Our storms breathe soft as June | The humble glares not on the high with anger; Love leaves no grudge at less, no greed for more; As to a mother's, the o'erwearied In vain strives Self the godlike A charm against the present What boots it patch the goblet's With words of unshorn truth, with The immortal gift in vain libations. love that never wearies. Those Graces were that seemed Allegiance paid; but winter came His snows, like desert sands, with scornful drift, After the World's soft bed, Its rich and dainty fare, Besieged the columned aisle and Like down seemed Love's coarse palace-gate; My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn rift, pillow to my head, His cheap food seemed as manna rare; But epitaphed her own sepul- Fresh-trodden prints of bare and chred state: Then I remembered whom I went to seek, Turned to the heedless city bleeding feet, whence I came, And blessed blunt Winter for his Hard by I saw, and springs of wor All must on stated days them- And a poor hunted slave looked selves imprison, Mocking with bread a dead creed's grinning jaws, up and smiled To bless the smile that set him free; Witless how long the life had New miracles I saw his presence And half my sorrow's burden His throne is with the outcast and took. the weak. THE PRESENT CRISIS WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart. So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, ΤΟ 20 Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is strong, Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, 30 Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, 40 List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.' Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood, Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey; — Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play? 50 Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, they were souls that stood alone, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design. 60 For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, 'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime; Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? Turn those tracks toward Past or Future that make Plymouth Rock sublime? They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free, 79 They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires; |