Bless the Lord for all his mercies! - for the peace and love I felt,
Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my spirit melt;
When, "Get behind me, Satan!" was the language of my heart,
And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts depart.
Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sunshine fell,
Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within my lonely cell;
The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward from the street
Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of passing feet.
At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast,
And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the long street I passed;
I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see,
How, from every door and window, the people gazed on me.
And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon my cheek,
Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling limbs grew weak:
"O Lord! support thy handmaid; and from her soul cast out
The fear of man, which brings a snare, — the weakness and the doubt."
Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a cloud in morning's breeze,
And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering words like these:
"Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven a brazen wall,
Trust still His loving-kindness whose power is over all."
We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke
On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock;
The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines on high,
Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on the sky.
And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and grave and cold,
And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed and old,
And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at hand,
Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land.
And poisoning with his evil words the ruler's ready ear,
The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with laugh and scoff and jeer;
It stirred my soul, and from my lips the seal of silence broke,
As if through woman's weakness a warning spirit spoke.
I cried, "The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter of the meek,
Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler of the weak!
Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones, go turn the prison lock
Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf amid the flock !"
Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a deeper red
O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flush of anger spread;
"Good people," quoth the white-lipped priest, "heed not her words so wild,
Her Master speaks within her, the Devil owns his child!"
But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the while the sheriff read
That law the wicked rulers against the poor have made,
Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood bring
No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering.
Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff, turning, said,
"Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this Quaker maid?
In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia's shore,
You may hold her at a higher price than Indian girl or Moor."
Grim and silent stood the captains; and when again he cried,
"Speak out, my worthy seamen !" -no voice, no sign replied;
But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind words met my ear,
"God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl and dear!"
A weight seemed lifted from my heart, -a pitying friend was nigh,
I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his eye;
And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so kind to me,
Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea, -
"Pile my ship with bars of silver, -pack with coins of Spanish gold,
From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold,
By the living God who made me! I would sooner in your bay
Sínk ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child away! "
"Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their cruel laws!"
Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's just applause.
"Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old,
Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver sold?"
I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half-way drawn,
Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn;
Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in silence back,
And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his track.
Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of soul;
Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and crushed his parchment roll.
"Good friends," he said, "since both have fled, the ruler and the priest,
Judge ye, if from their further work I be not well released."
Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept round the silent bay,
As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me go my way;
For He who turns the courses of the streamlet of the glen,
And the river of great waters, had turned the hearts of men.
O, at that hour the very earth seemed changed beneath my eye,
A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the sky,
A lovelier light on rock and hill, and stream and woodland lay,
And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of the bay.
Thanksgiving to the Lord of life!-to Him all praises be,
Who from the hands of evil men hath set his handmaid free;
All praise to Him before whose power the mighty are afraid,
Who takes the crafty in the snare, which for the poor is laid!
Sing, O my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's twilight calm
Uplift the loud thanksgiving, pour forth the grateful psalm;
Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did the saints of old,
When of the Lord's good angel the rescued Peter told.
FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS.
And weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty men of wrong,
The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay his hand upon the strong.
Woe to the wicked rulers in his avenging hour!
Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven and devour!
But let the humble ones arise,
the poor in heart be glad, And let the mourning ones again with robes of praise be clad, For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the stormy wave, And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty still to save!
FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS.
AROUND Sebago's lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break The mirror which its waters make.
The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.
The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,
The snowy mountain-tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.
Dazzling and white! save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.
Yet green are Saco's banks below,
And belts of spruce and cedar show,
Dark fringing round those cones of
The earth hath felt the breath of spring, Though yet on her deliverer's wing The lingering frosts of winter cling.
Fresh grasses fringe the meadowbrooks,
And mildly from its sunny nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks..
And odors from the springing grass,
The sweet birch and the sassafras,
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.
Her tokens of renewing care
Hath Nature scattered everywhere,
In bud and flower, and warmer air.
But in their hour of bitterness,
What reck the broken Sokokis,
Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?
The turf's red stain is yet undried, Scarce have the death-shot echoes died Along Sebago's wooded side:
And silent now the hunters stand, Grouped darkly, where a swell of land Slopes upward from the lake's white sand.
Fire and the axe have swept it bare, Save one lone beech, unclosing there Its light leaves in the vernal air.
With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute,
They break the damp turf at its foot,
And bare its coiled and twisted root.
They heave the stubborn trunk aside,
The firm roots from the earth divide,
The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.
And there the fallen chief is laid,
In tasselled garbs of skins arrayed,
And girded with his wampum-braid.
The silver cross he loved is pressed
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest
Upon his scarred and naked breast.
'Tis done the roots are backward sent, The beechen-tree stands up unbent, The Indian's fitting monument !
When of that sleeper's broken race Their green and pleasant dwelling-place Which knew them once, retains no
O, long may sunset's light be shed
As now upon that beech's head,
A green memorial of the dead!
There shall his fitting requiem be,
In northern winds, that, cold and free,
Howl nightly in that funeral tree.
To their wild wail the waves which break
Forever round that lonely lake
A solemn undertone shall make !
And who shall deem the spot unblest,
Where Nature's younger children rest,
Lulled on their sorrowing mother's
breast?
Deem ye that mother loveth less
These bronzed forms of the wilderness
She foldeth in her long caress?
As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers blow,
As if with fairer hair and brow
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.
What though the places of their rest No priestly knee hath ever pressed, No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed?
What though the bigot's ban be there, And thoughts of wailing and despair, And cursing in the place of prayer! Yet Heaven hath angels watchinground The Indian's lowliest forest-mound, And they have made it holy ground.
There ceases man's frail judgment; all
His powerless bolts of cursing fall
Unheeded on that grassy pall.
O, peeled, and hunted, and reviled,
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild!
Great Nature owns her simple child!
And Nature's God, to whom alone
The secret of the heart is known,
The hidden language traced thereon;
Who from its many cumberings
Of form and creed, and outward things,
To light the naked spirit brings;
Not with our partial eye shall scan, Not with our pride and scorn shall ban, The spirit of our brother man!
"To the winds give our banner! Bear homeward again!"
Cried the Lord of Acadia,
Cried Charles of Estienne; From the prow of his shallop He gazed, as the sun, From its bed in the ocean, Streamed up the St. John.
O'er the blue western waters
That shallop had passed,
Where the mists of Penobscot
Clung damp on her mast.
St. Saviour had looked
On the heretic sail,
As the songs of the Huguenot
Rose on the gale.
The pale, ghostly fathers
Remembered her well,
And had cursed her while passing,
With taper and bell,
But the men of Monhegan,
Of Papists abhorred, Had welcomed and feasted The heretic Lord.
They had loaded his shallop
With dun-fish and ball, With stores for his larder,
And steel for his wall.
Pemequid, from her bastions
And turrets of stone,
Had welcomed his coming
With banner and
gun.
And the prayers of the elders
Had followed his way,
As homeward he glided,
Down Pentecost Bay.
O, well sped La Tour!
For, in peril and pain,
His lady kept watch,
For his coming again.
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