Once on his star-gemmed, dazzling throne,

Sat an all bright and lofty One,

Unto whom God had given

To be the mightiest Angel-Lord

Within the range of Heaven;

With power of knowing things to come,

To judge o‘er man, and speak his doom.

O, he was pure! the fleecy snow,

Falling through air to earth below,

Was not more undefiled:

Sinless he was as the wreathed smile

On lip of sleeping child.

Haply, more like the snow was he,

Freezing—with all its purity.

Upon his forehead beamed a star,

Bright as the lamps of even are;

And his pale robe was worn

About him with a look of pride,

A high, majestic scorn,

Which showed he felt his glorious might,

His favor with the Lord of Light.

Years, thus he swayed the things of earth—

O‘er human crime and human worth—

Haughty, and high, and stern;

Nor ever, at sweet Mercy’s call,

His white neck would he turn;

But listening not to frailty’s plea,

Launched forth each just yet stern decree.

At last, our Father who above

Sits throned with Might, and Truth, and Love,

And knows our weakness blind,

Beheld him—proud, and pitying not

The errors of mankind;

And doomed him, for a punishment,

To be forth from his birth-place sent.

So down this angel from on high

Came from his sphere, to live and die

As mortal men have done;

That he might know the tempting snares

Which lure each human son;

And dwell as all on earth have dwelt.

And feel the grief we all have felt.

Then he knew Guilt, while round him weaved

Their spells, pale Sickness, Love deceived,

And Fear, and Hate, and Wrath;

And all the blighting ills of Fate

Were cast athwart his path:

He stood upon the grave’s dread brink,

And felt his soul with terror sink.

He learned why men to sin give way,

And how we live our passing day

In indolence and crime;

But yet his eye with awe looked on,

To see in all its prime

That godlike thing, the human mind,

A gem in black decay enshrined.

Long years in penance thus he spent,

Until the Mighty Parent sent

His loveliest messenger—

Who came with step so noiselessly,

And features passing fair;

Death was his name; the angel heard

The call, and swift to heaven he soared.

There in his former glory placed,

The star again his forehead graced;

But never more that brow

Was lifted up in scorn of sin;

His wings were folded now—

But not in pride: his port, though high,

No more spoke conscious majesty.

And O, what double light now shone

About that pure and heavenly one;

For in the clouds which made

The veil around his seat of power,

In silvery robes arrayed,

Hovered the seraph Charity,

And Pity with her melting eye.

AMBITION

One day, an obscure youth, a wanderer,

Known but to few, lay musing with himself

About the chances of his future life.

In that youth’s heart, there dwelt the coal Ambition,

Burning and glowing; and he asked himself,

“Shall I, in time to come, be great and famed?”

Now soon an answer wild and mystical

Seemed to sound forth from out the depths of air;

And to the gazer’s eye appeared a shape

Like one as of a cloud—and thus it spoke:

“O, many a panting, noble heart

Cherishes in its deep recess

The hope to win renown o‘er earth

From Glory’s prized caress.

“And some will win that envied goal,

And have their deeds known far and wide;

And some—by far the most—will sink

Down in oblivion’s tide.

“But thou, who visions bright dost cull

From the imagination’s store,

With dreams, such as the youthful dream

Of grandeur, love, and power,

“Fanciest that thou shalt build a name

And come to have the nations know

What conscious might dwells in the brain

That throbs beneath that brow?

“And see thick countless ranks of men

Fix upon thee their reverent gaze—

And listen to the plaudits loud

To thee that thousands raise?

“Weak, childish soul! the very place

That pride has made for folly’s rest;

What thoughts, with vanity all rife,

Fill up thy heaving breast!

“At night, go view the solemn stars

Those wheeling worlds through time the same—

How puny seem the widest power,

The proudest mortal name!

“Think too, that all, lowly and rich,

Dull idiot mind and teeming sense,

Alike must sleep the endless sleep,

A hundred seasons hence.

“So, frail one, never more repine,

Though thou livest on obscure, unknown;

Though after death unsought may be

Thy markless resting stone.”

And as these accents dropped in the youth’s ears,

He felt him sick at heart; for many a month

His fancy had amused and charmed itself

With lofty aspirations, visions fair

Of what he might be. And it pierced him sore

To have his airy castles thus dashed down.

THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF McDONALD CLARKE ³

A Parody

Not a sigh was heard, not a tear was shed,

As away to the “tombs” he was hurried,

No mother or friend held his dying head,

Or wept when the poet was buried.

They buried him lonely; no friend stood near,

(The scoffs of the multitude spurning,)

To weep o‘er the poet’s sacred bier;

No bosom with anguish was burning.

No polish’d coffin enclosed his breast,

Nor in purple or linen they wound him,

As a stranger he died; he went to his rest

With cold charity’s shroud wrapt ‘round him.

Few and cold were the prayers they said,

Cold and dry was the cheek of sadness,

Not a tear of grief baptised his head,

Nor of sympathy pardon’d his madness.

None thought, as they stood by his lowly bed,

Of the griefs and pains that craz’d him;

None thought of the sorrow that turn’d his head,

Of the vileness of those who prais’d him.

Lightly they speak of his anguish and woe,

And o‘er his cold ashes upbraid him,

By whatever he was that was evil below,

Unkindness and cruelty made him.

Ye hypocrites! stain not his grave with a tear,

Nor blast the fresh planted willow

That weeps o‘er his grave; for while he was here,

Ye refused him a crumb and a pillow.

Darkly and sadly his spirit has fled,

But his name will long linger in story;

He needs not a stone to hallow his bed;

He’s in Heaven, encircled with glory.

TIME TO COME

O, Death! a black and pierceless pall

Hangs round thee, and the future state;

No eye may see, no mind may grasp

That mystery of Fate.

This brain, which now alternate throbs

With swelling hope and gloomy fear;

This heart, with all the changing hues,

That mortal passions bear—

This curious frame of human mould,

Where unrequited cravings play,

This brain, and heart, and wondrous form

Must all alike decay.

The leaping blood will stop its flow;

The hoarse death-struggle pass; the cheek

Lay bloomless, and the liquid tongue

Will then forget to speak.

The grave will tame me; earth will close

O‘er cold dull limbs and ashy face;

But where, O, Nature, where shall be

The soul’s abiding place?

Will it e‘en live? for though its light

Must shine till from the body torn;

Then, when the oil of life is spent,

Still shall the taper burn?

O, powerless is this struggling brain

To rend the mighty mystery;

In dark, uncertain awe it waits

The common doom, to die.

A SKETCH

“The trail of the serpent is at times seen in every man’s path.”

Upon the ocean’s wave-worn shore

I marked a solitary form,

Whose brooding look, and features wore

The darkness of the coming storm!

And, from his lips, the sigh that broke,

So long within his bosom nursed,

In deep and mournful accents spoke,

Like troubled waves, that shining burst!

And as he gazed on earth and sea,

Girt with the gathering night; his soul,

Wearied and life-worn, longed to flee,

And rest within its final goal!

He thought of her whose love had beamed,

The sunlight of his ripened years;

But now her gentle memory seemed

To brim his eye with bitter tears!

“Oh! thou bless’d Spirit!” thus he sighed—

“Smile on me from thy realm of rest!

My dark and doubting spirit guide,

By conflict torn, and grief oppressed!

Teach me, in every saddening care,

To see the chastening hand of Heaven;

The Soul’s high culture to prepare,

Wisely and mercifully given!

“Could I this sacred solace share,

‘Twould still my struggling bosom’s moan;

And the deep peacefulness of prayer,

Might for thy heavy loss atone!

Earth, in its wreath of summer flowers,

And all its varied scenes of joy,

Its festal halls and echoing bowers,

No more my darkened thoughts employ.

“But here, the billow’s heaving breast,

And the low thunder’s knelling tone,

Speak of the wearied soul’s unrest,

Its murmuring, and conflicts lone!

And yon sweet star, whose golden gleam,

Pierces the tempest’s gathering gloom,

In the rich radiance of its beam,

Tells me of light beyond the tomb!”

DEATH OF THE NATURE-LOVER

Not in a gorgeous hall of pride

Where tears fall thick, and loved ones sigh,

Wished he, when the dark hour approached

To drop his veil of flesh, and die.

Amid the thundercrash of strife,

Where hovers War’s ensanguined cloud,

And bright swords flash and banners fly

Above the wounds, and groans, and blood.

Not there—not there! Death’s look he’d cast

Around a furious tiger’s den.

Rather than in the monstrous sight

Of the red butcheries of men.

Days speed: the time for that last look

Upon this glorious earth has come:

The Power he served so well vouchsafes

The sun to shine, the flowers to bloom.

Just ere the closing of the day,

His fainting limbs he needs will have

Borne out into the fresh free air,

Where sweet shrubs grow, and proud trees wave.

At distance, o‘er the pleasant fields,

A bay by misty vapors curled,

He gazes on, and thinks the haven

For which to leave a grosser world.

He sorrows not, but smiles content,

Dying there in that fragrant place,

Gazing on blossom, field, and bay,

As on their Maker’s very face.

The cloud-arch bending overhead,

There, at the setting of the sun

He bids adieu to earth, and steps

Down to the World Unknown.

THE PLAY-GROUND

When painfully athwart my brain

Dark thoughts come crowding on,

And, sick of worldly hollowness,

My heart feels sad or lone—

Then out upon the green I walk,

Just ere the close of day,

And swift I ween the sight I view

Clears all my gloom away.

For there I see young children—

The cheeriest things on earth—

I see them play—I hear their tones

Of loud and reckless mirth.

And many a clear and flute-like laugh

Comes ringing through the air;

And many a roguish, flashing eye,

And rich red cheek, are there.

O, lovely, happy children!

I am with you in my soul;

I shout—I strike the ball with you—

With you I race and roll.—

Methinks white-winged angels,

Floating unseen the while,

Hover around this village green,

And pleasantly they smile.

O, angels! guard these children!

Keep grief and guilt away:

From earthly harm—from evil thoughts

O, shield them night and day!

ODE

To be sung on Fort Greene; 4th of July, 1846. Tune “The Star Spangled Banner.”

-1-

O, God of Columbia! O, Shield of the Free!

More grateful to you than the fanes of old story,

Must the blood-bedewed soil, the red battle-ground, be

Where our fore-fathers championed America’s glory!

Then how priceless the worth of the sanctified earth,

We are standing on now. Lo! the slopes of its girth

Where the Martyrs were buried: Nor prayers, tears, or stones,

Mark their crumbled-in coffins, their white, holy bones!

-2-

Say! sons of Long-Island! in legend or song,

Keep ye aught of its record, that day dark and cheerless—

That cruel of days—when, hope weak, the foe strong,

Was seen the Serene One—still faithful, still fearless,

Defending the worth, of the sanctified earth

We are standing on now, &c.

-3-

Ah, yes! be the answer. In memory still

We have placed in our hearts, and embalmed there forever!

The battle, the prison-ship, martyrs and hill,

—O, may it be preserved till those hearts death shall sever!

For how priceless the worth, etc.

-4-

And shall not the years, as they sweep o‘er and o’er,

Shall they not, even here, bring the children of ages—

To exult as their fathers exulted before,

In the freedom achieved by our ancestral sages?

And the prayer rise to heaven, with pure gratitude given

And the sky by the thunder of cannon be riven?

Yea! yea! let the echo responsively roll

The echo that starts from the patriot’s soul!

THE MISSISSIPPI AT MIDNIGHT

How solemn! sweeping this dense black tide!

No friendly lights i’ the heaven o‘er us;

A murky darkness on either side,

And kindred darkness all before us!

Now, drawn near the shelving rim,

Weird-like shadows suddenly rise;

Shapes of mist and phantoms dim

Baffle the gazer’s straining eyes.

River fiends, with malignant faces!

Wild and wide their arms are thrown,

As if to clutch in fatal embraces

Him who sails their realms upon.

Then, by the trick of our own swift motion,

Straight, tall giants, an army vast,

Rank by rank, like the waves of ocean,

On the shore march stilly past.

How solemn! the river a trailing pall,

Which takes, but never again gives back;

And moonless and starless the heavens’ arch’d wall,

Responding an equal black!

Oh, tireless waters! like Life’s quick dream,

Onward and onward ever hurrying—

Like Death in this midnight hour you seem,

Life in your chill drops greedily burying!

SONG FOR CERTAIN CONGRESSMEN ⁴

We are all docile dough-faces,

They knead us with the fist,

They, the dashing southern lords,

We labor as they list;

For them we speak—or hold our tongues,

For them we turn and twist.

We join them in their howl against

Free soil and “abolition,”

That firebrand—that assassin knife—

Which risk our land’s condition,

And leave no peace of life to any

Dough-faced politician.

To put down “agitation,” now,

We think the most judicious;

To damn all “northern fanatics,”

Those “traitors” black and vicious;

The “reg‘lar party usages”

For us, and no “new issues.”

Things have come to a pretty pass,

When a trifle small as this,

Moving and bartering nigger slaves,

Can open an abyss,

With jaws a-gape for “the two great parties;”

A pretty thought, I wis!

Principle—freedom!—fiddlesticks!

We know not where they’re found.

Rights of the masses—progress!—bah!

Words that tickle and sound;

But claiming to rule o‘er “practical men”

Is very different ground.

Beyond all such we know a term

Charming to ears and eyes,

With it we’ll stab young Freedom,

And do it in disguise;

Speak soft, ye wily dough-faces

That term is “compromise.”

And what if children, growing up,

In future seasons read

The thing we do? and heart and tongue

Accurse us for the deed?

The future cannot touch us;

The present gain we heed.

Then, all together, dough-faces!

Let’s stop the exciting clatter,

And pacify slave-breeding wrath

By yielding all the matter;

For otherwise, as sure as guns,

The Union it will shatter.

Besides, to tell the honest truth

(For us an innovation,)

Keeping in with the slave power

Is our personal salvation;

We’ve very little to expect

From t’ other part of the nation.

Besides it’s plain at Washington

Who likeliest wins the race,

What earthly chance has “free soil”

For any good fat place?

While many a daw has feather’d his nest,

By his creamy and meek dough-face.

Take heart, then, sweet companions,

Be steady, Scripture Dick!

Webster, Cooper, Walker,

To your allegiance stick!

With Brooks, and Briggs and Phoenix,

Stand up through thin and thick!

We do not ask a bold brave front;

We never try that game;

‘Twould bring the storm upon our heads,

A huge mad storm of shame;

Evade it, brothers—“compromise”

Will answer just the same. PAUMANOK

BLOOD-MONEY ⁵

“Guilty of the body and the blood of Christ”

-1-

Of olden time, when it came to pass

That the beautiful god, Jesus, should finish his work on earth,

Then went Judas, and sold the divine youth,

And took pay for his body.

Curs’d was the deed, even before the sweat of the clutching hand

grew dry;

And darkness frown’d upon the seller of the like of God,

Where, as though earth lifted her breast to throw him from her,

and heaven refused him,

He hung in the air, self-slaughter’d.

The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalk’d silently

forward,

Since those ancient days—many a pouch enwrapping

meanwhile

Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary.

And still goes one, saying,

“What will ye give me, and I will deliver this man unto you?”

And they make the covenant, and pay the pieces of silver.

-2-

Look forth, deliverer,

Look forth, first-born of the dead,

Over the tree-tops of Paradise;

See thyself in yet-continued bonds,

Toilsome and poor, thou bear‘st man’s form again,

Thou art reviled, scourged, put into prison,

Hunted from the arrogant equality of the rest;

With staves and swords throng the willing servants of

authority,

Again they surround thee, mad with devilish spite;

Toward thee stretch the hands of a multitude, like vultures’

talons,

The meanest spit in thy face, they smite thee with their

palms;

Bruised, bloody, and pinion’d is thy body,

More sorrowful than death is thy soul.

Witness of anguish, brother of slaves,

Not with thy price closed the price of thine image:

And still Iscariot plies his trade.

April, 1843 PAUMANOK

THE HOUSE OF FRIENDS ⁶

“And one shall say unto him, What are those wounds in thy hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.”—Zachariah, xiii. 6.

If thou art balked, O Freedom,

The victory is not to thy manlier foes;

From the house of thy friends comes the death stab.

Vaunters of the Free,

Why do you strain your lungs off southward?

Why be going to Alabama?

Sweep first before your own door;

Stop this squalling and this scorn

Over the mote there in the distance;

Look well to your own eye, Massachusetts—

Yours, New-York and Pennsylvania;

—I would say yours too, Michigan,

But all the salve, all the surgery

Of the great wide world were powerless there.

Virginia, mother of greatness,

Blush not for being also mother of slaves.

You might have borne deeper slaves—

Doughfaces, Crawlers, Lice of Humanity—

Terrific screamers of Freedom,

Who roar and bawl, and get hot i’ the face,

But, were they not incapable of august crime,

Would quench the hopes of ages for a drink—

Muck-worms, creeping flat to the ground,

A dollar dearer to them than Christ’s blessing;

All loves, all hopes, less than the thought of gain;

In life walking in that as in a shroud:

Men whom the throes of heroes,

Great deeds at which the gods might stand appalled

The shriek of a drowned world, the appeal of women,

The exulting laugh of untied empires,

Would touch them never in the heart,

But only in the pocket.

Hot-headed Carolina,

Well may you curl your lip;

With all your bondsmen, bless the destiny

Which brings you no such breed as this.

Arise, young North!

Our elder blood flows in the veins of cowards—

The gray-haired sneak, the blanched poltroon,

The feigned or real shiverer at tongues

That nursing babes need hardly cry the less for—

Are they to be our tokens always?

Fight on, band braver than warriors,

Faithful and few as Spartans;

But fear not most the angriest, loudest malice—

Fear most the still and forked fang

That starts from the grass at your feet.

RESURGEMUS ⁷

Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of

slaves,

Like lightning Europe le‘pt forth,

Sombre, superb and terrible,

As Ahimoth, brother of Death.

God, ‘twas delicious!

That brief, tight, glorious grip

Upon the throats of kings.

You liars paid to defile the People,

Mark you now:

Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,

For court thieving in its manifold mean forms,

Worming from his simplicity the poor man’s wages;

For many a promise sworn by royal lips

And broken, and laughed at in the breaking;

Then, in their power, not for all these,

Did a blow fall in personal revenge,

Or a hair draggle in blood:

The People scorned the ferocity of kings.

But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction,

And frightened rulers come back:

Each comes in state, with his train,

Hangman, priest, and tax-gatherer,

Soldier, lawyer, and sycophant;

An appalling procession of locusts,

And the king struts grandly again.

Yet behind all, lo, a Shape

Vague as the night, draped interminably,

Head, front and form, in scarlet folds;

Whose face and eyes none may see,

Out of its robes only this,

The red robes, lifted by the arm,

One finger pointed high over the top,

Like the head of a snake appears.

Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves,

Bloody corpses of young men;

The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily,

The bullets of tyrants are flying,

The creatures of power laugh aloud:

And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.

Those corpses of young men,

Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets,

Those hearts pierced by the grey lead,

Cold and motionless as they seem,

Live elsewhere with undying vitality;

They live in other young men, O, kings,

They live in brothers, again ready to defy you;

They were purified by death,

They were taught and exalted.

Not a grave of those slaughtered ones,

But is growing its seed of freedom,

In its turn to bear seed,

Which the winds shall carry afar and resow,

And the rain nourish.

Not a disembodied spirit

Can the weapon of tyrants let loose,

But it shall stalk invisibly over the earth,

Whispering, counseling, cautioning.

Liberty, let others despair of thee,

But I will never despair of thee:

Is the house shut? Is the master away?

Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching,

He will surely return; his messengers come anon.

OUR FUTURE LOT

FAME’S VANITY

MY DEPARTURE

YOUNG GRIMES

THE INCA’S DAUGHTER

THE LOVE THAT IS HEREAFTER

WE ALL SHALL REST AT LAST

THE SPANISH LADY1

THE END OF ALL

THE COLUMBIAN’S SONG

THE PUNISHMENT OF PRIDE2

AMBITION

THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF McDONALD CLARKE3

A Parody

TIME TO COME

A SKETCH

DEATH OF THE NATURE-LOVER

THE PLAY-GROUND

ODE

-1-

-2-

-3-

-4-

THE MISSISSIPPI AT MIDNIGHT

SONG FOR CERTAIN CONGRESSMEN4

BLOOD-MONEY5

-1-

-2-

THE HOUSE OF FRIENDS6

RESURGEMUS7

THE SPANISH LADY ¹

THE PUNISHMENT OF PRIDE ²

THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF McDONALD CLARKE ³

SONG FOR CERTAIN CONGRESSMEN ⁴

BLOOD-MONEY ⁵

THE HOUSE OF FRIENDS ⁶

RESURGEMUS ⁷