A Greeting

Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers     And golden-fruited orange bowers     To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!     To her who, in our evil time,     Dragged into light the nation's crime     With strength beyond the strength of men,     And, mightier than their swords, her pen!     To her who world-wide entrance gave     To the log-cabin of the slave;     Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,     And all earth's languages his own,     North, South, and East and West, made all     The common air electrical,     Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven     Blazed down, and every chain was riven!     Welcome from each and all to her     Whose Wooing of the Minister     Revealed the warm heart of the man     Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,     And taught the kinship of the love     Of man below and God above;     To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes     Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks;     Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,     In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way,     With old New England's flavor rife,     Waifs from her rude idyllic life,     Are racy as the legends old     By Chaucer or Boccaccio told;     To her who keeps, through change of place     And time, her native strength and grace,     Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,     Or where, by birchen-shaded isles,     Whose summer winds have shivered o'er     The icy drift of Labrador,     She lifts to light the priceless Pearl     Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl!     To her at threescore years and ten     Be tributes of the tongue and pen;     Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given,     The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!     Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs     The air to-day, our love is hers!     She needs no guaranty of fame     Whose own is linked with Freedom's name.     Long ages after ours shall keep     Her memory living while we sleep;     The waves that wash our gray coast lines,     The winds that rock the Southern pines,     Shall sing of her; the unending years     Shall tell her tale in unborn ears.     And when, with sins and follies past,     Are numbered color-hate and caste,     White, black, and red shall own as one     The noblest work by woman done