Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/99

Rh “Henceforth she stands no more alone;
 * You know what Esek Harden is;—
 * He brooks no wrong to him or his.

“Now let the merriest tales be told,
 * And let the sweetest songs be sung
 * That ever made the old heart young!

“For now the lost has found a home;
 * And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,
 * As all the household joys return!”

Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon,
 * Between the shadow of the mows,
 * Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!

On Mabel’s curls of golden hair,
 * On Esek’s shaggy strength it fell;
 * And the wind whispered, “It is well!”

Strange are the forms my fancy meets, For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid, And through the veil of a closëd lid The ancient worthies I see again: I hear the tap of the elder’s cane, And his awful periwig I see, And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, His black cap hiding his whitened hair, Walks the Judge of the great Assize, Samuel Sewall the good and wise. His face with lines of firmness wrought, He wears the look of a man unbought, Who swears to his hurt and changes not Yet, touched and softened nevertheless With the grace of Christian gentleness, The face that a child would climb to kiss! True and tender and brave and just, That man might honor and woman trust.


 * Touching and sad, a tale is told,

Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old, Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept With a haunting sorrow that never slept, As the circling year brought round the time Of an error that left the sting of crime, When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts, With the laws of Moses and Hale’s Reports, And spake, in the name of both, the word That gave the witch’s neck to the cord. And piled the oaken planks that pressed The feeble life from the warlock’s breast! All the day long, from dawn to dawn, His door was bolted, his curtain drawn; No foot on his silent threshold trod, No eye looked on him save that of God, As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms, And, with precious proofs from the sacred word Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord, His faith confirmed and his trust renewed That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued, Might be washed away in the mingled flood Of his human sorrow and Christ’s dear blood!


 * Green forever the memory be

Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, Whom even his errors glorified, Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side By the cloudy shadows which o’er it glide! Honor and praise to the Puritan Who the halting step of his age outran, And, seeing the infinite worth of man In the priceless gift the Father gave, In the infinite love that stooped to save, Dared not brand his brother a slave! “Who doth such wrong,” he was wont to say, In his own quaint, picture-loving way, “Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade Which God shall cast down upon his head!”


 * Widely as heaven and hell, contrast

That brave old jurist of the past And the cunning trickster and knave of courts Who the holy features of Truth distorts,— Ruling as right the will of the strong, Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong; Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak Deaf as Egypt’s gods of leek;