Labor and Reform, vol 3, part 5 | Page 2

on Syria's Mount
Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the
listener's heart,
In holy words which cannot die,
In thoughts which angels leaned to
know,
Proclaimed thy message from on high,
Thy mission to a
world of woe.
That voice's echo hath not died!
From the blue lake of Galilee,
And
Tabor's lonely mountain-side,
It calls a struggling world to thee.
Thy name and watchword o'er this land
I hear in every breeze that
stirs,
And round a thousand altars stand
Thy banded party
worshippers.
Not, to these altars of a day,
At party's call, my gift I bring;
But on
thy olden shrine I lay
A freeman's dearest offering.
The voiceless utterance of his will,--
His pledge to Freedom and to
Truth,
That manhood's heart remembers still
The homage of his
generous youth.
Election Day, 1841
THE GALLOWS.
Written on reading pamphlets published by clergymen against the
abolition of the gallows.
I.
THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone
Since the Redeemer
walked with man, and made
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of
stone,
And mountain moss, a pillow for His head;
And He, who
wandered with the peasant Jew,
And broke with publicans the bread
of shame,
And drank with blessings, in His Father's name,
The

water which Samaria's outcast drew,
Hath now His temples upon
every shore,
Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dim
Evermore
rising, with low prayer and hymn,
From lips which press the temple's
marble floor,
Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.
II.
Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing good,"
He fed a blind and
selfish multitude,
And even the poor companions of His lot
With
their dim earthly vision knew Him not,
How ill are His high teachings
understood
Where He hath spoken Liberty, the priest
At His own
altar binds the chain anew;
Where He hath bidden to Life's equal
feast,
The starving many wait upon the few;
Where He hath spoken
Peace, His name hath been
The loudest war-cry of contending men;

Priests, pale with vigils, in His name have blessed
The unsheathed
sword, and laid the spear in rest,
Wet the war-banner with their sacred
wine,
And crossed its blazon with the holy sign;
Yea, in His name
who bade the erring live,
And daily taught His lesson, to forgive!

Twisted the cord and edged the murderous steel;
And, with His words
of mercy on their lips,
Hung gloating o'er the pincer's burning grips,

And the grim horror of the straining wheel;
Fed the slow flame
which gnawed the victim's limb,
Who saw before his searing eyeballs
swim
The image of their Christ in cruel zeal,
Through the black
torment-smoke, held mockingly to him!
III.
The blood which mingled with the desert sand,
And beaded
with its red and ghastly dew
The vines and olives of the Holy Land;

The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew;
The white-sown bones of
heretics, where'er
They sank beneath the Crusade's holy spear;

Goa's dark dungeons, Malta's sea-washed cell,
Where with the hymns
the ghostly fathers sung
Mingled the groans by subtle torture wrung,


Heaven's anthem blending with the shriek of hell!
The midnight of
Bartholomew, the stake
Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flame

Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's lake;
New England's scaffold,
and the priestly sneer
Which mocked its victims in that hour of fear,


When guilt itself a human tear might claim,--
Bear witness, O
Thou wronged and merciful One!
That Earth's most hateful crimes
have in Thy
name been done!
IV.
Thank God! that I have lived to see the time
When the great
truth begins at last to find
An utterance from the deep heart of
mankind,
Earnest and clear, that all Revenge is Crime,
That man is
holier than a creed, that all
Restraint upon him must consult his good,

Hope's sunshine linger on his prison wall,
And Love look in upon
his solitude.
The beautiful lesson which our Saviour taught
Through
long, dark centuries its way hath wrought
Into the common mind and
popular thought;
And words, to which by Galilee's lake shore
The
humble fishers listened with hushed oar,
Have found an echo in the
general heart,
And of the public faith become a living part.
V.
Who shall arrest this tendency? Bring back
The cells of Venice
and the bigot's rack?
Harden the softening human heart again
To
cold indifference to a brother's pain?
Ye most unhappy men! who,
turned away
From the mild sunshine of the Gospel day,
Grope in
the shadows of Man's twilight time,
What mean ye, that with
ghoul-like zest ye brood,
O'er those foul altars streaming with warm
blood,
Permitted in another age and clime?
Why cite that law with
which the bigot Jew
Rebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he knew
No
evil in the Just One? Wherefore turn
To the dark, cruel past? Can ye
not learn
From the pure Teacher's life how mildly free
Is the great
Gospel of Humanity?
The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and no more

Mexitli's altars soak with human gore,
No more the ghastly sacrifices
smoke
Through the green arches of the Druid's oak;

And ye of
milder faith, with your high claim
Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest
name,
Will ye become the Druids of our time
Set up your
scaffold-altars in our land,
And, consecrators of Law's darkest crime,

Urge to its loathsome work the hangman's hand?
Beware, lest
human nature, roused at last,
From its peeled shoulder your

encumbrance cast,
And, sick to loathing of your cry