Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/406

374 Free from its bonds the mind, The body from the rod; Broken all chains that bind The image of onr God. Just men no longer pine Behind their prison-bars; Through the rent dungeon shine The free sun and the stars. Earth own, at last, untrod By sect, or caste, or clan, The fatherhood of God, The brotherhood of man! Fraud fail, craft perish, forth The money-changers driven. And God's will done on earth, As now in heaven!

had bowed down to drunkenness, An abject worshijjper: The pride of manhood's pidse had grown Too faint and cold to stir; And he had given his spirit up To the unblessed thrall, And bowing to the poison cup, He gloried in his fall! There came a change—the cloud rolled off. And light fell on his brain— And like the passing of a dream That cometh not again. The shadow of the spirit fled. He saw the gulf before, He shuddered at the waste behind, And was a man once more. He shook the serpent folds away. That gathered round his heart. As shakes the swaying forest-oak Its poison vine apart; He stood erect; returning pride Grew terrible within, And conscience sat in judgment, on His most familiar sin. The light of Intellect again Along his pathway shone; And Reason like a monarch sat Upon his olden throne. The honored and the wise once more Within his presence came; And lingered oft on lovely lips His once forbidden name. There may be glory in the might. That treadeth nations down; Wreaths for the crimson conqueror. Pride for the kingly crown; But nobler is that triumph hour, The disenthralled shall find, When evil passion boweth down Unto the Godlike mind!

The proudest now is but my peer,

The highest not more high;

To-day, of all the weary year,

A king of men am I.

To-day alike are great and small,

The nameless and the known;

My palace is the people’s hall,

The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves to-day upon the list

Beside the served shall stand;

Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,

The gloved and dainty hand!

The rich is level with the poor,

The weak is strong to-day;

And sleekest broadcloth counts no more

Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence

My stubborn right abide;

I set a plain man’s common sense

Against the pedant’s pride.

To-day shall simple manhood try

The strength of gold and land;

The wide world has not wealth to buy

The power in my right hand!

While there ’s a grief to seek redress,

Or balance to adjust,

Where weighs our living manhood less

Than Mammon ’s vilest dust,—

While there ’s a right to need my vote,

A wrong to sweep away,

Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!

A man ’s a man to-day!