John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Personal PoemsSumner
O
Blew chill o’er Auburn’s Field of God,
Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch
Of sky, thy mourning children trod.
Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead
Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief,
A Rachel yet uncomforted!
Once more the flag is half-way hung,
And yet again the mournful bells
In all thy steeple-towers are rung.
Have come a simple wreath to lay,
Superfluous, on a grave that still
Is sweet with all the flowers of May.
It may be that my friend might miss,
In his new sphere of heart and mind,
Some token from my hand in this.
Along the past my thought I send;
The record of the cause he loved
Is the best record of its friend.
He saw not Sinai’s cloud and flame,
But never yet to Hebrew seer
A clearer voice of duty came.
These heavy burdens. I ordain
A work to last thy whole life through,
A ministry of strife and pain.
Put thou the scholar’s promise by,
The rights of man are more than these.”
He heard, and answered: “Here am I!”
His feet against the flinty shard,
Till the hard service grew, at last,
Its own exceeding great reward.
Upon his kingly forehead fell
The first sharp bolt of Slavery’s cloud,
Launched at the truth he urged so well.
Was sorer loss made Freedom’s gain,
Than his, who suffered for her sake
The beak-torn Titan’s lingering pain!
Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the same;
As through a night of storm, some tall,
Strong lighthouse lifts its steady flame.
The sheaves of Freedom’s large increase,
The holy fanes of equal law,
The New Jerusalem of peace.
The faint and blind of heart regret;
All knew at last th’ eternal rock
On which his forward feet were set.
Was folly to his purpose bold;
The strongest mesh of party lies
Weak to the simplest truth he told.
Straight onward to his goal he trod,
And proved the highest statesmanship
Obedience to the voice of God.
When treason’s storm-cloud blackest grew,
The weakness of a doubtful word;
His duty, and the end, he knew.
When once the hostile ensigns fell,
He stretched out hands of generous care
To lift the foe he fought so well.
Or craven in his soul’s broad plan;
Forgiving all things personal,
He hated only wrong to man.
The memories of her great and good,
Took from his life a fresher date,
And in himself embodied stood.
The venal crew that schemed and planned,
The fine scorn of that haughty face,
The spurning of that bribeless hand!
He wore his senatorial robe,
His lofty port was all for her,
The one dear spot on all the globe.
The vast contempt his manhood felt,
He saw a brother in the slave,—
With man as equal man he dealt.
Its grandeur wheresoe’er he trod,
As if from Plutarch’s gallery stepped
The hero and the demigod,
Nor want nor woe appealed in vain;
The homesick soldier knew his cheer,
And blessed him from his ward of pain.
The slight defects he never hid,
The surface-blemish in the stone
Of the tall, stately pyramid.
His conscience to the public mart;
But lived himself the truth he taught,
White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart.
Of power in noble use, too true
With thin humilities to hide
The work he did, the lore he knew?
By that assured self-estimate?
He took but what to him belonged,
Unenvious of another’s state.
And scan with care the written page
Through which he still shall warm and wake
The hearts of men from age to age.
He solaced thus his hours of pain!
Should not the o’erworn thresher pause,
And hold to light his golden grain?
On the hard ways his purpose went;
Small play of fancy lightened toil;
He spake alone the thing he meant.
A beauty veiled behind its own,
The graver’s line, the pencil’s tints,
The chisel’s shape evoked from stone.
The social courtesies that bless
And sweeten life, and loved his friends
With most unworldly tenderness.
The glad relief by Nature brought;
Her mountain ranges never turned
His current of persistent thought.
Three-banked like Latium’s tall trireme,
With laboring oars; the grove and beach
Were Forum and the Academe.
His strenuous bent of soul repressed,
And left from youth to silvered hair
Few hours for pleasure, none for rest.
O Nature, make the last amends!
Train all thy flowers his grave about,
And make thy singing-birds his friends!
The broken turf upon his bed!
Breathe, summer wind, thy tenderest strain
Of low, sweet music overhead!
The peace which follows long annoy,
And lend our earth-bent, mourning eyes,
Some hint of his diviner joy.
As God lives he must live alway;
There is no end for souls like his,
No night for children of the day!
Made weak his life’s great argument;
Small leisure his for frames and moods
Who followed Duty where she went.
Beyond the bigot’s narrow bound;
The truths he moulded into law
In Christ’s beatitudes he found.
His right of vote a sacred trust;
Clear, over threat and ridicule,
All heard his challenge: “Is it just?”
Not for himself a thought he gave;
In that last pang of martyrdom,
His care was for the half-freed slave.
In prayer, the passing soul to heaven
Whose mercy to His suffering poor
Was service to the Master given.
Her children’s children long be taught,
How, praised or blamed, he guarded well
The trust he neither shunned nor sought.
O Mother, from thy son, not long
He waited calmly in his place
The sure remorse which follows wrong.
The one brief lapse, the single blot;
Forgotten be the stain removed,
Her righted record shows it not!
With jealous care shall guard his fame;
The pine-tree on her ancient field
To all the winds shall speak his name.
Her loving hands shall yearly crown,
And from her pictured Pantheon
His grand, majestic face look down.
Who now shall doubt thy highest claim?
The world that counts thy jewels o’er
Shall longest pause at Summer’s name!