I break my pilgrim staff,-I lay
Aside the toiling oar ;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.
The airs of spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn ;
Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
Through fringed lids to heaven,
And the pale aster in the brook
Shall see its image given
The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
The south wind softly sigh,
And sweet, calin days in golden haze
Melt down the amber sky.
Not less shall manly deed and word
Rebuke an age of wrong;
The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
Make not the blade less strong.
But smiting hands shall learn to heal,—
To build as to destroy;
Nor less my heart for others feel
That I the more enjoy.
All as God wills, who wisely heeds
To give or to withhold,
And knoweth more of all my needs
Than all my prayers have told !
Enough that blessings undeserved
Have marked my erring track;—
That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,
His chastening turned me back ;—
That more and more a Providence
Of love is understood,
Making the springs of time and sense
Sweet with eternal good;-
That death seems but a covered way
Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
Beyond the Father's sight;—
That care and trial seem at last,
Through Memory's sunset air,
Like mountain-ranges overpast,
In purple distance fair;-
That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Slow rounding into calm.
And so the shadows fall apart,
And so the west winds play;
And all the windows of my heart
I open to the day.
A BLUSH as of roses
Where rose never grew !
Great drops on the bunch-grass,
But not of the dew!
A taint in the sweet air
For wild bees to shun!
A stain that shall never
Bleach out in the sun!
Back, steed of the prairies!
Sweet song-bird, fly back!
Wheel hither, bald vulture!
Gray wolf, call thy pack!
The foul human vultures
Have feasted and fled;
The wolves of the Border
Have crept from the dead.
From the hearths of their cabins,
The fields of their corn,
Unwarned and unweaponed,
The victims were torn,-
By the whirlwind of murder
Swooped up and swept on
To the low, reedy fen-lands,
The Marsh of the Swan.
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 grass 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 God 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.
DEAD Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps,
Her stones of emptiness remain ;
Around her sculptured mystery sweeps
The lonely waste of Edom's plain.
From the doomed dwellers in the cleft
The bow of vengeance turns not back;
Of all her myriads none are left
Along the Wady Mousa's track.
Clear in the hot Arabian day
Her arches spring, her statues climb; Unchanged, the graven wonders pay No tribute to the spoiler, Time!
Unchanged the awful lithograph
Of power and glory undertrod,-
Of nations scattered like the chaff
Blown from the threshing-floor of God.
Yet'shall the thoughtful stranger turn
From Petra's gates, with deeper awe
To mark afar the burial urn
Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor;
And where upon its ancient guard
Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet,— Looks from its turrets desertward,
And keeps the watch that God has set
The same as when in thunders loud
It heard the voice of God to man,-
As when it saw in fire and cloud
The angels walk in Israel's van!
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