Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete






THE REFORMER.

     ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan,
     I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
     Smiting the godless shrines of man
     Along his path.

     The Church, beneath her trembling dome,
     Essayed in vain her ghostly charm
     Wealth shook within his gilded home
     With strange alarm.

     Fraud from his secret chambers fled
     Before the sunlight bursting in
     Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head
     To drown the din.

     "Spare," Art implored, "yon holy pile;
     That grand, old, time-worn turret spare;"
     Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,
     Cried out, "Forbear!"

     Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,
     Groped for his old accustomed stone,
     Leaned on his staff, and wept to find
     His seat o'erthrown.

     Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes,
     O'erhung with paly locks of gold,—
     "Why smite," he asked in sad surprise,
     "The fair, the old?"

     Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke,
     Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam;
     Shuddering and sick of heart I woke,
     As from a dream.

     I looked: aside the dust-cloud rolled,
     The Waster seemed the Builder too;
     Upspringing from the ruined Old
     I saw the New.

     'T was but the ruin of the bad,—
     The wasting of the wrong and ill;
     Whate'er of good the old time had
     Was living still.

     Calm grew the brows of him I feared;
     The frown which awed me passed away,
     And left behind a smile which cheered
     Like breaking day.

     The grain grew green on battle-plains,
     O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the cow;
     The slave stood forging from his chains
     The spade and plough.

     Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay
     And cottage windows, flower-entwined,
     Looked out upon the peaceful bay
     And hills behind.

     Through vine-wreathed cups with wine once red,
     The lights on brimming crystal fell,
     Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head
     And mossy well.

     Through prison walls, like Heaven-sent hope,
     Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams strayed,
     And with the idle gallows-rope
     The young child played.

     Where the doomed victim in his cell
     Had counted o'er the weary hours,
     Glad school-girls, answering to the bell,
     Came crowned with flowers.

     Grown wiser for the lesson given,
     I fear no longer, for I know
     That, where the share is deepest driven,
     The best fruits grow.

     The outworn rite, the old abuse,
     The pious fraud transparent grown,
     The good held captive in the use
     Of wrong alone,—

     These wait their doom, from that great law
     Which makes the past time serve to-day;
     And fresher life the world shall draw
     From their decay.

     Oh, backward-looking son of time!
     The new is old, the old is new,
     The cycle of a change sublime
     Still sweeping through.

     So wisely taught the Indian seer;
     Destroying Seva, forming Brahm,
     Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear,
     Are one, the same.

     Idly as thou, in that old day
     Thou mournest, did thy sire repine;
     So, in his time, thy child grown gray
     Shall sigh for thine.

     But life shall on and upward go;
     Th' eternal step of Progress beats
     To that great anthem, calm and slow,
     Which God repeats.

     Take heart! the Waster builds again,
     A charmed life old Goodness bath;
     The tares may perish, but the grain
     Is not for death.

     God works in all things; all obey
     His first propulsion from the night
     Wake thou and watch! the world is gray
     With morning light!

     1848.

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