With a vain plea for mercy No stout knee was crooked; In the mouths of the rifles Right manly they looked.
How paled the May sunshine, O Marais du Cygne!
On death for the strong life, On red gra.s.s for green!
In the homes of their rearing, Yet warm with their lives, Ye wait the dead only, Poor children and wives!
Put out the red forge-fire, The smith shall not come; Unyoke the brown oxen, The ploughman lies dumb.
Wind slow from the Swan"s Marsh, O dreary death-train, With pressed lips as bloodless As lips of the slain!
Kiss down the young eyelids, Smooth down the gray hairs; Let tears quench the curses That burn through your prayers.
Strong man of the prairies, Mourn bitter and wild!
Wail, desolate woman!
Weep, fatherless child!
But the grain of G.o.d springs up From ashes beneath, And the crown of his harvest Is life out of death.
Not in vain on the dial The shade moves along, To point the great contrasts Of right and of wrong: Free homes and free altars, Free prairie and flood,-- The reeds of the Swan"s Marsh, Whose bloom is of blood!
On the lintels of Kansas That blood shall not dry; Henceforth the Bad Angel Shall harmless go by; Henceforth to the sunset, Unchecked on her way, Shall Liberty follow The march of the day.
THE Pa.s.s OF THE SIERRA.
ALL night above their rocky bed They saw the stars march slow; The wild Sierra overhead, The desert"s death below.
The Indian from his lodge of bark, The gray bear from his den, Beyond their camp-fire"s wall of dark, Glared on the mountain men.
Still upward turned, with anxious strain, Their leader"s sleepless eye, Where splinters of the mountain chain Stood black against the sky.
The night waned slow: at last, a glow, A gleam of sudden fire, Shot up behind the walls of snow, And tipped each icy spire.
"Up, men!" he cried, "yon rocky cone, To-day, please G.o.d, we"ll pa.s.s, And look from Winter"s frozen throne On Summer"s flowers and gra.s.s!"
They set their faces to the blast, They trod the eternal snow, And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last The promised land below.
Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed By many an icy horn; Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed, And green with vines and corn.
They left the Winter at their backs To flap his baffled wing, And downward, with the cataracts, Leaped to the lap of Spring.
Strong leader of that mountain band, Another task remains, To break from Slavery"s desert land A path to Freedom"s plains.
The winds are wild, the way is drear, Yet, flashing through the night, Lo! icy ridge and rocky spear Blaze out in morning light!
Rise up, Fremont! and go before; The hour must have its Man; Put on the hunting-shirt once more, And lead in Freedom"s van!
8th mo., 1856.
A SONG FOR THE TIME.
Written in the summer of 1856, during the political campaign of the Free Soil party under the candidacy of John C. Fremont.
Up, laggards of Freedom!--our free flag is cast To the blaze of the sun and the wings of the blast; Will ye turn from a struggle so bravely begun, From a foe that is breaking, a field that"s half won?
Whoso loves not his kind, and who fears not the Lord, Let him join that foe"s service, accursed and abhorred Let him do his base will, as the slave only can,-- Let him put on the bloodhound, and put off the Man!
Let him go where the cold blood that creeps in his veins Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on his chains; Where the black slave shall laugh in his bonds, to behold The White Slave beside him, self-fettered and sold!
But ye, who still boast of hearts beating and warm, Rise, from lake sh.o.r.e and ocean"s, like waves in a storm, Come, throng round our banner in Liberty"s name, Like winds from your mountains, like prairies aflame!
Our foe, hidden long in his ambush of night, Now, forced from his covert, stands black in the light.
Oh, the cruel to Man, and the hateful to G.o.d, Smite him down to the earth, that is cursed where he trod!
For deeper than thunder of summer"s loud shower, On the dome of the sky G.o.d is striking the hour!
Shall we falter before what we"ve prayed for so long, When the Wrong is so weak, and the Right is so strong?
Come forth all together! come old and come young, Freedom"s vote in each hand, and her song on each tongue; Truth naked is stronger than Falsehood in mail; The Wrong cannot prosper, the Right cannot fail.
Like leaves of the summer once numbered the foe, But the h.o.a.r-frost is falling, the northern winds blow; Like leaves of November erelong shall they fall, For earth wearies of them, and G.o.d"s over all!
WHAT OF THE DAY?
Written during the stirring weeks when the great political battle for Freedom under Fremont"s leadership was permitting strong hope of success,--a hope overshadowed and solemnized by a sense of the magnitude of the barbaric evil, and a forecast of the unscrupulous and desperate use of all its powers in the last and decisive struggle.
A SOUND of tumult troubles all the air, Like the low thunders of a sultry sky Far-rolling ere the downright lightnings glare; The hills blaze red with warnings; foes draw nigh, Treading the dark with challenge and reply.
Behold the burden of the prophet"s vision; The gathering hosts,--the Valley of Decision, Dusk with the wings of eagles wheeling o"er.
Day of the Lord, of darkness and not light!
It breaks in thunder and the whirlwind"s roar Even so, Father! Let Thy will be done; Turn and o"erturn, end what Thou bast begun In judgment or in mercy: as for me, If but the least and frailest, let me be Evermore numbered with the truly free Who find Thy service perfect liberty!
I fain would thank Thee that my mortal life Has reached the hour (albeit through care and pain) When Good and Evil, as for final strife, Close dim and vast on Armageddon"s plain; And Michael and his angels once again Drive howling back the Spirits of the Night.
Oh for the faith to read the signs aright And, from the angle of Thy perfect sight, See Truth"s white banner floating on before; And the Good Cause, despite of venal friends, And base expedients, move to n.o.ble ends; See Peace with Freedom make to Time amends, And, through its cloud of dust, the threshing-floor, Flailed by the thunder, heaped with chaffless grain.
1856.
A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS.
Written after the election in 1586, which showed the immense gains of the Free Soil party, and insured its success in 1860.
BENEATH thy skies, November!
Thy skies of cloud and rain, Around our blazing camp-fires We close our ranks again.
Then sound again the bugles, Call the muster-roll anew; If months have well-nigh won the field, What may not four years do?