WHAT THE VOLCe said. "He alone, whose hand is bounding "For thyself, while wrong and sorrow What the heart must feel. "Earnest words must needs be spoken When the warm heart bleeds or burns With its scorn of wrong, or pity "But, by all thy nature's weakness, Hidden faults and follies known, Be thou, in rebuking evil, Conscious of thine own. "Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty Cease not, Voice of holy speaking, So, when thoughts of evil doers Waken scorn or hatred move, Shall a mournful fellow-feeling Temper all with love. 37 TO DELAWARE. IVRITTEN during the discussion in the Legislature of that State in the winter of 1846-7, of a bill for the abolition of Slavery. THRICE welcome to thy sisters of the East, Trail in the sunset,-oh, redeemed and blest, Moaned never shoreward with the clank of chains, Shall weave new sun-bows in their tossing spray, Shall tremble northward with its words of fire: Glory and praise to God! another State is free! WORSHIP. 89 WORSHIP. [" PURE religion, and undefiled, before God and the Father, is this: To visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."-James i. 27.] THE Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken, Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places, Red altars, kindling through that night of error, Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting And man's oblation was his fear and woe! Then through great temples swelled the dismal moaning Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer; Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning, Swung their white censers in the burdened air: As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor Of gums and spices could the Unseen One please; As if his ear could bend, with childish favor, To the poor flattery of the organ keys' Feet red from war fields trod the church aisles holy With trembling reverence; and the oppressor there, Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly, Crushed human hearts beneath his knee of prayer. Not such the service the benignant Father For Earth he asks it: the full joy of Heaven Untroubled flows the river of his peace. He asks no taper lights, on high surrounding For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken: Types of our human weakness and our sorrow! Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead? Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to borrow From stranger eyes the home lights which have fled ? Oh, brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother; Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there; To worship rightly is to love each other, Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. Follow with reverent steps the great example Of Him whose holy work was "doing good;" THE DEMON OF THE STUDY. 41 So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple, Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease; Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, And in its ashes plant the tree of peace! THE DEMON OF THE STUDY. THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room, The shade of Denmark fled from the sun, And the Cocklane ghost from the barnloft cheer, The fiend of Faust was a faithful one, Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, And the devil of Martin Luther sat The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him But the demon that cometh day by day |