And, scattering ashes on my head,
I wore, undreaming of relief,
The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.
Again that moon of blossoms shines
On leaf and flower and folded wing,
And thou hast risen with the spring!
Once more thy strong maternal arms

Are round about thy children flung,
A lioness that guards her young!
No threat is on thy closéd lips,

But in thine eye a power to smite
The mad wolf backward from its light.
Southward the baffled robber's track

Henceforth runs only; hereaway,
The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.
Henceforth, within thy sacred gates,

His first low howl shall downward draw
The thunder of thy righteous law.
Not mindless of thy trade and gain,
But, acting on the wiser plan,
Thou 'rt grown conservative of man.

So shalt thou clothe with life the hope,
Dream-painted on the sightless eyes
Of him who sang of Paradise,

The vision of a Christian man,
In virtue as in stature great,
Embodied in a Christian State.

And thou, amidst thy sisterhood
Forbearing long, yet standing fast,
Shalt win their grateful thanks at last;

When North and South shall strive no more,

And all their feuds and fears be lost
In Freedom's holy Pentecost.

6th mo., 1855.

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY.

TH

'HE proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;

93

My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,

The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try

The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

While there's a grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,

Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon's vilest dust, -
While there's a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee'and ragged coat!
A man's a man to-day!

THE EVE OF ELECTION.

ROM gold to gray
Our mild sweet day

Of Indian Summer fades too soon;

FF

But tenderly

Above the sea

Hangs, white and calm, the Hunter's moon.

THE EVE ̧OF ELECTION.

In its pale fire
The village spire

Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance;
The painted walls
Whereon it falls

Transfigured stand in marble trance!

O'er fallen leaves

The west wind grieves,

Yet comes a seed-time round again ;
And morn shall see

The State sown free

With baleful tares or healthful grain.

Along the street

The shadows meet

Of Destiny, whose hands conceal

The moulds of fate

That shape the State,

And make or mar the common weal.

Around I see

The powers that be;

I stand by Empire's primal springs ;
And princes meet

In every street,

And hear the tread of uncrowned kings!

Hark! through the crowd
The laugh runs loud,

Beneath the sad, rebuking moon.

God save the land

A careless hand

May shake or swerve ere morrow's noon!

No jest is this;
One cast amiss

May blast the hope of Freedom's year.

O, take me where

Are hearts of prayer,

And foreheads bowed in reverent fear!

95

Not lightly fall
Beyond recall

The written scrolls a breath can float;
The crowning fact,
The kingliest act

Of Freedom, is the freeman's vote!

For pearls that gem
A diadem

The diver in the deep sea dies;

The regal right
We boast to-night

Is ours through costlier sacrifice :

The blood of Vane,
His prison pain

Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod,
And hers whose faith

Drew strength from death,

And prayed her Russell up to God!

Our hearts grow cold,
We lightly hold

A right which brave men died to gain;

The stake, the cord,

The axe, the sword,

Grim nurses at its birth of pain.

The shadow rend,

And o'er us bend,

O martyrs, with your crowns and palms,

Breathe through these throngs
Your battle songs,

Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms!

Look from the sky,

Like God's great eye,

Thou solemn moon, with searching beam;

Till in the sight

Of thy pure light

Our mean self-seekings meaner seem.