John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
The Tent on the BeachThe Cable Hymn
O
O dreary shores, give ear!
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea
The voice of God to hear!
Thought-winged and shod with fire;
The angel of His stormy sky
Rides down the sunken wire.
“The world’s long strife is done;
Close wedded by that mystic cord,
Its continents are one.
Shall all her peoples be;
The hands of human brotherhood
Are clasped beneath the sea.
And Asian mountains borne,
The vigor of the Northern brain
Shall nerve the world outworn.
Shall thrill the magic thread;
The new Prometheus steals once more
The fire that wakes the dead.”
From answering beach to beach;
Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
And melt the chains of each!
Glide tamed and dumb below!
Bear gently, Ocean’s carrier-dove,
Thy errands to and fro.
Beneath the deep so far,
The bridal robe of earth’s accord,
The funeral shroud of war!
Space mocked and time outrun;
And round the world the thought of all
Is as the thought of one!
The tongues of striving cease;
As on the Sea of Galilee
The Christ is whispering, Peace!
“Glad prophecy! to this at last,”
The Reader said, “shall all things come.
Forgotten be the bugle’s blast,
And battle-music of the drum.
A little while the world may run
Its old mad way, with needle-gun
And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall reign:
The cradle-song of Christ was never sung in vain!”
He said, as died the faint applause,
“Is something that I found last year
Down on the island known as Orr’s.
I had it from a fair-haired girl
Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl,
(As if by some droll freak of circumstance,)
Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet Stowe’s romance.”