Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/386

354

bless ye, brothers! in the fight
 * Ye ’re waging now, ye cannot fail,

For better is your sense of right
 * Than king-craft’s triple mail.

Than tyrant’s law, or bigot’s ban,
 * More mighty is your simplest word;

The free heart of an honest man
 * Than crosier or the sword.

Go, let your blinded Church rehearse
 * The lesson it has learned so well;

It moves not with its prayer or curse
 * The gates of heaven or hell.

Let the State scaffold rise again;
 * Did Freedom die when Russell died?

Forget ye how the blood of Vane
 * From earth’s green bosom cried?

The great hearts of your olden time
 * Are beating with you, full and strong;

All holy memories and sublime
 * And glorious round ye throng.

The bluff, bold men of Runnymede
 * Are with ye still in times like these;

The shades of England’s mighty dead,
 * Your cloud of witnesses!

The truths ye urge are borne abroad
 * By every wind and every tide;

The voice of Nature and of God
 * Speaks out upon your side.

The weapons which your hands have found
 * Are those which Heaven itself has wrought,

Light, Truth, and Love; your battleground
 * The free, broad field of Thought.

No partial, selfish purpose breaks
 * The simple beauty of your plan,

Nor lie from throne or altar shakes
 * Your steady faith in man.

The languid pulse of England starts
 * And bounds beneath your words of power,

The beating of her million hearts
 * Is with you at this hour!

O ye who, with undoubting eyes,
 * Through present cloud and gathering storm,