Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/34

22 soldier guides her way. Now she turns over this face, whose mouth is full of purple dust, bit out of the ground in his extremest agony, the last sacrament offered him by earth herself; now she raises that form, cold, stiff, stony, and ghastly as a dream of hell. But, lo! another comes; she too a woman, younger and fairer, yet not less bold, a maiden from the hostile town to seek her lover. They meet, two women among the corpses; two angels come to Golgotha, seeking to raise a man. There he lies before them; they look. Yes, it is he you seek; the same dress, form, features, too; it is he, the son, the lover. Maid and mother could tell that face in any light. The grass is wet with his blood. The ground is muddy with the life of men. The mother's innocent robe is drabbled in the blood her bosom bore. Their kisses, groans, and tears recall the wounded man. He knows the mother's voice; that voice yet more beloved. His lips move only, for they cannot speak. He dies! The waxing moon moves high in heaven, walking in beauty amid the clouds, and murmurs soft her cradle-song unto the slumbering earth. The broken sword reflects her placid beams. A star looks down, and is imaged back in a pool of blood. The cool night wind plays in the branches of the trees shivered with shot. Nature is beautiful—that lovely grass under- neath their feet; those pendulous branches of the leafy elm; the stars, and that romantic moon lining the clouds with silver light! A groan of agony, hopeless and pro- longed, wails out from that bloody ground. But in yonder farm the whippoorwill sings to her lover all night long ; the rising tide ripples melodious against the shores. So wears the night away,—Nature, all sinless, round that field of woe.

What a scene that morning looks upon! I will not turn again. Let the dead bury their dead. But their blood cries out of the ground against the rulers who shed it,—"Cain! where are thy brothers?" What shall the fool answer; what the traitor say?

Then comes thanksgiving in all the churches of Boston.