Crispus Attucks
WHERE shall we seek for a hero, and where shall we find a story?
Our laurels are wreathed for conquest, our songs for completed glory.
But we honor a shrine unfinished, a column uncapped with pride,
If we sing the deed that was sown like seed when Crispus Attucks died.
Shall we take for a sign this Negro-slave with unfamiliar name—
With his poor companions, nameless too, till their lives leaped forth in flame?
Yea, sorely, the verdict is not for us, to render or deny;
We can only interpret the symbol; God chose these men to die—
As teachers and types, that to humble lives may chief award be made;
That from lowly ones, and rejected stones, the temple's base is laid!
When the bullets leaped from the British guns, no chance decreed their aim:
Men see what the royal hirelings saw—a multitude and a flame;
But beyond the flame, a mystery; five dying men in the street,
While the streams of severed races in the well of a nation meet!
O, blood of the people! changeless tide, through century, creed and race!
Still one as the sweet salt sea is one, though tempered by sun and place;
The same in the ocean currents, and the same in the sheltered seas;
Forever the fountain of common hopes and kindly sympathies;
Indian and Negro, Saxon and Celt, Teuton and Latin and Gaul—
Mere surface shadow and sunshine; while the sounding unifies all!
One love, one hope, one duty theirs! No matter the time or ken,
There never was separate heart-beat in all the races of men!
But alien is one—of class, not race—he has drawn the line for himself;
His roots drink life from inhuman soil, from garbage of pomp and pelf;
His heart beats not with the common beat, he has changed his life-stream's hue;
He deems his flesh to be finer flesh, he boasts that his blood is blue:
Patrician, aristocrat, tory—whatever his age or name,
To the people's rights and liberties, a traitor ever the same.
The natural crowd is a mob to him, their prayer a vulgar rhyme;
The freeman's speech is sedition, and the patriot's deed a crime.
Wherever the race, the law, the land,—whatever the time, or throne,
The tory is always a traitor to every class but his own.
Thank God for a land where pride is clipped, where arrogance stalks apart;
Where law and song and loathing of wrong are words of the common heart;
Where the masses honor straightforward strength, and know, when veins are bled,
That the bluest blood is putrid blood—that the people's blood is red!
And honor to Crispus Attucks, who was leader and voice that day;
The first to defy, and the first to die, with Maverick. Carr, and Gray.
Call it riot or revolution, his hand first clenched at the crown;
His feet were the first in perilous place to pull the king's flag down;
His breast was the first one rent apart that liberty's stream might flow;
For our freedom now and forever, his head was the first bid low.
Call it riot or revolution, or mob or crowd, as you may,
Such deaths have been seed of nations, such lives shall be honored for aye.
They were lawless hinds to the lackeys—but martyrs to Paul Revere;
And Otis and Hancock and Warren read spirit and meaning clear.
Ye teachers, answer: what shall be done when just men stand in the dock;
When the caitiff is robed in ermine, and his sworders keep the lock;
When torture is robbed of clemency, and guilt is without remorse;
When tiger and panther are gentler than the Christian slaver's curse;
When law is a satrap's menace, and order the drill of a horde—
Shall the people kneel to be trampled, and bare their neck to the sword?
Not so! by this Stone of Resistance that Boston raises here!
By the old North Church's lantern, and the watching of Paul Revere!
Not so! by Paris of 'Ninety-Three, and Ulster of 'NinetyEight!
By Toussaint in St. Domingo! by the horror of Delhi's gate!
By Adams's word to Hutchinson! by the tea that is brewing still!
By the farmers that met the soldiers at Concord and Bunker Hill!
Not so! not so! Till the world is done, the shadow of wrong is dread;
The crowd that bends to a lord to-day, to-morrow shall strike him dead.
There is only one thing changeless: the earth steals from under our feet,
The times and manners are passing moods, and the laws are incomplete;
There is only one thing changes not, one word that still survives—
The slave is the wretch who wields the lash, and not the man in gyves!
There is only one test of contract: is it willing, is it good?
There is only one guard of equal right: the unity of blood;
There is never a mind unchained and true that class or race allows;
There is never a law to be obeyed that reason disavows;
There is never a legal sin but grows to the law's disaster,
The master shall dropp the whip, and the slave shall enslave the master!
O, Planter of seed in thought and deed has the year of right revolved,
And brought the Negro patriot's cause with its problem to be solved?
His blood streamed first for the building, and through all the century's years,
Our growth of story and fame of glory are mixed with his blood and tears.
He lived with men like a soul condemned—derided, defamed, and mute;
Debased to the brutal level, and instructed to be a brute.
His virtue was shorn of benefit, his industry of reward;
His love!—O men, it were mercy to have cut affection's cord;
Through the night of his woe, no pity save that of his fellow-slave;
For the wage of his priceless labor, the scourging block and the grave!
And now, is the tree to blossom? Is the bowl of agony filled?
Shall the price be paid, and the honor said, and the word of outrage stilled?
And we who have toiled for freedom's law, have we sought for freedom's soul?
Have we learned at last that human right is not a part but the whole?
That nothing is told while the clinging sin remains part unconfessed?
That the health of the nation is periled if one man be oppressed?
Has he learned—the slave from the rice-swamps, whose children were sold—has he,
With broken chains on his limbs, and the cry in his blood, 'I am free!'
Has he learned through affliction's teaching what our Crispus Attucks knew—
When Right is stricken, the white and black are counted as one, not two?
Has he learned that his century of grief was worth a thousand years
In blending his life and blood with ours, and that all his toils and tears
Were heaped and poured on him suddenly, to give him a right to stand
From the gloom of African forests, in the blaze of the freest land?
That his hundred years have earned for him a place in the human van
Which others have fought for and thought for since the world of wrong began?
For this, shall his vengeance change to love, and his retribution burn,
Defending the right, the weak and the poor, when each shall have his turn;
For this, shall he set his woeful past afloat on the stream of night;
For this, he forgets as we all forget when darkness turns to light;
For this, he forgives as we all forgive when wrong has changed to right.
And so, must we come to the learning of Boston's lesson to-day;
The moral that Crispus Attucks taught in the old heroic way;
God made mankind to be one in blood, as one in spirit and thought;
And so great a boon, by a brave man's death, is never dearly bought!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Loyalty to the Flag
In the love of home and country and the flag of Uncle Sam,
Can the loyalty be doubted of a dusky son of Ham?
Wheresoever duty calls him, as a freedman or a slave,
The response is ever hearty when 'Old Glory' he would save.
'Twas the war of Revolution, when a Negro's blood was first,
To be shed for independence, when a yoke the land had cursed;
Crispus Attucks died in Boston, on State street he paid the debt,
Liberty his blood has planted and the tree is growing yet.
Ask the spirit of Pitcairn how he came to meet his death?
Where and who it was that brought him down to breathe the dying breath?
'Twas the Negro Salem's bullet at the charge of Bunker's Hill,
Bringing to the whites their freedom but to Negroes naught but ill.
In the battle of New Orleans, eighteen fourteen was the year,
When the Negro fought with valor till the victory was clear;
Jackson paid this glowing tribute—may the spirit never lag—
'None more strong and none more useful, none more loyal to the flag.'
O, how brave the Negro soldiers when the Civil war was fought!
Shall they fight such noble battles in the nation's cause for naught?
Hark! the battle cry of Charleston! at Fort Wagner is the place!
At Port Hudson and Fort Pillow how the rebel guns they face!
Fifty-fourth of Massachusetts—may such regiments be praised—
By its valor at Fort Wagner, North and South became amazed!
Hall began as color-bearer but was killed on duty grand,
To the spot went William Carney and the colors took in hand.
Wounded many times was Carney, shot in head, in arm and thigh,
On one knee he fell and crawling kept the colors flying high,
Blood upon the banner streaming while his words the action crowned;
'Boys I've kept aloft 'Old Glory' and it never touched the ground!'
Colonel Stafford was disabled, Dwight his men to battle led,
With great feeling at New Orleans, Stafford to the sergeant said,
'Guard, protect defend these colors,' 'Yes,' he answered, 'though I die
I will bring them back in honor or to God report the why.'
All the world has heard the story of the Cuban war with Spain,
Ah! the sound of Negro valor falls upon the ear again,
At Elkaney and San Juan how they helped to win the day,
Near the town of Santiago, held the enemy at bay!
Side by side with other soldiers being in complexion white,
Negroes died to take San Juan in the thickest of the fight,
Thus they gained the worthy plaudit from the loyal, brave and true;
'Negroes on the field of battle, dignify the nation's blue.'
Shall the prejudice existing in the country now, increase,
While the Negro's patriotism merits rest at home and peace?
Nay, the hydra-headed monster in the end will surely die,
We expect the right to triumph over evil by and by.
poem by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
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There is Blood on the Earth
THERE is blood on the face of the earth-
It reeks through the years, and is red:
Where Truth was slaughtered at birth,
And the veins of Liberty bled.
Lo! vain is the hand that tries
To cover the crimson stain:
It spreads like a plague, and cries
Like a soul in writhing pain.
It wasteth the planet's flesh;
It calleth on breasts of stone:
God holdeth His wrath in a leash
Till the hearts of men atone.
Blind, like the creatures of time;
Cursed, like all the race,
They answer: '' The blood and crime
Belong to a sect and place! '
What are these things to Heaven—
Races or places of men?
The world through one Christ was forgiven—
Nor question of races then.
The wrong of to-day shall be rued
In a thousand coming years;
The debt must be paid in blood,
The interest, in tears.
Shall none stand up for right
Whom the evil passes by?
But God had the globe in sight,
And hearkens the weak one's cry.
Wherever a principle dies—
Nay, principles never die!
But wherever a ruler lies,
And a people share the lie;
Where right is crushed by force,
And manhood is stricken dead—
There dwelleth the ancient curse,
And the blood on the earth is red!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Then and Now
"Build me a nation," said the Lord.
The distant nations heard the word,
Build me a nation true and strong,
Bar out the old world's hate and wrong;
For men had traced with blood and tears
The trail of weary wasting years,
And torn and bleeding martyrs trod
Through fire and torture up to God.
While in the hollow of his hand
God hid the secret of our land,
Men warred against their fiercest foes,
And kingdoms fell and empires rose,
Till, weary of the old world strife,
Men sought for broader, freer life,
And plunged into the ocean's foam
To find another, better home.
And, like a vision fair and bright
The new world broke upon their sight.
Men grasped the prize, grew proud and strong,
And cursed the land with crime and wrong.
The Indian stood despoiled of lands,
The Negro bound with servile bands,
Oppressed through weary years of toil,
His blood and tears bedewed the soil.
Then God arose in dreadful wrath,
And judgment streamed around his path;
His hand the captive's fetters broke,
His lightnings shattered every yoke.
As Israel through the Red sea trod,
Led by the mighty hand of God,
They passed to freedom through a flood,
Whose every wave and surge was blood.
And slavery, with its crime and shame,
Went down in wrath and blood and flame
The land was billowed-o'er with graves
Where men had lived and died as slaves.
Four and thirty years -- what change since
then!
Beings once chattles now are men;
Over the gloom of slavery's night,
Has flashed the dawn of freedom's light.
To-day no mother with anguish wild
Kneels and implores that her darling child
Shall not be torn from her bleeding heart,
With its quivering tendrils rent apart.
The father may soothe his child to sleep,
And watch his slumbers calm and deep.
No tyrant's tread will disturb his rest
Where freedom dwells as a welcome guest.
His walls may be bare of pictured grace,
His fireside the lowliest place;
But the wife and children sheltered there
Are his to defend and guard with care.
Where haughty tyrants once bore rule
Are ballot-box and public school.
The old slave-pen of former days
Gives place to fanes of prayer and praise.
To-night we would bring our meed of praise
To noble friends of darker days;
The men and women crowned with light,
The true and tried in our gloomy night.
To Lundy, whose heart was early stirred
To speak for freedom an earnest word;
To Garrison, valiant, true and strong,
Whose face was as flint against our wrong.
And Phillips, the peerless, grand and brave,
A tower of strength to the outcast slave.
Earth has no marble too pure and white
To enrol his name in golden light.
Our Douglass, too, with his massive brain,
Who plead our cause with his broken chain,
And helped to hurl from his bloody seat
The curse that writhed and died at his feet.
And Governor Andrew, who, looking back,
Saw none he despised, though poor and black;
And Harriet Beecher, whose glowing pen
Corroded the chains of fettered men.
To-night with greenest laurels we'll crown
North Elba's grave where sleeps John Brown,
Who made the gallows an altar high,
And showed how a brave old man could die.
And Lincoln, our martyred President,
Who returned to his God with chains he had rent.*
And Sumner, amid death's icy chill,
Leaving to Hoar his Civil Rights Bill.
And let us remember old underground,
With all her passengers northward bound,
The train that ran till it ceased to pay,
With all her dividends given away.
Nor let it be said that we have forgot
The women who stood with Lucretia Mott;
Nor her who to the world was known
By the simple name of Lucy stone.
A tribute unto a host of others
Who knew that men though black were brothers,
Who battled against our nation's sin,
Whose graves are thick whose ranks are thin.
Oh, people chastened in the fire,
To nobler, grander things aspire;
In the new era of your life,
Bring love for hate, and peace for strife;
Upon your hearts this vow record
That ye will build unto the Lord
A nobler future, true and grand,
To strengthen, crown and bless the land.
A higher freedom ye may gain
Than that which comes from a riven chain;
Freedom your native land to bless
With peace, and love and righteousness,
As dreams that are past, a tale all told,
Are the days when men were bought and sold;
Now God be praised from sea to sea,
Our flag floats o'er a country free.
poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
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The Patriot's Game
I.
TEAR down the crape from the column! Let the shaft stand white and fair!
Be silent the wailing music—there is no death in the air!
We come not in plaint or sorrow—no tears may dim our sight:
We dare not weep o'er the epitaph we have not dared to write.
Come hither with glowing faces, the sire, the youth, and the child;
This grave is a shrine for reverent hearts and hands that are undefiled:
Its ashes are inspiration; it giveth us strength to bear,
And sweepeth away dissension, and nerveth the will to dare.
In the midst of the tombs a Gravestone—and written thereon no word!
And behold! at the head of the grave, a gibbet, a torch, and a sword!
And the people kneel by the gibbet, and pray by the nameless stone
For the torch to be lit, and the name to be writ, and the sword's red work to be done!
II.
With pride and not with grief
We lay this century leaf
Upon the tomb, with hearts that do not falter:
A few brief, toiling years
Since fell the nation's tears,
And lo, the patriot's gibbet is an altar!
The people that are blest
Have him they love the best
To mount the martyr's scaffold when they need him;
And vain the cords that bind
While the nation's steadfast mind,
Like the needle to the pole, is true to freedom!
III.
Three powers there are that dominate the world-
Fraud, Force, and Right—and two oppress the one:
The bolts of Fraud and Force like twins are hurled—
Against them ever standeth Right alone.
Cyclopian strokes the brutal allies give:
Their fetters massive and their dungeon walls;
Beneath their yoke, weak nations cease to live,
And valiant Right itself defenseless falls!
Defaced is law, and justice slain at birth;
Good men are broken—malefactors thrive;
But, when the tyrants tower o'er the earth,
Behind their wheels strong right is still alive!
Alive, like seed that God's own hand has sown—
Like seed that lieth in the lowly furrow,
But springs to life when wintry winds are blown:
To-day the earth is gray—'tis green to-morrow.
The roots strike deep despite the rulers' power,
The plant grows strong with summer sun and rain,
Till autumn bursts the deep red-hearted flower,
And freedom marches to the front again!
While slept the right, and reigned the dual wrong,
Unchanged, unchecked, for half a thousand years,
In tears of blood we cried, 'O Lord, how long!'
And even God seemed deaf to Erin's tears.
But, when she lay all weak and bruised and broken,
Her white limbs seared with cruel chain and thorn—
As bursts the cloud, the lightning word was spoken,
God's seed took root—His crop of men was born!
With one deep breath began the land's progression:
On every field the seeds of freedom fell:
Burke, Grattan, Flood, and Curran in the session—
Fitzgerald, Sheares, and Emmet in the cell!
Such teachers soon aroused the dormant nation—
Such sacrifice insured the endless fight:
The voice of Grattan smote wrong's domination—
The death of Emmet sealed the cause of right!
IV.
Richest of gifts to- a, nation! Death with the living crown!
Type of ideal manhood to the people's heart brought down!
Fount of the hopes we cherish—test of the things we do;
Gorgon's face for the traitor—talisman for the true!
Sweet is the love of a woman, and sweet is the kiss of a child;
Sweet is the tender strength, and the bravery of the mild;
But sweeter than all, for embracing all, is the young life's peerless price—
The young heart laid on the altar, as a nation's sacrifice.
How can the debt be canceled? Prayers and tears we may give—
But how recall the anguish of hearts that have ceased to live?
Flushed with the pride of genius—filled with the strength of life—
Thrilled with delicious passion for her who would be his wife—
This was the heart he offered—the upright life he gave—
This is the silent sermon of the patriot's nameless grave.
Shrine of a nation's honor—stone left blank for a name
Light on the dark horizon to guide us clear from shame
Chord struck deep with the keynote, telling us what can save—
'A nation among the nations,' or forever a nameless grave.
Such is the will of the martyr—the burden we still must bear;
But even from death he reaches the legacy to share:
He teaches the secret of manhood—the watchword of those who aspire—
That men must follow freedom though it lead through blood and fire;
That sacrifice is the bitter draught which freemen still mast quaff—
That every patriotic life is the patriot's epitaph.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Wendell Phillips
WHAT shall we mourn? For the prostrate tree that sheltered the young green wood?
For the fallen cliff that fronted the sea, and guarded the fields from the flood?
For the eagle that died in the tempest, afar from its eyrie's brood?
Nay, not for these shall we weep; for the silver cord must be worn,
And the golden fillet shrink back at last, and the dust to its earth return;
And tears are never for those who die with their face to the duty done;
But we mourn for the fledglings left on the waste, and the fields where the wild waves run.
From the midst of the flock he defended, the brave one has gone to his rest;
And the tears of the poor he befriended their wealth of affliction attest.
From the midst of the people is stricken a symbol they daily saw,
Set over against the law books, of a Higher than Human Law;
For his life was a ceaseless protest, and his voice was a prophet's cry
To be true to the Truth and faithful, though the world were arrayed for the Lie.
From the hearing of those who hated, a threatening voice has past;
But the lives of those who believe and die are not blown like a leaf on the blast.
A sower of infinite seed was he, a woodman that hewed toward the light,
Who dared to be traitor to Union when Union was traitor to Right!
' Fanatic! ' the insects hissed, till he taught them to understand
That the highest crime may be written in the highest law of the land.
'Disturber' and 'Dreamer' the Philistines cried when he preached an ideal creed,
Till they learned that the men who have changed the world with the world have disagreed;
That the remnant is right, when the masses are led like sheep to the pen;
For the instinct of equity slumbers till roused by instinctive men.
It is not enough to win rights from a king and write them down in a book.
New men, new lights; and the fathers' code the sons may never brook.
What is liberty now were license then: their freedom oar yoke would be;
And each new decade must have new men to determine its liberty.
Mankind is a marching army, with a broadening front the while:
Shall it crowd its bulk on the farm-paths, or clear to the outward file?
Its pioneers are the dreamers who fear neither tongue nor pen
Of the human spiders whose silk is wove from the lives of toiling men.
Come, brothers, here to the burial! But weep not, rather rejoice,
For his fearless life and his fearless death; for his true, unequalled voice,
Like a silver trumpet sounding the note of human right;
For his brave heart always ready to enter the weak one's fight;
For his soul unmoved by the mob's wild shout or the social sneer's disgrace;
For his freeborn spirit that drew no line between class or creed or race.
Come, workers; here was a teacher, and the lesson he taught was good:
There are no classes or races, but one human brotherhood;
There are no creeds to be outlawed, no colors of skin debarred;
Mankind is one in its rights and wrongs—one right, one hope, one guard.
By his life he taught, by his death we learn the great reformer's creed:
The right to be free, and the hope to be just, and the guard against selfish greed.
And richest of all are the unseen wreaths on his coffin-lid laid down
By the toil-stained hands of workmen—their sob, their kiss, and their crown
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Pilgrim's Fathers
ONE righteous word for Law—the common will;
One living truth of Faith—God regnant still;
One primal test of Freedom—all combined;
One sacred Revolution—change of mind;
One trust unfailing for the night and need—
The tyrant-flower shall cast the freedom-seed.
So held they firm, the Fathers aye to be,
From Home to Holland, Holland to the sea—
Pilgrims for manhood, in their little ship,
Hope in each heart and prayer on every lip.
They could not live by king-made codes and creeds;
They chose the path where every footstep bleeds.
Protesting, not rebelling; scorned and banned;
Through pains and prisons harried from the land;
Through double exile,—till at last they stand
Apart from all,—unique, unworldly, true,
Selected grain to sow the earth anew;
A winnowed part—a saving remnant they;
Dreamers who work—adventurers who pray!
What vision led them? Can we test their prayers?
Who knows they saw no empire in the West?
The later Puritans sought land and gold,
And all the treasures that the Spaniard told;
What line divides the Pilgrims from the rest?
We know them by the exile that was theirs;
Their justice, faith, and fortitude attest;
And those long years in Holland, when their band
Sought humble living in a stranger's land.
They saw their England covered with a weed
Of flaunting lordship both in court and creed.
With helpless hands they watched the error grow,
Pride on the top and impotence below;
Indulgent nobles, privileged and strong,
A haughty crew to whom all rights belong;
The bishops arrogant, the courts impure,
The rich conspirators against the poor;
The peasant scorned, the artisan despised;
The all-supporting workers lowest prized.
They marked those evils deepen year by year:
The pensions grow, the freeholds disappear,
Till England meant but monarch, prelate, peer.
At last, the Conquest! Now they know the word:
The Saxon tenant and the Norman lord!
No longer Merrie England: now it meant
The payers and the takers of the rent;
And rent exacted not from lands alone—
All rights and hopes must centre in the throne:
Law-tithes for prayer—their souls were not their own!
Then o'er the brim the bitter waters welled;
The mind protested and the soul rebelled.
And yet, how deep the bowl, how slight the flow!
A few brave exiles from their country go;
A few strong souls whose rich affections cling,
Though cursed by clerics, hunted by the king.
Their last sad vision on the Grimsby strand
Their wives and children kneeling on the sand.
Then twelve slow years in Holland—changing years—
Strange ways of life—strange voices in their ears;
The growing children learning foreign speech;
And growing, too, within the heart of each
A thought of further exile—of a home
In some far land—a home for life and death
By their hands built, in equity and faith.
And then the preparation—the heart-beat
Of wayfarers who may not rest their feet;
Their Pastor's blessing—the farewells of some
'Who stayed in Leyden. Then the sea's wide blue!—
'They sailed,' writ one,' and as they sailed they knew
That they were Pilgrims!'
On the wintry main
Grod flings their lives as farmers scatter grain.
His breath propels the winged seed afloat;
His tempests swerve to spare the fragile boat;
Before His prompting terrors disappear;
He points the way while patient seamen steer;
Till port is reached, nor North, nor South, but HERE!
Here, where the shore was rugged as the waves,
'Where frozen nature dumb and leafless lay,
And no rich meadows bade the Pilgrims stay,
'Was spread the symbol of the life that saves:
To conquer first the outer things; to make
Their own advantage, unallied, unbound;
Their blood the mortar, building from the ground;
Their cares the statutes, making all anew;
To learn to trust the many, not the few;
To bend the mind to discipline; to break
The bonds of old convention, and forget
The claims and barriers of class; to face
A desert land, a strange and hostile race,
And conquer both to friendship by the debt
That Nature pays to justice, love, and toil.
Here, on this rock, and on this sterile soil,
Began the kingdom not of kings, but men:
Began the making of the world again.
Here centuries sank, and from the hither brink
A new world reached and raised an old-world link,
When English hands, by wider vision taught,
Threw down the feudal bars the Normans brought,
And here revived, in spite of sword and stake,
Their ancient freedom of the Wapentake!
Here struck the seed—the Pilgrims' roofless town,
Where equal rights and equal bonds were set,
Where all the people equal-franchised met;
Where doom was writ of privilege and crown;
Where human breath blew all the idols down;
Where crests were nought, where vulture flags were furled,
And common men began to own the world!
All praise to others of the vanguard then!
To Spain, to France; to Baltimore and Penn;
To Jesuit, Quaker,—Puritan and Priest;
Their toil be crowned—their honors be increased!
We slight no true devotion, steal no fame
From other shrines to gild the Pilgrims' name.
As time selects, we judge their treasures heaped;
Their deep foundations laid; their harvests reaped;
Their primal mode of liberty; their rules
Of civil right; their churches, courts, and schools;
Their freedom's very secret here laid down,—
The spring of government is the little town!
They knew that streams must follow to a spring;
And no stream flows from township to a king.
Give praise to others, early-come or late,
For love and labor on our ship of state;
But this must stand, above all fame and zeal:
The Pilgrim Fathers laid the ribs and keel.
On their strong lines we base our social health,—
The man—the home—the town—the commonwealth!
Unconscious builders? Yea: the conscious fail!
Design is impotent if Nature frown.
No deathless pile has grown from intellect.
Immortal things have God for architect,
And men are but the granite He lays down.
Unconscious? Yea! They thought it might avail
To build a gloomy creed about their lives,
To shut out all dissent; but naught survives
Of their poor structure; and we know to-day
Their mission was less pastoral than lay—
More Nation-seed than Gospel-seed were they!
The Faith was theirs: the time had other needs.
The salt they bore must sweeten worldly deeds.
There was a meaning in the very wind
That blew them here so few, so poor, so strong,
To grapple concrete work, not abstract wrong.
Their saintly Robinson was left behind
To teach by gentle memory; to shame
The bigot spirit and the word of flame;
To write dear mercy in the Pilgrims' law;
To lead to that wide faith his soul foresaw,—
That no rejected race in darkness delves;
There are no Gentiles, but they make themselves;
That men are one of blood and one of spirit;
That one is as the whole, and all inherit!
On all the story of a life or race,
The blessing of a good man leaves its trace.
Their Pastor's word at Leyden here sufficed:
'But follow me as I have followed Christ!'
And, 'I believe there is more truth to come!'
O gentle soul, what future age shall sum
The sweet incentive of thy tender word!
Thy sigh to hear of conquest by the sword:
'How happy to convert, and not to slay! '
When valiant Standish killed the chief at bay.
To such as thee the Fathers owe their fame;
The Nation owes a temple to thy name.
Thy teaching made the Pilgrims kindly, free,—
All that the later Puritans should be.
Thy pious instinct marks their destiny.
Thy love won more than force or arts adroit—
It writ and kept the deed with Massasoit;
It earned the welcome Samoset expressed;
It lived again in Eliot's loving breast;
It filled the Compact which the Pilgrims signed—
Immortal scroll! the first where men combined
From one deep lake of common blood to draw
All rulers, rights, and potencies of law.
When waves of ages have their motive spent
Thy sermon preaches in this Monument,
Where Virtue, Courage, Law, and Learning sit;
Calm Faith above them, grasping Holy Writ;
White hand upraised o'er beauteous, trusting eyes,
And pleading finger pointing to the skies!
The past is theirs—the future ours; and we
Must learn and teach. Oh, may our record be
Like theirs, a glory, symbolled in a stone,
To speak as this speaks, of our labors done.
They had no model; but they left us one.
Severe they were; but let him cast the stone
Who Christ's dear love dare measure with his own.
Their strict professions were not cant nor pride.
Who calls them narrow, let his soul be wide!
Austere, exclusive—ay, but with their faults,
Their golden probity mankind exalts,
They never lied in practice, peace, or strife;
They were no hypocrites; their faith was clear;
They feared too much some sins men ought to fear:
The lordly arrogance and avarice,
And vain frivolity's besotting vice;
The stern enthusiasm of their life
Impelled too far, and weighed poor nature down;
They missed God's smile, perhaps, to watch His frown.
But he who digs for faults shall resurrect
Their manly virtues born of self-respect.
How sum their merits? They were true and brave;
They broke no compact and they owned no slave;
They had no servile order, no- dumb throat;
They trusted first the universal vote;
The first were they to practice and. instill
The rule of law and not the rule of will;
They lived one noble test: who would be freed
Must give up all to follow duty's lead.
They made no revolution based on blows,
But taught one truth that all the planet knows,
That all men think of, looking on a throne—
The people may be trusted with their own!
In every land wherever might holds sway
The Pilgrims' leaven is at work to-day.
The Mayflower's cabin was the chosen womb
Of light predestined for the nations' gloom.
God grant that those who tend the sacred flame
May worthy prove of their Forefathers' name.
More light has come,—more dangers, too, perplex:
New prides, new greeds, our high condition vex.
The Fathers fled from feudal lords,, and made
A freehold state; may we not retrograde
To lucre-lords and hierarchs of trade.
May we, as they did, teach in court and school,
There must be classes, but no class shall rule:
The sea is sweet, and rots not like the pool.
Though vast the token of our future glory,
Though tongue of man hath told not such a story,—
Surpassing Plato's dream, More's phantasy,—still we
Have no new principles to keep us free.
As Nature works with changeless grain on grain,
The truths the Fathers taught we need again.
Depart from this, though we may crowd our shelves,
With codes and precepts for each lapse and flaw,
And patch our moral leaks with statute law,
We cannot be protected from ourselves!
Still must we keep in every stroke and vote
The law of conscience that the Pilgrims wrote;
Our seal their secret: LIBERTY CAN BE;
THE STATE IS FREEDOM IF THE TOWN IS FREE.
The death of nations in their work began;
They sowed the seed of federated Man.
Dead nations were but robber-holds; and we
The first battalion of Humanity!
All living nations, while our eagles shine,
One after one, shall swing into our line;
Our freeborn heritage shall be the guide
And bloodless order of their regicide;
The sea shall join, not limit; mountains stand
Dividing farm from farm, not land from land.
O People's Voice! when farthest thrones shall hear;
When teachers own; when thoughtful rabbis know;
When artist minds in world-wide symbol show;
When serfs and soldiers their mute faces raise;
When priests on grand cathedral altars praise;
When pride and arrogance shall disappear,
The Pilgrims' Vision is accomplished here!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Living
To toil all day and lie worn-out at night;
To rise for all the years to slave and sleep,
And breed new broods to do no other thing
In toiling, bearing, breeding — life is this
To myriad men, too base for man or brute.
To serve for common duty, while the brain
Is hot with high desire to be distinct;
To fill the sand-grain place among the stones
That build the social wall in million sameness,
Is life by leave, and death by insignificance.
To live the morbid years, with dripping blood
Of sacrificial labor for a Thought;
To take the dearest hope and lay it down
Beneath the crushing wheels for love of Freedom;
To bear the sordid jeers of cant and trade,
And go on hewing for a far ideal, —
This were a life worth giving to a cause,
If cause be found so worth a martyr life.
But highest life of man, nor work nor sacrifice,
But utter seeing of the things that be!
To pass amid the hurrying crowds, and watch
The hungry race for things of vulgar use;
To mark the growth of baser lines in men;
To note the bending to a servile rule;
To know the natural discord called disease
That rots like rust the blood and souls of men;
To test the wisdoms and philosophies by touch
Of that which is immutable, being clear,
The beam God opens to the poet's brain;
To see with eyes of pity laboring souls
Strive upward to the Freedom and the Truth,
And still be backward dragged by fear and ignorance;
To see the beauty of the world, and hear
The rising harmony of growth, whose shade
Of undertone is harmonized decay;
To know that love is life — that blood is one
And rushes to the union — that the heart
Is like a cup athirst for wine of love;
Who sees and feels this meaning utterly,
The wrong of law, the right of man, the natural truth.
Partaking not of selfish aims, withholding not
The word that strengthens and the hand that helps:
Who waits and sympathizes with the pettiest life,
And loves all things, and reaches up to God
With thanks and blessing — He alone is living.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Resurgite!- June, 1877
NOW, for the faith that is in ye,
Polander, Sclav, and Kelt!
Prove to the world what the lips have hurled
The hearts have grandly felt.
Rouse, ye races in shackles!
See in the East, the glare
Is red in the sky, and the warning cry
Is sounding—'Awake! Prepare!'
A voice from the spheres—a hand downreached
To hands that would be free,
To rend the gyves from the fettered lives
That strain toward Liberty!
Circassia! the cup is flowing
That holdeth perennial youth:
Who strikes succeeds, for when manhood bleeds
Each dropp is a Cadmus' tooth.
Sclavonia! first from the sheathing
Thy knife to the cord that binds;
Thy one-tongued host shall renew the boast:
'The Scythians are the Winds!'
Greece! to the grasp of heroes,
Flashed with thine ancient pride,
Thy swords advance: in the passing chance
The great of heart are tried.
Poland! thy lance-heads brighten:
The Tartar has swept thy name
From the schoolman's chart, but the patriot's heart
Preserves its lines in flame.
Ireland! mother of dolors,
The trial on thee descends:
Who quaileth in fear when the test is near,
His bondage never ends.
Oppression, that kills the craven,
Defied, is the freeman's good:
No cause can be lost forever whose cost
Is coined from Freedom's blood!
Liberty's wine and altar
Are blood and human right;
Her weak shall be strong while the struggle with wrong
Is a sacrificial fight.
Earth for the people—their laws their own—
An equal race for all:
Though shattered and few who to this are true
Shall flourish the more they fall.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Inspiration
LIFE of Ages, richly poured,
Love of God, unspent and free,
Flowing in the Prophet’s word
And the People’s liberty!
Never was to chosen race
That unstinted tide confined;
Thine is every time and place,
Fountain sweet of heart and mind!
Secret of the morning stars,
Motion of the oldest hours,
Pledge through elemental wars
Of the coming spirit’s powers!
Rolling planet, flaming sun,
Stand in nobler man complete;
Prescient laws Thine errands run,
Frame the shrine for Godhead meet.
Homeward led, the wondering eye
Upward yearned in joy or awe,
Found the love that waited nigh,
Guidance of Thy guardian Law.
In the touch of earth it thrilled;
Down from mystic skies it burned:
Right obeyed and passion stilled
Its eternal gladness earned.
Breathing in the thinker’s creed,
Pulsing in the hero’s blood,
Nerving simplest thought and deed,
Freshening time with truth and good,
Consecrating art and song,
Holy book and pilgrim track,
Hurling floods of tyrant wrong
From the sacred limits back,—
Life of Ages, richly poured,
Love of God, unspent and free,
Flow still in the Prophet’s word
And the People’s liberty!
poem by Samuel Johnson
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Fatherland
THE BRAVE old land of deed and song,
Of gentle hearts and spirits strong,
Of queenly maids and heroes grand,
Of equal laws,—our Fatherland!
Though born beneath a brighter sun,
Shall we forget the marvels done,
By soul outspoken, blood outpoured,
By bard and patriot, song and sword?
Forget how firm and true our sires,
Still lighted by their battle-fires,
’Gainst kingly power and kingly crime,
Long struggled in the darkened time?
How in a rolling sea they stood,
Where every wave was freemen’s blood,—
Shall we forget the time of strife,
When freedom’s only price was life?
Shall Cromwell’s memory, Milton’s lyre,
Not kindle ’mong us souls of fire,
Not raise in us a spirit strong—
High scorn of shams, quick hate of wrong?
Shall we not learn, Australians born!
To smile on tinselled power our scorn,—
At least, a freeman’s pride to try,
When tinselled power would bend or buy?
The brave old land of deed and song,
We ne’er will do her memories wrong!
For freedom here we’ll firmly stand,
As stood our sires for Fatherland!
poem by Sir Henry Parkes
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Ireland - 1882
'ISLAND of Destiny! Innisfail!' they cried, when their weary eyes
First looked on thy beauteous bosom from the amorous, ocean rise.
'Island of Destiny! Innisfail!' we cry. dear land, to thee,
As the sun of thy future rises and reddens the western sea!
Pregnant as earth with its gold and gems and its metals strong and fine,
Is thy soul with its ardors and fancies and sympathies divine.
Mustard seed of the nations! they scattered thy leaves to the air,
But the ravisher pales at the harvest that flourishes everywhere.
Queen in the right of thy courage! manacled, scourged, defamed,
Thy voice in the teeth of the bayonets the right of a race proclaimed.
'Bah!' they sneered from their battlements, 'her people cannot unite;
They are sands of the sea, that break before the rush of our ordered might!'
And wherever the flag of the pirate flew, the English slur was heard,
And the shallow of soul re-echoed the boast of the taunting word.
But we—O sun, that of old was our god, we look in thy face to-day,
As our Druids who prayed in the ancient time, and with them we proudly say:
'We have wronged no race, we have robbed no land, we have never oppressed the weak!'
And this in the face of Heaven is the nobler thing to speak.
We can never unite—thank God for that! in such unity as yours,
That strangles the rights of others, and only itself endures
As the guard of a bloodstained spoil and the red-eyed watch of the slave;
No need for such robber-union to a race free-souled and brave.
The races that band for plunder are the mud of the human stream,
The base and the coward and sordid, without an unselfish gleam.
It is mud that unites; but the sand is free—ay, every grain is free,
And the freedom of individual men is the highest of liberty.
It is mud that coheres; but the sand is free, till the lightning smite the shore,
And smelt the grains to a crystal mass, to return to sand no more.
And so with the grains of our Irish sand, that flash cleareyed to the sun,
Till a noble Purpose smites them and melts them into one.
While the sands are free, O Tyrants! like the wind are your steel and speech;
Your brute-force crushes a legion, but a soul it can never reach.
Island of Destiny! Innisfail? for thy faith is the payment near:
The mine of the future is opened, and the golden veins appear.
Thy hands are white and thy page unstained. Reach out for the glorious years,
And take them from Grod as His recompense for thy fortitude and tears.
Thou canst stand by the way ascending, as thy tyrant goes to the base:
The seeds of her death are in her and the signs in her cruel face.
On her darkened path lie the corpses of men, with whose blood her feet are red;
And the curses of ruined nations are a cloud above her head.
O Erin, fresh in the latest day, like a gem from a Syrian tomb,
The burial clay of the centuries has saved thy light in the gloom.
Thy hands may stretch to a kindred world: there is none that hates but one;
And she but hates as a pretext for the rapine she has done.
The night of thy grief is closing, and the sky in the East is red:
Thy children watch from the mountain-tops for the sun to kiss thy head.
O Mother of men that are fit to be free, for their test for freedom borne,
Thy vacant place in the Nations' race awaits but the coming morn!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Ritner
THANK God for the token! one lip is still free,
One spirit untrammelled, unbending one knee!
Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted and firm,
Erect, when the multitude bends to the storm;
When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, and God,
Are bowed at an Idol polluted with blood;
When the recreant North has forgotten her trust,
And the lip of her honor is low in the dust, —
Thank God, that one arm from the shackle has broken!
Thank God, that one man as a freeman has spoken!
O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has been blown!
Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the murmur has gone!
To the land of the South, of the charter and chain,
Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's pain;
Where the cant of Democracy dwells on the lips
Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders of whips!
Where 'chivalric' honor means really no more
Than scourging of women, and robbing the poor!
Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth on high,
And the words which he utters, are — Worship, or die!
Right onward, oh, speed it! Wherever the blood
Of the wronged and the guiltless is crying to God;
Wherever a slave in his fetters is pining;
Wherever the lash of the driver is twining;
Wherever from kindred, torn rudely apart,
Comes the sorrowful wail of the broken of heart;
Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind,
In silence and darkness, the God-given mind;
There, God speed it onward! its truth will be felt,
The bonds shall be loosened, the iron shall melt!
And oh, will the land where the free soul of Penn
Still lingers and breathes over mountain and glen;
Will the land where a Benezet's spirit went forth
To the peeled and the meted, and outcast of Earth;
Where the words of the Charter of Liberty first
From the soul of the sage and the patriot burst;
Where first for the wronged and the weak of their kind,
The Christian and statesman their efforts combined;
Will that land of the free and the good wear a chain?
Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be vain?
No, Ritner! her 'Friends' at thy warning shall stand
Erect for the truth, like their ancestral band;
Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past time,
Counting coldness injustice, and silence a crime;
Turning back from the cavil of creeds, to unite
Once again for the poor in defence of the Right;
Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full tide of Wrong,
Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges along;
Unappalled by the danger, the shame, and the pain,
And counting each trial for Truth as their gain!
And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true,
Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;
Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert with thine,
On the banks of Swetara, the songs of the Rhine, —
The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to brave
The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave;
Will the sons of such men yield the lords of the South
One brow for the brand, for the padlock one mouth?
They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain,
Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?
No, never! one voice, like the sound in the cloud,
When the roar of the storm waxes loud and more loud,
Wherever the foot of the freeman hath pressed
From the Delaware's marge to the Lake of the West,
On the South-going breezes shall deepen and grow
Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble below!
The voice of a people, uprisen, awake,
Pennsylvania's watchword, with Freedom at stake,
Thrilling up from each valley, flung down from each height,
'Our Country and Liberty! God for the Right!'
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Montsgur
I stand alone in this desolate space
In death they are truly alive
Massacred innocence, evil took place
The angels were burning inside
Centuries later I wonder why
What secret that they took to their grave
Still burning heretics under our skies
Religion's still burning inside
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
As we kill them all so god will know his own
The innocents died for the pope on his throne
Catholic greed and its paranoid zeal
Curse of the grail and the blood of the cross
Templar believers with blood on their hands
Joined in the choruse to kill on demand
Burned at the stake for their soul's liberty
To stand with the cathars to die and be free
The book of old testament crippled and black
Satan his weapon is lust
Living this evil damnation of flesh
Back to the torture of life
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
As we kill them all so god know his own
Laugh at the darkness and in god we trust
The eye of the triangle smiling with sin
No passover feast for the cursed within
Facing the sun as they went to their grave
Burn like a dog or you live like a slave
Death is the price for your soul's liberty
To stand with the cathars and to die and be free
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
At the gates and the walls of Montsgur
Blood on the stones of the citadel
song performed by by Iron Maiden
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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England
ENGLAND, England, England,
Girdled by ocean and skies,
And the power of a world, and the heart of a race,
And a hope that never dies.
England, England, England,
Wherever a true heart beats,
Wherever the rivers of commerce flow,
Wherever the bugles of conquest blow,
Wherever the glories of liberty grow,
'Tis the name that the world repeats.
And ye, who dwell in the shadow
Of the century-sculptured piles,
Where sleep our century-honoured dead,
Whilst the great world thunders overhead,
And far out, miles on miles,
Beyond the smoke of the mighty town,
The blue Thames dimples and smiles;
Not yours alone the glory of old,
Of the splendid thousand years,
Of Britain's might and Britain's right
And the brunt of British spears.
Not yours alone, for the great world round,
Ready to dare and do,
Scot and Celt and Norman and Dane,
With the Northman's sinew and heart and brain,
And the Northman's courage for blessing or bane,
Are England's heroes too.
North and south and east and west,
Wherever their triumphs be,
Their glory goes home to the ocean-girt isle,
Where the heather blooms and the roses smile,
With the green isle under her lee.
And if ever the smoke of an alien gun
Should threaten her iron repose,
Shoulder to shoulder against the world,
Face to face with her foes,
Scot, and Celt and Saxon are one
Where the glory of England goes.
And we of the newer and vaster West,
Where the great war-banners are furled,
And commerce hurries her teeming hosts,
And the cannon are silent along our coasts,
Saxon and Gaul, Canadians claim
A part in the glory and pride and aim
Of the Empire that girdles the world.
England, England, England,
Wherever the daring heart
By Arctic floe or torrid strand
Thy heroes play their part;
For as long as conquest holds the earth,
Or commerce sweeps the sea,
By orient jungle or western plain
Will the Saxon spirit be:
And whatever the people that dwell beneath,
Or whatever the alien tongue,
Over the freedom and peace of the world
Is the flag of England flung,
Till the last great freedom is found,
And the last great truth be taught,
Till the last great deed be done,
And the last great battle is fought;
Till the last great fighter is slain in the last great fight,
And the war-wolf is dead in his den–
England, breeder of hope and valour and might,
Iron mother of men.
Yea, England, England, England,
Till honour and valour are dead,
Till the world's great cannons rust,
Till the world's great hopes are dust,
Till faith and freedom be fled,
Till wisdom and justice have passed
To sleep with those who sleep in the many-chambered vast,
Till glory and knowledge are charnelled dust in dust,
To all that is best in the world's unrest,
In heart and mind you are wed.
While out from the Indian jungle
To the far Canadian snows,
Over the East and over the West,
Over the worst and over the best,
The flag of the world to its winds unfurled,
The blood-red ensign blows.
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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Ballad Of The Black Slave
This is the ballad of the black slave,
Who has been beaten and disgraced,
Who has been called the n-word and negro,
Who has received no pay.
This is the ballad of the black slave,
Who prays for freedom every night,
Who is going to rebel,
For what he thinks is right.
Now this is the ballad of the freed slave,
Who has seen much blood shed,
Who has fought for equal rights,
And who has won his freedom.
poem by Michael Issac Palmer
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The Power Of Thy Sword
Lord of battle I pray on bended knee conquest by the rising sun
I'll wait for thy command with flame and blood at hand
glory and a broken sword.
I'm the master of the world I have no fear of man or beast
Born inside the soul of the world
Riding hard breaking bone with steel and stone
Eternal might I was born to wield.
Let us drink to the battles we've lived and we've fought
Celebrate the pain and havoc we have wrought
Great heroes charge into the fight
From the north to the south in the black of night
The clash of honor calls to stand when others fall
Gods of war feel the power of my sword
Drink to the battles we've lived and we've fought
Celebrate the pain and havoc we have wrought
Great heroes charge into the fight
From the north to the south in the black of night
Fierce is my blade fierce is my hate born to die in battle
I laugh at my fate
Now pay in blood when your blood has been spilled
You're never forgiven death is fulfilled !
The clash of honor calls to stand when others fall
Gods of war feel the power of my sword
The clash of honor calls
I will stand when others fall
Open magic doors
The will know the power of my sword
There is blood in my hands there is blood in my eyes
With blood in my voice I scream as you die
Thirsting for vengeance and mounds of the slain
Shaking the forest onto the plain
Fierce is my blade fierce is my hate born to die in battle
I laugh at my fate
Now pay in blood when your blood has been spilled
You're never forgiven death is fulfilled !
The clash of honor calls to stand when others fall
Gods of war feel the power of my sword
Know the power of my sword
Know the power of my sword
Know the power of my sword
Know the power of my sword
They will know the power of my sword
song performed by by Manowar from The Triumph Of Steel
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Pride and Honor
The pride and honor is always supreme
Whether it is nation, individual or team
It will be razed to ground the moment you have arrogance
It must be realized and borne in mind at once
So many kingdoms perished just for one reason
They were headed by headstrong and ambitious persons
What did they want for whole world in return?
Blood bath, killings, molestation in turn
Did Napoleon, Sikandar the Greet any recognition?
Only known for their powerful drive with ambition
What did it carry with their mind and impression?
World can’t be won over by simple invasion
Individual is not known by his ancestral identity
It is simple logic and must be felt with pity
How can you claim your present glory to past
As world is moving toward destiny very fast
The blood of mine was the royal blood...
Toughest to win was that royal blood...
Heavens salute to that royal blood...
Proud to have that royal blood...
But it killed many
Don’t you think royal blood is funny?
At what cost and what benefit?
How did it try for freedom to light?
No violence can protect
Only you must speak with noble act
Nothing can be termed as royal
If you fail to act as loyal
poem by Hasmukh Amathalal
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Christmas Antiphones
I -- In Church
Thou whose birth on earth
Angels sang to men,
While thy stars made mirth,
Saviour, at thy birth,
This day born again;
As this night was bright
With thy cradle-ray,
Very light of light,
Turn the wild world's night
To thy perfect day.
God whose feet made sweet
Those wild ways they trod,
From thy fragrant feet
Staining field and street
With the blood of God;
God whose breast is rest
In the time of strife,
In thy secret breast
Sheltering souls opprest
From the heat of life;
God whose eyes are skies
Love-lit as with spheres
By the lights that rise
To thy watching eyes,
Orbed lights of tears;
God whose heart hath part
In all grief that is,
Was not man's the dart
That went through thine heart,
And the wound not his?
Where the pale souls wail,
Held in bonds of death,
Where all spirits quail,
Came thy Godhead pale
Still from human breath -
Pale from life and strife,
Wan with manhood, came
Forth of mortal life,
Pierced as with a knife,
Scarred as with a flame.
Thou the Word and Lord
In all time and space
Heard, beheld, adored,
With all ages poured
Forth before thy face,
Lord, what worth in earth
Drew thee down to die?
What therein was worth,
Lord, thy death and birth?
What beneath thy sky?
Light above all love
By thy love was lit,
And brought down the Dove
Feathered from above
With the wings of it.
From the height of night,
Was not thine the star
That led forth with might
By no worldly light
Wise men from afar?
Yet the wise men's eyes
Saw thee not more clear
Than they saw thee rise
Who in shepherd's guise
Drew as poor men near.
Yet thy poor endure,
And are with us yet;
Be thy name a sure
Refuge for thy poor
Whom men's eyes forget.
Thou whose ways we praised,
Clear alike and dark,
Keep our works and ways
This and all thy days
Safe inside thine ark.
Who shall keep thy sheep,
Lord, and lose not one?
Who save one shall keep,
Lest the shepherds sleep?
Who beside the Son?
From the grave-deep wave,
From the sword and flame,
Thou, even thou, shalt save
Souls of king and slave
Only by thy Name.
Light not born with morn
Or her fires above,
Jesus virgin-born,
Held of men in scorn,
Turn their scorn to love.
Thou whose face gives grace
As the sun's doth heat,
Let thy sunbright face
Lighten time and space
Here beneath thy feet.
Bid our peace increase,
Thou that madest morn;
Bid oppressions cease;
Bid the night be peace;
Bid the day be born.
II--OUTSIDE CHURCH
We whose days and ways
All the night makes dark,
What day shall we praise
Of these weary days
That our life-drops mark?
We whose mind is blind,
Fed with hope of nought;
Wastes of worn mankind,
Without heart or mind,
Without meat or thought;
We with strife of life
Worn till all life cease,
Want, a whetted knife,
Sharpening strife on strife,
How should we love peace?
Ye whose meat is sweet
And your wine-cup red,
Us beneath your feet
Hunger grinds as wheat,
Grinds to make you bread.
Ye whose night is bright
With soft rest and heat,
Clothed like day with light,
Us the naked night
Slays from street to street.
Hath your God no rod,
That ye tread so light?
Man on us as God,
God as man hath trod,
Trod us down with might.
We that one by one
Bleed from either's rod.
What for us hath done
Man beneath the sun,
What for us hath God?
We whose blood is food
Given your wealth to feed,
From the Christless rood
Red with no God's blood,
But with man's indeed;
How shall we that see
Nightlong overhead
Life, the flowerless tree,
Nailed whereon as we
Were our fathers dead -
We whose ear can hear,
Not whose tongue can name,
Famine, ignorance, fear,
Bleeding tear by tear
Year by year of shame,
Till the dry life die
Out of bloodless breast,
Out of beamless eye,
Out of mouths that cry
Till death feed with rest -
How shall we as ye,
Though ye bid us, pray?
Though ye call, can we
Hear you call, or see,
Though ye show us day?
We whose name is shame,
We whose souls walk bare,
Shall we call the same
God as ye by name,
Teach our lips your prayer?
God, forgive and give,
For His sake who died?
Nay, for ours who live,
How shall we forgive
Thee, then, on our side?
We whose right to light
Heaven's high noon denies,
Whom the blind beams smite
That for you shine bright,
And but burn our eyes,
With what dreams of beams
Shall we build up day,
At what sourceless streams
Seek to drink in dreams
Ere they pass away?
In what street shall meet,
At what market-place,
Your feet and our feet,
With one goal to greet,
Having run one race?
What one hope shall ope
For us all as one
One same horoscope,
Where the soul sees hope
That outburns the sun?
At what shrine what wine,
At what board what bread,
Salt as blood or brine,
Shall we share in sign
How we poor were fed?
In what hour what power
Shall we pray for morn,
If your perfect hour,
When all day bears flower,
Not for us is born?
III--BEYOND CHURCH
Ye that weep in sleep,
Souls and bodies bound,
Ye that all night keep
Watch for change, and weep
That no change is found;
Ye that cry and die,
And the world goes on
Without ear or eye,
And the days go by
Till all days are gone;
Man shall do for you,
Men the sons of man,
What no God would do
That they sought unto
While the blind years ran.
Brotherhood of good,
Equal laws and rights,
Freedom, whose sweet food
Feeds the multitude
All their days and nights
With the bread full-fed
Of her body blest
And the soul's wine shed
From her table spread
Where the world is guest,
Mingling me and thee,
When like light of eyes
Flashed through thee and me
Truth shall make us free,
Liberty make wise;
These are they whom day
Follows and gives light
Whence they see to slay
Night, and burn away
All the seed of night.
What of thine and mine,
What of want and wealth,
When one faith is wine
For my heart and thine
And one draught is health?
For no sect elect
Is the soul's wine poured
And her table decked;
Whom should man reject
From man's common board?
Gods refuse and choose,
Grudge and sell and spare;
None shall man refuse,
None of all men lose,
None leave out of care.
No man's might of sight
Knows that hour before;
No man's hand hath might
To put back that light
For one hour the more.
Not though all men call,
Kneeling with void hands,
Shall they see light fall
Till it come for all
Tribes of men and lands.
No desire brings fire
Down from heaven by prayer,
Though man's vain desire
Hang faith's wind-struck lyre
Out in tuneless air.
One hath breath and saith
What the tune shall be -
Time, who puts his breath
Into life and death,
Into earth and sea.
To and fro years flow,
Fill their tides and ebb,
As his fingers go
Weaving to and fro
One unfinished web.
All the range of change
Hath its bounds therein,
All the lives that range
All the byways strange
Named of death or sin.
Star from far to star
Speaks, and white moons wake,
Watchful from afar
What the night's ways are
For the morning's sake.
Many names and flames
Pass and flash and fall,
Night-begotten names,
And the night reclaims,
As she bare them, all.
But the sun is one,
And the sun's name Right;
And when light is none
Saving of the sun,
All men shall have light.
All shall see and be
Parcel of the morn;
Ay, though blind were we,
None shall choose but see
When that day is born.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The House of the Commonwealth
We sent a word across the seas that said,
"The house is finished and the doors are wide,
Come, enter in.
A stately house it is, with tables spread,
Where men in liberty and love abide
With hearts akin.
"Behold, how high our hands have lifted it!
The soil it stands upon is pure and sweet
As are our skies.
Our title deeds in holy sweat are writ,
Not red accusing blood -- and 'neath our feet
No foeman lies."
And England, Mother England, leans her face
Upon her hand and feels her blood burn young
At what she sees:
The image here of that fair strength and grace
That made her feared and loved and sought and sung
Through centuries.
What chorus shall we lift, what song of joy,
What boom of seaward cannon, roll of drums?
The majesty of nationhood demands
A burst of royal sounds, as when a victor comes
From peril of a thousand foes;
An empire's honour saved from death
Brought home again; an added rose
Of victory upon its wreath.
In this wise men have greeted kings,
In name or fame,
But such acclaim
Were vain and emptiest of things
If love were silent, drawn apart,
And mute the People's mighty heart.
The love that ivy-like an ancient land doth cherish,
It grows not in a day, nor in a year doth perish.
But, little leaf by leaf,
It creeps along the walls and wreathes the ramparts hoary.
The sun that gives it strength -- it is a nation's glory;
The dew, a people's grief.
The love that ivy-like around a home-land lingers,
With soft embrace of breast and green, caressive fingers,
We are too young to know.
Not ours the glory-dome, the monuments and arches
At thought of which takes arms the blood, and proudly marches
Exultant o'er the foe.
Green lands undesolated
For no avengement cry;
No feud of race unsated
Leaps out again to triumph,
Leaps out again to triumph, or to die!
Attendant here to-day in heart and mind
Must be all lovers of mankind,
Attendant, too, the souls sublime --
The Prophet-souls of every clime,
Who, living, in a tyrant's time,
Yet thought and wrought and sought to break
The chains about mankind and make
A man where men had made a slave:
Who all intent to lift and save
Beheld the flag of Freedom wave
And scorned the prison or the grave;
For whom the darkness failed to mar
The vision of a world afar,
The shining of the Morning Star.
Attendant here, then, they must be,
And gathering close with eyes elate
Behold the vision of a State
Where men are equal, just, and free:
A State that hath no stain upon her,
No taint to hurt her maiden honour;
A Home where love and kindness centre;
A People's House where all may enter.
And, being entered, meet no dearth
Of welcome round a common hearth;
A People's House not built of stone,
Nor wrought by hand and brain alone,
But formed and founded on the heart;
A People's House, A People's Home,
En-isled in foam and far apart;
A People's House, where all may roam
The many rooms and be at ease;
A People's House, with tower and dome;
And over all a People's Flag --
A Flag upon the breeze.
poem by Roderic Quinn
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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To Englishmen
You flung your taunt across the wave;
We bore it as became us,
Well knowing that the fettered slave
Left friendly lips no option save
To pity or to blame us.
You scoffed our plea. 'Mere lack of will,
Not lack of power,' you told us:
We showed our free-state records; still
You mocked, confounding good and ill,
Slave-haters and slaveholders.
We struck at Slavery; to the verge
Of power and means we checked it;
Lo! — presto, change! its claims you urge,
Send greetings to it o'er the surge,
And comfort and protect it.
But yesterday you scarce could shake,
In slave-abhorring rigor,
Our Northern palms for conscience' sake:
To-day you clasp the hands that ache
With 'walloping the nigger!'
O Englishmen! — in hope and creed,
In blood and tongue our brothers!
We too are heirs of Runnymede;
And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed
Are not alone our mother's.
'Thicker than water,' in one rill
Through centuries of story
Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still
We share with you its good and ill,
The shadow and the glory.
Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave
Nor length of years can part us:
Your right is ours to shrine and grave,
The common freehold of the brave,
The gift of saints and martyrs.
Our very sins and follies teach
Our kindred frail and human:
We carp at faults with bitter speech,
The while, for one unshared by each,
We have a score in common.
We bowed the heart, if not the knee,
To England's Queen, God bless her!
We praised you when your slaves went free:
We seek to unchain ours. Will ye
Join hands with the oppressor?
And is it Christian England cheers
The bruiser, not the bruisëd?
And must she run, despite the tears
And prayers of eighteen hundred years,
Amuck in Slavery's crusade?
Oh, black disgrace! Oh, shame and loss
Too deep for tongue to phrase on!
Tear from your flag its holy cross,
And in your van of battle toss
The pirate's skull-bone blazon!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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