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

THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG.

     IN the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,
     So terrible alive,
     Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, became
     The wandering wild bees' hive;
     And he who, lone and naked-handed, tore
     Those jaws of death apart,
     In after time drew forth their honeyed store
     To strengthen his strong heart.

     Dead seemed the legend: but it only slept
     To wake beneath our sky;
     Just on the spot whence ravening Treason crept
     Back to its lair to die,
     Bleeding and torn from Freedom's mountain bounds,
     A stained and shattered drum
     Is now the hive where, on their flowery rounds,
     The wild bees go and come.

     Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel,
     They wander wide and far,
     Along green hillsides, sown with shot and shell,
     Through vales once choked with war.
     The low reveille of their battle-drum
     Disturbs no morning prayer;
     With deeper peace in summer noons their hum
     Fills all the drowsy air.

     And Samson's riddle is our own to-day,
     Of sweetness from the strong,
     Of union, peace, and freedom plucked away
     From the rent jaws of wrong.
     From Treason's death we draw a purer life,
     As, from the beast he slew,
     A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife
     The old-time athlete drew!
     1868.