The Homestead

AGAINST the wooded hills it stands,
Ghost of a dead home, staring through
Its broken lights on wasted lands
Where old-time harvests grew.


Unploughed, unsown, by scythe unshorn,
The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie,
Once rich and rife with golden corn
And pale green breadths of rye.


Of healthful herb and flower bereft,
The garden plot no housewife keeps;
Through weeds and tangle only left,
The snake, its tenant, creeps.


A lilac spray, still blossom-clad,
Sways slow before the empty rooms;
Beside the roofless porch a sad
Pathetic red rose blooms.


His track, in mould and dust of drouth,
On floor and hearth the squirrel leaves,
And in the fireless chimney's mouth
His web the spider weaves.


The leaning barn, about to fall,
Resounds no more on husking eves;
No cattle low in yard or stall,
No thresher beats his sheaves.


So sad, so drear! It seems almost
Some haunting Presence makes its sign;
That down yon shadowy lane some ghost
Might drive his spectral kine!


O home so desolate and lorn!
Did all thy memories die with thee?
Were any wed, were any born,
Beneath this low roof-tree?


Whose axe the wall of forest broke,
And let the waiting sunshine through?
What goodwife sent the earliest smoke
Up the great chimney flue?


Did rustic lovers hither come?
Did maidens, swaying back and forth
In rhythmic grace, at wheel and loom,
Make light their toil with mirth?


Did child feet patter on the stair?
Did boyhood frolic in the snow?



Did gray age, in her elbow chair,
Knit, rocking to and fro?


The murmuring brook, the sighing breeze,
The pine's slow whisper, cannot tell;
Low mounds beneath the hemlock-trees
Keep the home secrets well.


Cease, mother-land, to fondly boast
Of sons far off who strive and thrive,
Forgetful that each swarming host
Must leave an emptier hive.


O wanderers from ancestral soil,
Leave noisome mill and chaffering store:
Gird up your loins for sturdier toil,
And build the home once more!


Come back to bayberry-scented slopes,
And fragrant fern, and ground-nut vine;
Breathe airs blown over holt and copse
Sweet with black birch and pine.


What matter if the gains are small
That life's essential wants supply?
Your homestead's title gives you all
That idle wealth can buy.


All that the many-dollared crave,
The brick-walled slaves of 'Change and mart,
Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, you have,
More dear for lack of art.


Your own sole masters, freedom-willed,
With none to bid you go or stay,
Till the old fields your fathers tilled,
As manly men as they!


With skill that spares your toiling hands,
And chemic aid that science brings,
Reclaim the waste and outworn lands,
And reign thereon as kings

The Hive At Gettysburg

IN the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,
So terrible alive,
Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, became
The wandering wild bees' hive;
And he who, lone and naked-handed, tore
Those jaws of death apart,
In after time drew forth their honeyed store
To strengthen his strong heart.
Dead seemed the legend: but it only slept
To wake beneath our sky;
Just on the spot whence ravening Treason crept
Back to its lair to die,
Bleeding and torn from Freedom's mountain bounds,
A stained and shattered drum
Is now the hive where, on their flowery rounds,
The wild bees go and come.
Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel,
They wander wide and far,
Along green hillsides, sown with shot and shell,
Through vales once choked with war.
The low reveille of their battle-drum
Disturbs no morning prayer;
With deeper peace in summer noons their hum
Fills all the drowsy air.
And Samson's riddle is our own to-day,
Of sweetness from the strong,
Of union, peace, and freedom plucked away
From the rent jaws of wrong.
From Treason's death we draw a purer life,
As, from the beast he slew,
A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife
The old-time athlete drew!

The Hero

'O for a knight like Bayard,
Without reproach or fear;
My light glove on his casque of steel,
My love-knot on his spear!


'O for the white plume floating
Sad Zutphen's field above,
The lion heart in battle,
The woman's heart in love!


'O that man once more were manly,
Woman's pride, and not her scorn
That once more the pale young mother
Dared to boast `a man is born'!


'But, now life's slumberous current
No sun-bowed cascade wakes;
No tall, heroic manhood
The level dulness breaks.


'O for a knight like Bayard,
Without reproach or fear!
My light glove on his casque of steel
My love-knot on his spear!'


Then I said, my own heart throbbing
To the time her proud pulse beat,
'Life hath its regal natures yet,True,
tender, brave, and sweet!


'Smile not, fair unbeliever!
One man, at least, I know,
Who might wear the crest of Bayard
Or Sydney's plume of snow.


'Once, when over purple mountains
Died away the Grecian sun,
And the far Cyllenian ranges
Paled and darkened, one by one,


'Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder,
Cleaving all the quiet sky,
And against his sharp steel lightnings
Stood the Suliote but to die.


'Woe for the weak and halting!
The crescent blazed behind
A curving line of sabres
Like fire before the wind!


'Last to fly, and first to rally,
Rode he of whom I speak,



When, groaning in his bridle path,
Sank down like a wounded Greek.


'With the rich Albanian costume
Wet with many a ghastly stain,
Gazing on earth and sky as one
Who might not gaze again!


'He looked forward to the mountains,
Back on foes that never spare,
Then flung him from his saddle,
And place the stranger there.


''Allah! hu!' Through flashing sabres,
Through a stormy hail of lead,
The good Thessalian charger
Up the slopes of olives sped.


'Hot spurred the turbaned riders;
He almost felt their breath,
Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down
Between the hills and death.


'One brave and manful struggle,He
gained the solid land,
And the cover of the mountains,
And the carbines of his band!'


'It was very great and noble,'
Said the moist-eyed listener then,
'But one brave deed makes no hero;
Tell me what he since hath been!'


'Still a brave and generous manhood,
Still and honor without stain,
In the prison of the Kaiser,
By the barricades of Seine.


'But dream not helm and harness
The sign of valor true;
Peace bath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.


'Wouldst know him now? Behold him,
The Cadmus of the blind,
Giving the dumb lip language,
The idiot clay a mind.


'Walking his round of duty
Serenely day by day,
With the strong man's hand of labor
And childhood's heart of play.



'True as the knights of story,
Sir Lancelot and his peers,
Brave in his calm endurance
As they in tilt of spears.


'As waves in stillest waters,
As stars in noonday skies,
All that wakes to noble action
In his noon of calmness lies.


'Wherever outraged Nature
Asks word or action brave,
Wherever struggles labor,
Wherever groans a slave,


'Wherever rise the peoples,
Wherever sinks a throne,
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
An answer in his own.


'Knight of a better era,
Without reproach or fear!
Said I not well that Bayards
And Sidneys still are here?

The Henchman

My lady walks her morning round,
My lady's page her fleet greyhound,
My lady's hair the fond winds stir,
And all the birds make songs for her.


Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers,
And Rathburn side is gay with flowers;
But ne'er like hers, in flower or bird,
Was beauty seen or music heard.


The distance of the stars is hers;
The least of all her worshippers,
The dust beneath her dainty heel,
She knows not that I see or feel.


Oh, proud and calm!-she cannot know
Where'er she goes with her I go;
Oh, cold and fair!-she cannot guess
I kneel to share her hound's caress!


Gay knights beside her hunt and hawk,
I rob their ears of her sweet talk;
Her suitors come from east and west,
I steal her smiles from every guest.


Unheard of her, in loving words,
I greet her with the song of birds;
I reach her with her green-armed bowers,
I kiss her with the lips of flowers.


The hound and I are on her trail,
The wind and I uplift her veil;
As if the calm, cold moon she were,
And I the tide, I follow her.


As unrebuked as they, I share
The license of the sun and air,
And in a common homage hide
My worship from her scorn and pride.


World-wide apart, and yet so near,
I breathe her charmed atmosphere,
Wherein to her my service brings
The reverence due to holy things.


Her maiden pride, her haughty name,
My dumb devotion shall not shame;
The love that no return doth crave
To knightly levels lifts the slave,


No lance have I, in joust or fight,
To splinter in my lady's sight



But, at her feet, how blest were I
For any need of hers to die!

The Haschish

Of all that Orient lands can vaunt
Of marvels with our own competing,
The strangest is the Haschish plant,
And what will follow on its eating.
What pictures to the taster rise,
Of Dervish or of Almeh dances!
Of Eblis, or of Paradise,
Set all aglow with Houri glances!
The poppy visions of Cathay,
The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian;
The wizard lights and demon play
Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!
The Mollah and the Christian dog
Change place in mad metempsychosis;
The Muezzin climbs the synagogue,
The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses!
The Arab by his desert well
Sits choosing from some Caliph's daughters,
And hears his single camel's bell
Sound welcome to his regal quarters.
The Koran's reader makes complaint
Of Shitan dancing on and off it;
The robber offers alms, the saint
Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet.
Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes;
But we have one ordained to beat it,
The Haschish of the West, which makes
Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.
The preacher eats, and straight appears
His Bible in a new translation;
Its angels negro overseers,
And Heaven itself a snug plantation!
The man of peace, about whose dreams
The sweet millennial angels cluster,
Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes,
A raving Cuban filibuster!
The noisiest Democrat, with ease,
It turns to Slavery's parish beadle;
The shrewdest statesman eats and sees
Due southward point the polar needle.
The Judge partakes, and sits erelong
Upon his bench a railing blackguard;
Decides off-hand that right is wrong,
And reads the ten commandments backward.
O potent plant! so rare a taste
Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten;
The hempen Haschish of the East
Is powerless to our Western Cotton!

The Golden Wedding Of Longwood

With fifty years between you and your well-kept wedding vow,
The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now.


And, sweet as has life's vintage been through all your pleasant past,
Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last!


Again before me, with your names, fair Chester's landscape comes,
Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes.


The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green and soft,
Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft.


And lo! from all the country-side come neighbors, kith and kin;
From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in.


And they who, without scrip or purse, mob-hunted, travel-worn,
In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as victors now return.


Older and slower, yet the same, files in the long array,
And hearts are light and eyes are glad, though heads are badger-gray.


The fire-tried men of Thirty-eight who saw with me the fall,
Midst roaring flames and shouting mob, of Pennsylvania Hall;


And they of Lancaster who turned the cheeks of tyrants pale,
Singing of freedom through the grates of Moyamensing jail!


And haply with them, all unseen, old comrades, gone before,
Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your open door,-


The eagle face of Lindley Coates, brave Garrett's daring zeal,
Christian grace of Pennock, the steadfast heart of Neal.


Ah me! beyond all power to name, the worthies tried and true,
Grave men, fair women, youth and maid, pass by in hushed review.


Of varying faiths, a common cause fused all their hearts in one.
God give them now, whate'er their names, the peace of duty done!


How gladly would I tread again the old-remembered places,
Sit down beside your hearth once more and look in the dear old faces!


And thank you for the lessons your fifty years are teaching,
For honest lives that louder speak than half our noisy preaching;


For your steady faith and courage in that dark and evil time,
When the Golden Rule was treason, and to feed the hungry, crime;


For the poor slave's house of refuge when the hounds were on his track,
And saint and sinner, church and state, joined hands to send him back.


Blessings upon you!--What you did for each sad, suffering one,



So homeless, faint, and naked, unto our Lord was done!


Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales and Longwood's bowery ways
The mellow sunset of your lives, friends of my early days.
May many more of quiet years be added to your sum,


And, late at last, in tenderest love, the beckoning angel come.


Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are there, alike below, above;
Our friends are now in either world, and love is sure of love.

The Garrison of Cape Ann

From the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like span
Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann.
Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down,
And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing town.


Long has passed the summer morning, and its memory waxes old,
When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled.
Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool,
And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy grave, Rantoul!


With the memory of that morning by the summer sea I blend
A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather penned,
In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things,
Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings.


Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life of old,
Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward, mean and coarse and cold;
Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and vulgar clay,
Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hodden gray.


The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din
Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in;
And the lore of homeland fireside, and the legendary rhyme,
Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his time.


So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter knew,
When with pious chisel wandering Scotland's moorland graveyards through,
From the graves of old traditions I part the black- berry-vines,
Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch the faded lines.


Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran,
The garrison-house stood watching on the gray rocks of Cape Ann;
On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade,
And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid.


On his slow round walked the sentry, south and eastward looking forth
O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white with breakers stretching north,Wood
and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged capes, with bush and tree,
Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and gusty sea.


Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly lit by dying brands,
Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their muskets in their hands;
On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison haunch was shared,
And the pewter tankard circled slowly round from beard to beard.


Long they sat and talked together,-talked of wizards Satan-sold;
Of all ghostly sights and noises,-signs and wonders manifold;
Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men in her shrouds,
Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning clouds;


Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depths of Gloucester woods,
Full of plants that love the summer,-blooms of warmer latitudes;



Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic's flowery vines,
And the white magnolia-blossoms star the twilight of the pines!


But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky tones of fear,
As they spake of present tokens of the powers of evil near;
Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel and aim of gun;
Never yet was ball to slay them in the mould of mortals run.


Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from the midnight wood they came,Thrice
around the block-house marching, met, unharmed, its volleyed flame;
Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in earth or lost in air,
All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moonlit sands lay bare.


Midnight came; from out the forest moved a dusky mass that soon
Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, grimly marching in the moon.
'Ghosts or witches,' said the captain, 'thus I foil the Evil One!'
And he rammed a silver button, from his doublet, down his gun.


Once again the spectral horror moved the guarded wall about;
Once again the levelled muskets through the palisades flashed out,
With that deadly aim the squirrel on his tree-top might not shun,
Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his slant wing to the sun.


Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless shower of lead.
With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the phantoms fled;
Once again, without a shadow on the sands the moonlight lay,
And the white smoke curling through it drifted slowly down the bay!


'God preserve us!' said the captain; 'never mortal foes were there;
They have vanished with their leader, Prince and Power of the air!
Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess naught avail;
They who do the Devil's service wear their master's coat of mail!'


So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again a warning call
Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round the dusky hall
And they looked to flint and priming, and they longed for break of day;
But the captain closed his Bible: 'Let us cease from man, and pray!'


To the men who went before us, all the unseen powers seemed near,
And their steadfast strength of courage struck its roots in holy fear.
Every hand forsook the musket, every head was bowed and bare,
Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the captain led in prayer.


Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres round the wall,
But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears and hearts of all,Howls
of rage and shrieks of anguish! Never after mortal man
Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the block-house of Cape Ann.


So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town,
From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down.
Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives the youth
And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth.



Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres of the mind,
Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined;
Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain,
And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.


In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high
Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly;
But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith, and not to sight,
And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night!

The Funeral Tree of the Sokokis. 1756

Around Sebago's lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make.


The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rock o'er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.


The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,
The snowy mountain-tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.


Dazzling and white! Save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.


Yet green are Saco's banks below,
And belts of spruce and cedar show,
Dark fringing round those cones of snow.


The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
Though yet on her deliverer's wing
The lingering frosts of winter cling.


Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
And mildly from its sunny nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks.


And odors from the springing grass,
The sweet birch and the sassafras,
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.


Her tokens of renewing care
Hath Nature scattered everywhere,
In bud and flower, and warmer air.


But in their hour of bitterness,
What reck the broken Sokokis,
Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?


The turf's red stain is yet undried,
Scarce have the death-shot echoes died
Along Sebago's wooded side;


And silent now the hunters stand,
Grouped darkly, where a swell of land
Slopes upward from the lake's white sand.


Fire and the axe have swept it bare,
Save one lone beech, unclosing there
Its light leaves in the vernal air.



With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute,
They break the damp turf at its foot,
And bare its coiled and twisted root.


They heave the stubborn trunk aside,
The firm roots from the earth divide, The
rent beneath yawns dark and wide.


And there the fallen chief is laid
In tasselled garb of skins arrayed,
And girded with his wampum-braid.


The silver cross he loved is pressed
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest
Upon his scarred and naked breast.


'T is done : the roots are backward sent,
The beechen-tree stands up unbent,
The Indian's fitting monument!


When of that sleeper's broken race
Their green and pleasant dwelling place,
Which knew them once, retains no trace;


Oh, long may sunset's light be shed
As now upon that beech's head,
A green memorial of the dead!


There shall his fitting requiem be,
In northern winds, that, cold and free,
Howl nightly in that funeral tree.


To their wild wail the waves which break
Forever round that lonely lake
A solemn undertone shall make!


And who shall deem the spot unblest,
Where Nature's younger children rest,
Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast?


Deem ye that mother loveth less
These bronzed forms of the wilderness
She foldeth in her long caress?


As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers blow,
As if with fairer hair and brow
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.


What though the places of their rest
No priestly knee hath ever pressed, No
funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed?



What though the bigot's ban be there,
And thoughts of wailing and despair,
And cursing in the place of prayer!


Yet Heaven hath angels watching round
The Indian's lowliest forest-mound, And
they have made it holy ground.


There ceases man's frail judgment : all
His powerless bolts of cursing fall
Unheeded on that grassy pall.


O peeled and hunted and reviled,
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild!
Great Nature owns her simple child!


And Nature's God, to whom alone
The secret of the heart is known, The
hidden language traced thereon;


Who from its many cumberings
Of form and creed, and outward things,
To light the naked spirit brings;


Not with our partial eye shall scan,
Not with our pride and scorn shall ban,
The spirit of our brother man!

The Frost Spirit

He comes, - he comes, - the Frost Spirit comes!
You may trace his footsteps now
On the naked woods and the blasted fields
And the brown hill's withered brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees
Where their pleasant green came forth,
And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,
Have shaken them down to earth.


He comes, - he comes, - the Frost Spirit comes!
From the frozen Labrador,
From the icy bridge of the northern seas,
Which the white bear wanders o'er,
Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice,
And the luckless forms below
In the sunless cold of the lingering night
Into marble statues grow!


He comes, - he comes, - the Frost Spirit comes!
On the rushing Northern blast,
And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed
As his fearful breath went past.
With an unscorched wing he has hurried on,
Where the fires of Hecla glow
On the darkly beautiful sky above
And the ancient ice below.


He comes, - he comes, - the Frost Spirit comes!
And the quiet lake shall feel
The torpid touch of his glazing breath,
And ring to the skater's heel;
And the streams which danced on the broken rocks,
Or sang to the leaning grass,
Shall bow again to their winter chain,
And in mournful silence pass.


He comes, - he comes, - the Frost Spirit comes!
Let us meet him as we may,
And turn with the light of the parlor-fire
His evil power away;
And gather closer the circle 'round,
When the firelight dances high,
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend
As his sounding wing goes by!

The Freed Islands

A FEW brief years have passed away
Since Britain drove her million slaves
Beneath the tropic's fiery ray:
God willed their freedom; and to-day
Life blooms above those island graves!
He spoke! across the Carib Sea,
We heard the clash of breaking chains,
And felt the heart-throb of the free,
The first, strong pulse of liberty
Which thrilled along the bondman's veins.
Though long delayed, and far, and slow,
The Briton's triumph shall be ours:
Wears slavery here a prouder brow
Than that which twelve short years ago
Scowled darkly from her island bowers?
Mighty alike for good or ill
With mother-land, we fully share
The Saxon strength, the nerve of steel,
The tireless energy of will,
The power to do, the pride to dare.
What she has done can we not do?
Our hour and men are both at hand;
The blast which Freedom's angel blew
O'er her green islands, echoes through
Each valley of our forest land.
Hear it, old Europe! we have sworn
The death of slavery. When it falls,
Look to your vassals in their turn,
Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worn,
Your prisons and your palace walls!
O kingly mockers! scoffing show
What deeds in Freedom's name we do;
Yet know that every taunt ye throw
Across the waters, goads our slow
Progression towards the right and true.
Not always shall your outraged poor,
Appalled by democratic crime,
Grind as their fathers ground before;
The hour which sees our prison door
Swing wide shall be their triumph time.
On then, my brothers! every blow
Ye deal is felt the wide earth through;
Whatever here uplifts the low
Or humbles Freedom's hateful foe,
Blesses the Old World through the New.
Take heart! The promised hour draws near;
I hear the downward beat of wings,
And Freedom's trumpet sounding clear:
'Joy to the people! woe and fear
To new-world tyrants, old-world kings!'