Massachusetts To Virginia

The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way,
Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay:
No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,
Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel,


No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go;
Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow;
And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far,
A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are spread for war.


We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy words and high
Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our sky;
Yet not one brown, hard hand foregoes its honest labor here,
No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends his axe in fear.


Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's bank;
Cold on the shores of Labrador the fog lies white and dank;
Through storm, and wave, and blinding mist, stout are the hearts which man
The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.


The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms,
Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms;
Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam,
They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.


What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day
When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?
How, side by side with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men
Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then?


Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the call
Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from Faneuil Hall?
When, echoing back her Henry's cry, came pulsing on each breath
Of Northern winds the thrilling sounds of 'Liberty or Death!'


What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved
False to their fathers' memory, false to the faith they loved;
If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn,
Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?


We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell;
Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound's yell;
We gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves,
From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves!


Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow;
The spirit of her early time is with her even now;
Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow and calm and cool,
She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister's slave and tool!


All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may,
Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day;



But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone,
And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!


Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air
With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair;
Cling closer to the 'cleaving curse' that writes upon your plains
The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains.


Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old,
By watching round the shambles where human flesh is sold;
Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count his market value, when
The maddened mother's cry of woe shall pierce the slaver's den!


Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the Virginia name;
Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with rankest weeds of shame;
Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair universe;
We wash our hands forever of your sin and shame and curse.


A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been,
Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire's mountain men:
The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still
In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.


And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his prey
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft of gray,
How, through the free lips of the son, the father's warning spoke;
How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke!


A hundred thousand right arms were lifted up on high,
A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud reply;
Through the thronged towns of Essex the startling summons rang,
And up from bench and loom and wheel her young mechanics sprang!


The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of thousands as of one,
The shaft of Bunker calling to that Lexington;
From Norfolk's ancient villages, from Plymouth's rocky bound
To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close to her round;


From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose
Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua flows,
To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the mountain larches stir,
Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of 'God save Latimer!'


And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray;
And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay!
Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,
And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill.


The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and daughters,
Deep calling unto deep aloud, the sound of many waters!
Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand?
No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land!



Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne,
In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn;
You've spurned our kindest counsels; you've hunted for our lives;
And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves!


We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within
The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin;
We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can,
With the strong upward tendencies and God-like soul of man!


But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given
For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven;
No slave-hunt in our borders, - no pirate on our strand!
No fetters in the Bay State, - no slave upon our land!

Marguerite


MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760.

THE robins sang in the orchard, the buds into
blossoms grew;
Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins
knew!
Sick, in an alien household, the poor French
neutral lay;
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April
day,
Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's
warp and woof,
On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs
of roof,
The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the
stand,
The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from
her sick hand.


What to her was the song of the robin, or warm
morning light,
As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of
sound or sight?


Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her
bitter bread;
The world of the alien people lay behind her dim
and dead.


But her soul went back to its child-time; she saw
the sun o'erflow
With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over
Gaspereau;


The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea
at flood,
Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to
upland wood;


The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's
rise and fall,
The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark
coast-wall.


She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song
she sang;
And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers
rang.


By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing
the wrinkled sheet,
Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the



ice-cold feet.


With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and
long abuse,
By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use.


Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the
mistress stepped,
Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with
his hands, and wept.


Outspake the mother, who watched him sharply,
with brow a-frown
'What! love you the Papist, the beggar, the
charge of the town?'


Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I know
and God knows
I love her, and fain would go with her wherever
she goes!


'O mother! that sweet face came pleading, for
love so athirst.
You saw but the town-charge; I knew her God's
angel at first.'


Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed down
a bitter cry;
And awed by the silence and shadow of death
drawing nigh,


She murmured a psalm of the Bible; but closer
the young girl pressed,
With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross
to her breast.


'My son, come away,' cried the mother, her voice
cruel grown.
'She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her
alone!'


But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, his
lips to her ear,
And he called back the soul that was passing
'Marguerite, do you hear?'


She paused on the threshold of Heaven; love, pity,
surprise,
Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of
her eyes.


With his heart on his lips he kissed her, but never



her cheek grew red,
And the words the living long for he spake in the
ear of the dead.


And the robins sang in the orchard, where buds to
blossoms grew;
Of the folded hands and the still face never the
robins knew!

Lydia H. Sigourney

She sang alone, ere womanhood had known
The gift of song which fills the air to-day
Tender and sweet, a music all her own
May fitly linger where she knelt to pray.

Lines on A Fly-Leaf

I need not ask thee, for my sake,
To read a book which well may make
Its way by native force of wit
Without my manual sign to it.
Its piquant writer needs from me
No gravely masculine guaranty,
And well might laugh her merriest laugh
At broken spears in her behalf;
Yet, spite of all the critics tell,
I frankly own I like her well.
It may be that she wields a pen
Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned men,
That her keen arrows search and try
The armor joints of dignity,
And, though alone for error meant,
Sing through the air irreverent.
I blame her not, the young athlete
Who plants her woman's tiny feet,
And dares the chances of debate
Where bearded men might hesitate,
Who, deeply earnest, seeing well
The ludicrous and laughable,
Mingling in eloquent excess
Her anger and her tenderness,
And, chiding with a half-caress,
Strives, less for her own sex than ours,
With principalities and powers,
And points us upward to the clear
Sunned heights of her new atmosphere.


Heaven mend her faults!--I will not pause
To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws,
Or waste my pity when some fool
Provokes her measureless ridicule.
Strong-minded is she? Better so
Than dulness set for sale or show,
A household folly, capped and belled
In fashion's dance of puppets held,
Or poor pretence of womanhood,
Whose formal, flavorless platitude
Is warranted from all offence
Of robust meaning's violence.
Give me the wine of thought whose head
Sparkles along the page I read,-Electric
words in which I find
The tonic of the northwest wind;
The wisdom which itself allies
To sweet and pure humanities,
Where scorn of meanness, hate of wrong,
Are underlaid by love as strong;
The genial play of mirth that lights
Grave themes of thought, as when, on nights



Of summer-time, the harmless blaze
Of thunderless heat-lightning plays,
And tree and hill-top resting dim
And doubtful on the sky's vague rim,
Touched by that soft and lambent gleam,
Start sharply outlined from their dream.


Talk not to me of woman's sphere,
Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer,
Nor wrong the manliest saint of all
By doubt, if he were here, that Paul
Would own the heroines who have lent
Grace to truth's stern arbitrament,
Foregone the praise to woman sweet,
And cast their crowns at Duty's feet;
Like her, who by her strong Appeal
Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel,
Who, earliest summoned to withstand
The color-madness of the land,
Counted her life-long losses gain,
And made her own her sisters' pain;
Or her who, in her greenwood shade,
Heard the sharp call that Freedom made,
And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre
Of love the Tyrtman carmen's fire
Or that young girl,--Domremy's maid
Revived a nobler cause to aid,-Shaking
from warning finger-tips
The doom of her apocalypse;
Or her, who world-wide entrance gave
To the log-cabin of the slave,
Made all his want and sorrow known,
And all earth's languages his own.

Lines On The Portrait Of A Celebrated Publisher

A MOONY breadth of virgin face,
By thought unviolated;
A patient mouth, to take from scorn
The hook with bank-notes baited!
Its self-complacent sleekness shows
How thrift goes with the fawner;
An unctuous unconcern of all
Which nice folks call dishonor!
A pleasant print to peddle out
In lands of rice and cotton;
The model of that face in dough
Would make the artist's fortune.
For Fame to thee has come unsought,
While others vainly woo her,
In proof how mean a thing can make
A great man of its doer.
To whom shall men thyself compare,
Since common models fail 'em,
Save classic goose of ancient Rome,
Or sacred ass of Balaam?
The gabble of that wakeful goose
Saved Rome from sack of Brennus;
The braying of the prophet's ass
Betrayed the angel's menace!
So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats,
And azure-tinted hose on,
Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets
The slow-match of explosion —
An earthquake blast that would have tossed
The Union as a feather,
Thy instinct saved a perilled land
And perilled purse together.
Just think of Carolina's sage
Sent whirling like a Dervis,
Of Quattlebum in middle air
Performing strange drill-service!
Doomed like Assyria's lord of old,
Who fell before the Jewess,
Or sad Abimelech, to sigh,
'Alas! a woman slew us!'
Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise
The danger darkly lurking,
And maiden bodice dreaded more
Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkin.
How keen to scent the hidden plot!
How prompt wert thou to balk it,
With patriot zeal and pedler thrift,
For country and for pocket!
Thy likeness here is doubtless well,
But higher honor's due it;
On auction-block and negro-jail
Admiring eyes should view it.



Or, hung aloft, it well might grace
The nation's senate-chamber —
A greedy Northern bottle-fly
Preserved in Slavery's amber!

Lexington


1775.

No Berserk thirst of blood had they,
No battle-joy was theirs, who set
Against the alien bayonet
Their homespun breasts in that old day.


Their feet had trodden peaceful, ways;
They loved not strife, they dreaded pain;
They saw not, what to us is plain,
That God would make man's wrath his praise.


No seers were they, but simple men;
Its vast results the future hid
The meaning of the work they did
Was strange and dark and doubtful then.


Swift as their summons came they left
The plough mid-furrow standing still,
The half-ground corn grist in the mill,
The spade in earth, the axe in cleft.


They went where duty seemed to call,
They scarcely asked the reason why;
They only knew they could but die,
And death was not the worst of all!


Of man for man the sacrifice,
All that was theirs to give, they gave.
The flowers that blossomed from their grave
Have sown themselves beneath all skies.


Their death-shot shook the feudal tower,
And shattered slavery's chain as well;
On the sky's dome, as on a bell,
Its echo struck the world's great hour.


That fateful echo is not dumb
The nations listening to its sound
Wait, from a century's vantage-ground,
The holier triumphs yet to come,-


The bridal time of Law and Love,
The gladness of the world's release,
When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace
The hawk shall nestle with the dove!-


The golden age of brotherhood
Unknown to other rivalries
Than of the mild humanities,
And gracious interchange of good,



When closer strand shall lean to strand,
Till meet, beneath saluting flags,
The eagle of our mountain-crags,
The lion of our Motherland!

Leggett’s Monument

Yes, pile the marble o'er him! It is well
That ye who mocked him in his long stern strife,
And planted in the pathway of his life
The ploughshares of your hatred hot from hell,
Who clamored down the bold reformer when
He pleaded for his captive fellow-men,
Who spurned him in the market-place, and sought
Within thy walls, St. Tammany, to bind
In party chains the free and honest thought,
The angel utterance of an upright mind,
Well is it now that o'er his grave ye raise
The stony tribute of your tardy praise,
For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame
Of the brave heart beneath, but of the builders' shame!

Kossuth


Type of two mighty continents!--combining
The strength of Europe with the warmth and glow
Of Asian song and prophecy,--the shining
Of Orient splendors over Northern snow!
Who shall receive him? Who, unblushing, speak
Welcome to him, who, while he strove to break
The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, smote off
At the same blow the fetters of the serf,
Rearing the altar of his Fatherland
On the firm base of freedom, and thereby
Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless hand,
Mocked not the God of Justice with a lie!
Who shall be Freedom's mouthpiece? Who shall give
Her welcoming cheer to the great fugitive?
Not he who, all her sacred trusts betraying,
Is scourging back to slavery's hell of pain
The swarthy Kossuths of our land again!
Not he whose utterance now from lips designed
The bugle-march of Liberty to wind,
And call her hosts beneath the breaking light,
The keen reveille of her morn of fight,
Is but the hoarse note of the blood-hound's baying,
The wolf's long howl behind the bondman's flight!
Oh for the tongue of him who lies at rest
In Quincy's shade of patrimonial trees,
Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best,
To lend a voice to Freedom's sympathies,
And hail the coming of the noblest guest
The Old World's wrong has given the New World of the West!

Laying Up Treasure

From the Mahabharata.

Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer
Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year
Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings
Nor thieves can take away. When all the things
Thou tallest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall,
Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all.

King Volmer and Elsie

After the Danish of Christian Winter

Where, over heathen doom-rings and gray stones of the Horg,
In its little Christian city stands the church of Vordingborg,
In merry mood King Volmer sat, forgetful of his power,
As idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded on his tower.


Out spake the King to Henrik, his young and faithful squire
'Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the maid of thy desire?'
'Of all the men in Denmark she loveth only me
As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to thee.'


Loud laughed the king: 'To-morrow shall bring another day,
When I myself will test her; she will not say me nay.'
Thereat the lords and gallants, that round about him stood,
Wagged all their heads in concert and smiled as courtiers should.


The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg, and on the ancient town
From the tall tower of Valdemar the Golden Goose looks down;
The yellow grain is waving in the pleasant wind of morn,
The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn.


In the garden of her father little Elsie sits and spins,
And, singing with the early birds, her daily task, begins.
Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls around her garden-bower,
But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer than the flower.


About her form her kirtle blue clings lovingly, and, white
As snow, her loose sleeves only leave her small, round wrists in sight;
Below, the modest petticoat can only half conceal
The motion of the lightest foot that ever turned a wheel.


The cat sits purring at her side, bees hum in sunshine warm;
But, look! she starts, she lifts her face, she shades it with her arm.
And, hark! a train of horsemen, with sound of dog and horn,
Come leaping o'er the ditches, come trampling down the corn!


Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and scarf and plume streamed gay,
As fast beside her father's gate the riders held their way;
And one was brave in scarlet cloak, with golden spur on heel,
And, as he checked his foaming steed, the maiden checked her wheel.


'All hail among thy roses, the fairest rose to me!
For weary months in secret my heart has longed for thee!'
What noble knight was this? What words for modest maiden's ear?
She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashfulness and fear.


She lifted up her spinning-wheel; she fain would seek the door,
Trembling in every limb, her cheek with blushes crimsoned o'er.
'Nay, fear me not,' the rider said, 'I offer heart and hand,
Bear witness these good Danish knights who round about me stand.



'I grant you time to think of this, to answer as you may,
For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring another day.'
He spake the old phrase slyly as, glancing round his train,
He saw his merry followers seek to hide their smiles in vain.


'The snow of pearls I'll scatter in your curls of golden hair,
I'll line with furs the velvet of the kirtle that you wear;
All precious gems shall twine your neck; and in a chariot gay
You shall ride, my little Elsie, behind four steeds of gray.


'And harps shall sound, and flutes shall play, and brazen lamps shall glow;
On marble floors your feet shall weave the dances to and fro.
At frosty eventide for us the blazing hearth shall shine,
While, at our ease, we play at draughts, and drink the blood-red wine.'


Then Elsie raised her head and met her wooer face to face;
A roguish smile shone in her eye and on her lip found place.
Back from her low white forehead the curls of gold she threw,
And lifted up her eyes to his, steady and clear and blue.


'I am a lowly peasant, and you a gallant knight;
I will not trust a love that soon may cool and turn to slight.
If you would wed me henceforth be a peasant, not a lord;
I bid you hang upon the wall your tried and trusty sword.'


'To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen Dynadel away,
And in its place will swing the scythe and mow your father's hay.'
'Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak my eyes can never bear;
A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all that you must wear.'


'Well, Vadmal will I wear for you,' the rider gayly spoke,
'And on the Lord's high altar I'll lay my scarlet cloak.'
'But mark,' she said, 'no stately horse my peasant love must ride,
A yoke of steers before the plough is all that he must guide.'


The knight looked down upon his steed: 'Well, let him wander free
No other man must ride the horse that has been backed by me.
Henceforth I'll tread the furrow and to my oxen talk,
If only little Elsie beside my plough will walk.'


'You must take from out your cellar cask of wine and flask and can;
The homely mead I brew you may serve a peasant man.'
'Most willingly, fair Elsie, I'll drink that mead of thine,
And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat to drain my generous wine.'


'Now break your shield asunder, and shatter sign and boss,
Unmeet for peasant-wedded arms, your knightly knee across.
And pull me down your castle from top to basement wall,
And let your plough trace furrows in the ruins of your hall!'


Then smiled he with a lofty pride; right well at last he knew



The maiden of the spinning-wheel was to her troth. plight true.
'Ah, roguish little Elsie! you act your part full well
You know that I must bear my shield and in my castle dwell!


'The lions ramping on that shield between the hearts aflame
Keep watch o'er Denmark's honor, and guard her ancient name.


'For know that I am Volmer; I dwell in yonder towers,
Who ploughs them ploughs up Denmark, this goodly home of ours'.


'I tempt no more, fair Elsie! your heart I know is true;
Would God that all our maidens were good and pure as you!
Well have you pleased your monarch, and he shall well repay;
God's peace! Farewell! To-morrow will bring another day!'


He lifted up his bridle hand, he spurred his good steed then,
And like a whirl-blast swept away with all his gallant men.
The steel hoofs beat the rocky path; again on winds of morn
The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn.


'Thou true and ever faithful!' the listening Henrik cried;
And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he stood by Elsie's side.
None saw the fond embracing, save, shining from afar,
The Golden Goose that watched them from the tower of Valdemar.


O darling girls of Denmark! of all the flowers that throng
Her vales of spring the fairest, I sing for you my song.
No praise as yours so bravely rewards the singer's skill;
Thank God! of maids like Elsie the land has plenty still!