Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/457

Rh For thyself, while wrong and sorrow
 * Make to thee their strong appeal,

Coward wert thou not to utter
 * What the heart must feel.

Earnest words must needs be spoken
 * When the warm heart bleeds or burns

With its scorn of wrong, or pity
 * For the wronged, by turns.

But, by all thy nature’s weakness,
 * Hidden faults and follies known,

Be thou, in rebuking evil,
 * Conscious of thine own.

Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty
 * To thy lips her trumpet set,

But with harsher blasts shall mingle
 * Wailings of regret.”

Cease not, Voice of holy speaking,
 * Teacher sent of God, be near,

Whispering through the day’s cool silence,
 * Let my spirit hear!

So, when thoughts of evil-doers
 * Waken scorn, or hatred move,

Shall a mournful fellow-feeling
 * Temper all with love.

the sunset’s glowing wall The city towers rise black and tall, Where Zorah, on its rocky height, Stands like an armed man in the light.

Down Eshtaol’s vales of ripened grain Falls like a cloud the night amain, And up the hillsides climbing slow The barley reapers homeward go.

Look, dearest! how our fair child’s head The sunset light hath hallowëd, Where at this olive’s foot he lies, Uplooking to the tranquil skies.

Oh, while beneath the fervent heat Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat, I ’ve watched, with mingled joy and dread, Our child upon his grassy bed.

Joy, which the mother feels alone Whose morning hope like mine had flown, When to her bosom, over-blessed, A dearer life than hers is pressed.

Dread, for the future dark and still, Which shapes our dear one to its will; Forever in his large calm eyes, I read a tale of sacrifice.

The same foreboding awe I felt When at the altar’s side we knelt, And he, who as a pilgrim came, Rose, winged and glorious, through the flame.

I slept not, though the wild bees made A dreamlike murmuring in the shade, And on me the warm-fingered hours Pressed with the drowsy smell of flowers.

Before me, in a vision, rose The hosts of Israel’s scornful foes,—