THE PRESENT CRISIS.

275

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what

is great,

Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate;

But the soul is still oracular: amid the market's din

List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,

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They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

Slavery, the earthborn 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

Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,

Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis 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.

While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone;

Stood serene and down the future saw the golden beam incline

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,

By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,

And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned

One new word of that grand Credo which in prophethearts hath burned

Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands,

On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;

Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe

return

To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden

urn.

THE PRESENT CRISIS.

277

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle

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;

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the

Past's;

But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar fires;

Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away

To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?

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SONG OF THE STARS.

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's bloodrusted key.

SONG OF THE STARS

BRYANT.

WHEN the radiant morn of creation broke,
And the world in the smile of God awoke,

And the empty realms of darkness and death
Were moved through their depths by his might
breath,

And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame
From the void abyss by myriads came,
In the joy of youth as they darted away,
Through the widening wastes of space to play,
Their silver voices in chorus rang,

And this was the song the bright ones sang:

"Away, away, through the wide, wide sky,
The fair, blue fields that before us lie,

Each sun, with the worlds that round him roll,
Each planet, poised on her turning pole;

SONG OF THE STARS.

With her isles of green, and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like fluid light.

"For the source of glory uncovers his face,
And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space;
And we drink as we go the luminous tides
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides:
Lo! yonder the living splendors play;
Away, on our joyous path, away!

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Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar, In the infinite azure, star after star,

279

How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass!
How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass !

And the path of the gentle winds is seen,

Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean.

"And see, where the brighter day-beams pour,
How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower;
And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues,
Shift o'er the bright planets, and shed their dews;
And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone the night goes round!

"Away, away! in our blossoming bowers,
In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours,
In the seas and fountains that shine with morn,
See, Love is brooding, and Life is born;
And breathing myriads are breaking from night,
To rejoice, like us, in motion and light

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