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






THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.

The reader of the biography of William Allen, the philanthropic associate of Clarkson and Romilly, cannot fail to admire his simple and beautiful record of a tour through Europe, in the years 1818 and 1819, in the company of his American friend, Stephen Grellett.

     No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest
     Goaded from shore to shore;
     No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest,
     The leaves of empire o'er.
     Simple of faith, and bearing in their hearts
     The love of man and God,
     Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient marts,
     And Scythia's steppes, they trod.

     Where the long shadows of the fir and pine
     In the night sun are cast,
     And the deep heart of many a Norland mine
     Quakes at each riving blast;
     Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa stands,
     A baptized Scythian queen,
     With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled hands,
     The North and East between!

     Where still, through vales of Grecian fable, stray
     The classic forms of yore,
     And beauty smiles, new risen from the spray,
     And Dian weeps once more;
     Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart resounds;
     And Stamboul from the sea
     Lifts her tall minarets over burial-grounds
     Black with the cypress-tree.

     From Malta's temples to the gates of Rome,
     Following the track of Paul,
     And where the Alps gird round the Switzer's home
     Their vast, eternal wall;
     They paused not by the ruins of old time,
     They scanned no pictures rare,
     Nor lingered where the snow-locked mountains
     climb
     The cold abyss of air!

     But unto prisons, where men lay in chains,
     To haunts where Hunger pined,
     To kings and courts forgetful of the pains
     And wants of human-kind,
     Scattering sweet words, and quiet deeds of good,
     Along their way, like flowers,
     Or pleading, as Christ's freemen only could,
     With princes and with powers;

     Their single aim the purpose to fulfil
     Of Truth, from day to day,
     Simply obedient to its guiding will,
     They held their pilgrim way.
     Yet dream not, hence, the beautiful and old
     Were wasted on their sight,
     Who in the school of Christ had learned to hold
     All outward things aright.

     Not less to them the breath of vineyards blown
     From off the Cyprian shore,
     Not less for them the Alps in sunset shone,
     That man they valued more.
     A life of beauty lends to all it sees
     The beauty of its thought;
     And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies
     Make glad its way, unsought.

     In sweet accordancy of praise and love,
     The singing waters run;
     And sunset mountains wear in light above
     The smile of duty done;
     Sure stands the promise,—ever to the meek
     A heritage is given;
     Nor lose they Earth who, single-hearted, seek
     The righteousness of Heaven!

     1849.

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