 mountainside:

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: O, 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;

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 hill-top stood,
Casting deep and deeper shadows
Through the mystery of the wood.

Dread closed huge 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 missed the hour of trysting,
Do not think 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 heart a motherly patience

Wrapt its arms forevermore; From her soul 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,
Knelt she at the postern low:
And thereat she knocketh gently,

Fearing much the warder's no;
All her heart stood still and listened,
As the door swung backward slow.

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,
And her spirit, lily-wise,
Blossomed when he turned upon her
The deep welcome of his eyes,
Sending upward to that sunlight
All its dew for sacrifice.

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 silence,

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.

Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet,

Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping about thy slim white stem,

dences;

A pair for propagation,

So has the seed of these increased

And furnished half the nation.

eyes

See golden ages rising,
Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys
Thou 'rt fond of crystallizing!

My wonder, then, was not unmixed
With merciful suggestion,
When, as my roving eyes grew fixed
Upon the chair in question,
I saw its trembling arms enclose
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.

"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,

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.

66 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 shani,
And he will print my ditty.

ON THE CAPTURE OF FUGITIVE
SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON.

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!

I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast

Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest;

And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame, 'Tis but my Bay-State dialect, our fathers spake the same!

Shame on the costly mockery of piling

stone on stone

To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and gone,

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,

O,

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.

"T is ours to save our brethren, with peace and love to win Their darkened hearts from error, ere they harden it to sin; But if before his duty man with listless spirit stands,

Erelong the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands.

TO THE DANDELION.

DEAR common flower, that grow'st beside the way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,

First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold,

High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they

An Eldorado in the grass have found, Which not the rich earth's ample round

May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me

Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian

seas,

Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 'Tis the Spring's largess, which she

scatters now

To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, Though most hearts never under

stand

To take it at God's value, but pass by The offered wealth with unrewarded

eye.

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; The eyes thou givest me Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: