Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/353

Rh By the whirlwind of murder
 * Swooped up and swept on

To the low, reedy fen-lands,
 * The Marsh of the Swan.

With a vain plea for mercy
 * No stout knee was crooked;

In the mouths of the rifles
 * Right manly they looked.

How paled the May sunshine,
 * O Marais du Cygne!

On death for the strong life,
 * On red grass for green!

In the homes of their rearing,
 * Yet warm with their lives,

Ye wait the dead only,
 * Poor children and wives!

Put out the red forge-fire,
 * The smith shall not come;

Unyoke the brown oxen,
 * The ploughman lies dumb.

Wind slow from the Swan’s Marsh,
 * O dreary death-train,

With pressed lips as bloodless
 * As lips of the slain!

Kiss down the young eyelids,
 * Smooth down the gray hairs;

Let tears quench the curses
 * That burn through your prayers.

Strong man of the prairies,
 * Mourn bitter and wild!

Wail, desolate woman!
 * Weep, fatherless child!

But the grain of God springs up
 * From ashes beneath,

And the crown of his harvest
 * Is life out of death.

Not in vain on the dial
 * The shade moves along,

To point the great contrasts
 * Of right and of wrong:

Free homes and free altars,
 * Free prairie and flood,—

The reeds of the Swan’s Marsh,
 * Whose bloom is of blood!

On the lintels of Kansas
 * That blood shall not dry;

Henceforth the Bad Angel
 * Shall harmless go by;

Henceforth to the sunset,
 * Unchecked on her way,

Shall Liberty follow
 * The march of the day.

night above their rocky bed
 * They saw the stars march slow;

The wild Sierra overhead,
 * The desert’s death below.

The Indian from his lodge of bark,
 * The gray bear from his den,

Beyond their camp-fire’s wall of dark,
 * Glared on the mountain men.

Still upward turned, with anxious strain,
 * Their leader’s sleepless eye,

Where splinters of the mountain chain
 * Stood black against the sky.

The night waned slow: at last, a glow,
 * A gleam of sudden fire,

Shot up behind the walls of snow,
 * And tipped each icy spire.

“Up, men!” he cried, “yon rocky cone,
 * To-day, please God, we ’ll pass,

And look from Winter’s frozen throne
 * On Summer’s flowers and grass!”

They set their faces to the blast,
 * They trod the eternal snow,

And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last
 * The promised land below.

Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed
 * By many an icy horn;

Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed,
 * And green with vines and corn.

They left the Winter at their backs
 * To flap his baffled wing,

And downward, with the cataracts,
 * Leaped to the lap of Spring.

Strong leader of that mountain band,
 * Another task remains,

To break from Slavery’s desert land
 * A path to Freedom’s plains.

The winds are wild, the way is drear,
 * Yet, flashing through the night,