Aechdeacon Barbour

Through the long hall the shuttered windows shed     A dubious light on every upturned head;     On locks like those of Absalom the fair,     On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair,     On blank indifference and on curious stare;     On the pale Showman reading from his stage     The hieroglyphics of that facial page;     Half sad, half scornful, listening to the bruit     Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot,     And the shrill call, across the general din,     "Roll up your curtain! Let the show begin!"     At length a murmur like the winds that break     Into green waves the prairie's grassy lake,     Deepened and swelled to music clear and loud,     And, as the west-wind lifts a summer cloud,     The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far     A green land stretching to the evening star,     Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees     And flowers hummed over by the desert bees,     Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of greenness show     Fantastic outcrops of the rock below;     The slow result of patient Nature's pains,     And plastic fingering of her sun and rains;     Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely windowed hall,     And long escarpment of half-crumbled wall,     Huger than those which, from steep hills of vine,     Stare through their loopholes on the travelled Rhine;     Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind     A fancy, idle as the prairie wind,     Of the land's dwellers in an age unguessed;     The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West.     Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells surpass     The Tartar's marvels of his Land of Grass,     Vast as the sky against whose sunset shores     Wave after wave the billowy greenness pours;     And, onward still, like islands in that main     Loom the rough peaks of many a mountain chain,     Whence east and west a thousand waters run     From winter lingering under summer's sun.     And, still beyond, long lines of foam and sand     Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a-land,     From many a wide-lapped port and land-locked bay,     Opening with thunderous pomp the world's highway     To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far Cathay.     "Such," said the Showman, as the curtain fell,     "Is the new Canaan of our Israel;     The land of promise to the swarming North,     Which, hive-like, sends its annual surplus forth,     To the poor Southron on his worn-out soil,     Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil;     To Europe's exiles seeking home and rest,     And the lank nomads of the wandering West,     Who, asking neither, in their love of change     And the free bison's amplitude of range,     Rear the log-hut, for present shelter meant,     Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent."     Then spake a shrewd on-looker, "Sir," said he,     "I like your picture, but I fain would see     A sketch of what your promised land will be     When, with electric nerve, and fiery-brained,     With Nature's forces to its chariot chained,     The future grasping, by the past obeyed,     The twentieth century rounds a new decade."     Then said the Showman, sadly: "He who grieves     Over the scattering of the sibyl's leaves     Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we know     What needs must ripen from the seed we sow;     That present time is but the mould wherein     We cast the shapes of holiness and sin.     A painful watcher of the passing hour,     Its lust of gold, its strife for place and power;     Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, truth,     Wise-thoughted age, and generous-hearted youth;     Nor yet unmindful of each better sign,     The low, far lights, which on th' horizon shine,     Like those which sometimes tremble on the rim     Of clouded skies when day is closing dim,     Flashing athwart the purple spears of rain     The hope of sunshine on the hills again:     I need no prophet's word, nor shapes that pass     Like clouding shadows o'er a magic glass;     For now, as ever, passionless and cold,     Doth the dread angel of the future hold     Evil and good before us, with no voice     Or warning look to guide us in our choice;     With spectral hands outreaching through the gloom     The shadowy contrasts of the coming doom.     Transferred from these, it now remains to give     The sun and shade of Fate's alternative."     Then, with a burst of music, touching all     The keys of thrifty life, the mill-stream's fall,     The engine's pant along its quivering rails,     The anvil's ring, the measured beat of flails,     The sweep of scythes, the reaper's whistled tune,     Answering the summons of the bells of noon,     The woodman's hail along the river shores,     The steamboat's signal, and the dip of oars:     Slowly the curtain rose from off a land     Fair as God's garden. Broad on either hand     The golden wheat-fields glimmered in the sun,     And the tall maize its yellow tassels spun.     Smooth highways set with hedge-rows living green,     With steepled towns through shaded vistas seen,     The school-house murmuring with its hive-like swarm,     The brook-bank whitening in the grist-mill's storm,     The painted farm-house shining through the leaves     Of fruited orchards bending at its eaves,     Where live again, around the Western hearth,     The homely old-time virtues of the North;     Where the blithe housewife rises with the day,     And well-paid labor counts his task a play.     And, grateful tokens of a Bible free,     And the free Gospel of Humanity,     Of diverse sects and differing names the shrines,     One in their faith, whate'er their outward signs,     Like varying strophes of the same sweet hymn     From many a prairie's swell and river's brim,     A thousand church-spires sancify the air     Of the calm Sabbath, with their sign of prayer.     Like sudden nightfall over bloom and green     The curtain dropped: and, momently, between     The clank of fetter and the crack of thong,     Half sob, half laughter, music swept along;     A strange refrain, whose idle words and low,     Like drunken mourners, kept the time of woe;     As if the revellers at a masquerade     Heard in the distance funeral marches played.     Such music, dashing all his smiles with tears,     The thoughtful voyager on Ponchartrain hears,     Where, through the noonday dusk of wooded shores     The negro boatman, singing to his oars,     With a wild pathos borrowed of his wrong     Redeems the jargon of his senseless song.     "Look," said the Showman, sternly, as he rolled     His curtain upward. "Fate's reverse behold!"     A village straggling in loose disarray     Of vulgar newness, premature decay;     A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls,     With "Slaves at Auction!" garnishing its walls;     Without, surrounded by a motley crowd,     The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous and loud,     A squire or colonel in his pride of place,     Known at free fights, the caucus, and the race,     Prompt to proclaim his honor without blot,     And silence doubters with a ten-pace shot,     Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant     With pious phrase and democratic cant,     Yet never scrupling, with a filthy jest,     To sell the infant from its mother's breast,     Break through all ties of wedlock, home, and kin,     Yield shrinking girlhood up to graybeard sin;     Sell all the virtues with his human stock,     The Christian graces on his auction-block,     And coolly count on shrewdest bargains driven     In hearts regenerate, and in souls forgiven!     Look once again! The moving canvas shows     A slave plantation's slovenly repose,     Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds,     The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds;     And, held a brute, in practice, as in law,     Becomes in fact the thing he's taken for.     There, early summoned to the hemp and corn,     The nursing mother leaves her child new-born;     There haggard sickness, weak and deathly faint,     Crawls to his task, and fears to make complains;     And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in decay,     Weep for their lost ones sold and torn away!     Of ampler size the master's dwelling stands,     In shabby keeping with his half-tilled lands;     The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds unclean,     The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean.     Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift,     Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift;     Within, profusion to discomfort joined,     The listless body and the vacant mind;     The fear, the hate, the theft and falsehood, born     In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and scorn!     There, all the vices, which, like birds obscene,     Batten on slavery loathsome and unclean,     From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise,     Pollute the nursery where the child-heir lies,     Taint infant lips beyond all after cure,     With the fell poison of a breast impure;     Touch boyhood's passions with the breath of flame,     From girlhood's instincts steal the blush of shame.     So swells, from low to high, from weak to strong,     The tragic chorus of the baleful wrong;     Guilty or guiltless, all within its range     Feel the blind justice of its sure revenge.     Still scenes like these the moving chart reveals.     Up the long western steppes the blighting steals;     Down the Pacific slope the evil Fate     Glides like a shadow to the Golden Gate:     From sea to sea the drear eclipse is thrown,     From sea to sea the Mauvaises Terres have grown,     A belt of curses on the New World's zone!     The curtain fell. All drew a freer breath,     As men are wont to do when mournful death     Is covered from their sight. The Showman stood     With drooping brow in sorrow's attitude     One moment, then with sudden gesture shook     His loose hair back, and with the air and look     Of one who felt, beyond the narrow stage     And listening group, the presence of the age,     And heard the footsteps of the things to be,     Poured out his soul in earnest words and free.     "O friends!" he said, "in this poor trick of paint     You see the semblance, incomplete and faint,     Of the two-fronted Future, which, to-day,     Stands dim and silent, waiting in your way.     To-day, your servant, subject to your will;     To-morrow, master, or for good or ill.     If the dark face of Slavery on you turns,     If the mad curse its paper barrier spurns,     If the world granary of the West is made     The last foul market of the slaver's trade,     Why rail at fate? The mischief is your own.     Why hate your neighbor? "Blame yourselves alone!     "Men of the North! The South you charge with wrong     Is weak and poor, while you are rich and strong.     If questions, idle and absurd as those     The old-time monks and Paduan doctors chose,     Mere ghosts of questions, tariffs, and dead banks,     And scarecrow pontiffs, never broke your ranks,     Your thews united could, at once, roll back     The jostled nation to its primal track.     Nay, were you simply steadfast, manly, just,     True to the faith your fathers left in trust,     If stainless honor outweighed in your scale     A codfish quintal or a factory bale,     Full many a noble heart, (and such remain     In all the South, like Lot in Siddim's plain,     Who watch and wait, and from the wrong's control     Keep white and pure their chastity of soul,)     Now sick to loathing of your weak complaints,     Your tricks as sinners, and your prayers as saints,     Would half-way meet the frankness of your tone,     And feel their pulses beating with your own,     "The North! the South! no geographic line     Can fix the boundary or the point define,     Since each with each so closely interblends,.     Where Slavery rises, and where Freedom ends.     Beneath your rocks the roots, far-reaching, hide     Of the fell Upas on the Southern side;     The tree whose branches in your northwinds wave     Dropped its young blossoms on Mount Vernon's grave;     The nursling growth of Monticello's crest     Is now the glory of the free Northwest;     To the wise maxims of her olden school     Virginia listened from thy lips, Rantoul;     Seward's words of power, and Sumner's fresh renown,     Flow from the pen that Jefferson laid down!     And when, at length, her years of madness o'er,     Like the crowned grazer on Euphrates' shore,     From her long lapse to savagery, her mouth     Bitter with baneful herbage, turns the South,     Resumes her old attire, and seeks to smooth     Her unkempt tresses at the glass of truth,     Her early faith shall find a tongue again,     New Wythes and Pinckneys swell that old refrain,     Her sons with yours renew the ancient pact,     The myth of Union prove at last a fact!     Then, if one murmur mars the wide content,     Some Northern lip will drawl the last dissent,     Some Union-saving patriot of your own     Lament to find his occupation gone.     "Grant that the North's insulted, scorned, betrayed,     O'erreached in bargains with her neighbor made,     When selfish thrift and party held the scales     For peddling dicker, not for honest sales,     Whom shall we strike? Who most deserves our blame?     The braggart Southron, open in his aim,     And bold as wicked, crashing straight through all     That bars his purpose, like a cannon-ball?     Or the mean traitor, breathing northern air,     With nasal speech and puritanic hair,     Whose cant the loss of principle survives,     As the mud-turtle e'en its head outlives;     Who, caught, chin-buried in some foul offence,     Puts on a look of injured innocence,     And consecrates his baseness to the cause     Of constitution, union, and the laws?     "Praise to the place-man who can hold aloof     His still unpurchased manhood, office-proof;     Who on his round of duty walks erect,     And leaves it only rich in self-respect;     As More maintained his virtue's lofty port     In the Eighth Henry's base and bloody court.     But, if exceptions here and there are found,     Who tread thus safely on enchanted ground,     The normal type, the fitting symbol still     Of those who fatten at the public mill,     Is the chained dog beside his master's door,     Or Circe's victim, feeding on all four!     "Give me the heroes who, at tuck of drum,     Salute thy staff, immortal Quattlebum!     Or they who, doubly armed with vote and gun,     Following thy lead, illustrious Atchison,     Their drunken franchise shift from scene to scene,     As tile-beard Jourdan did his guillotine!     Rather than him who, born beneath our skies,     To Slavery's hand its supplest tool supplies;     The party felon whose unblushing face     Looks from the pillory of his bribe of place,     And coolly makes a merit of disgrace,     Points to the footmarks of indignant scorn,     Shows the deep scars of satire's tossing horn;     And passes to his credit side the sum     Of all that makes a scoundrel's martyrdom!     " Bane of the North, its canker and its moth!     These modern Esaus, bartering rights for broth!     Taxing our justice, with their double claim,     As fools for pity, and as knaves for blame;     Who, urged by party, sect, or trade, within     The fell embrace of Slavery's sphere of sin,     Part at the outset with their moral sense,     The watchful angel set for Truth's defence;     Confound all contrasts, good and ill; reverse     The poles of life, its blessing and its curse;     And lose thenceforth from their perverted sight     The eternal difference 'twixt the wrong and right;     To them the Law is but the iron span     That girds the ankles of imbruted man;     To them the Gospel has no higher aim     Than simple sanction of the master's claim,     Dragged in the slime of Slavery's loathsome trail,     Like Chalier's Bible at his ass's tail!     "Such are the men who, with instinctive dread,     Whenever Freedom lifts her drooping head,     Make prophet-tripods of their office-stools,     And scare the nurseries and the village schools     With dire presage of ruin grim and great,     A broken Union and a foundered State!     Such are the patriots, self-bound to the stake     Of office, martyrs for their country's sake:     Who fill themselves the hungry jaws of Fate,     And by their loss of manhood save the State.     In the wide gulf themselves like Curtius throw,     And test the virtues of cohesive dough;     As tropic monkeys, linking heads and tails,     Bridge o'er some torrent of Ecuador's vales!     "Such are the men who in your churches rave     To swearing-point, at mention of the slave!     When some poor parsons haply unawares,     Stammers of freedom in his timid prayers;     Who, if some foot-sore negro through the town     Steals northward, volunteer to hunt him down.     Or, if some neighbor, flying from disease,     Courts the mild balsam of the Southern breeze,     With hue and cry pursue him on his track,     And write Free-soiler on the poor man's back.     Such are the men who leave the pedler's cart,     While faring South, to learn the driver's art,     Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with pious aim     The graceful sorrows of some languid dame,     Who, from the wreck of her bereavement, saves     The double charm of widowhood and slaves!     Pliant and apt, they lose no chance to show     To what base depths apostasy can go;     Outdo the natives in their readiness     To roast a negro, or to mob a press;     Poise a tarred schoolmate on the lyncher's rail,     Or make a bonfire of their birthplace mail!     "So some poor wretch, whose lips no longer bear     The sacred burden of his mother's prayer,     By fear impelled, or lust of gold enticed,     Turns to the Crescent from the Cross of Christ,     And, over-acting in superfluous zeal,     Crawls prostrate where the faithful only kneel,     Out-howls the Dervish, hugs his rags to court     The squalid Santon's sanctity of dirt;     And, when beneath the city gateway's span     Files slow and long the Meccan caravan,     And through its midst, pursued by Islam's prayers,     The prophet's Word some favored camel bears,     The marked apostate has his place assigned     The Koran-bearer's sacred rump behind,     With brush and pitcher following, grave and mute,     In meek attendance on the holy brute!     " Men of the North! beneath your very eyes,     By hearth and home, your real danger lies.     Still day by day some hold of freedom falls     Through home-bred traitors fed within its walls.     Men whom yourselves with vote and purse sustain,     At posts of honor, influence, and gain;     The right of Slavery to your sons to teach,     And 'South-side' Gospels in your pulpits preach,     Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear     On the sharp point of her subverted spear,     And imitate upon her cushion plump     The mad Missourian lynching from his stump;     Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor     Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and more;     And, ere your dull eyes open to the cheat,     Sell your old homestead underneath your feet!     While such as these your loftiest outlooks hold,     While truth and conscience with your wares are sold,     While grave-browed merchants band themselves to aid     An annual man-hunt for their Southern trade,     What moral power within your grasp remains     To stay the mischief on Nebraska's plains?     High as the tides of generous impulse flow,     As far rolls back the selfish undertow;     And all your brave resolves, though aimed as true     As the horse-pistol Balmawhapple drew,     To Slavery's bastions lend as slight a shock     As the poor trooper's shot to Stirling rock!     "Yet, while the need of Freedom's cause demands     The earnest efforts of your hearts and hands,     Urged by all motives that can prompt the heart     To prayer and toil and manhood's manliest part;     Though to the soul's deep tocsin Nature joins     The warning whisper of her Orphic pines,     The north-wind's anger, and the south-wind's sigh,     The midnight sword-dance of the northern sky,     And, to the ear that bends above the sod     Of the green grave-mounds.in the Fields of God,     In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or cheer,     The land's dead fathers speak their hope or fear,     Yet let not Passion wrest from Reason's hand     The guiding rein and symbol of command.     Blame not the caution proffering to your zeal     A well-meant drag upon its hurrying wheel;     Nor chide the man whose honest doubt extends     To the means only, not the righteous ends;     Nor fail to weigh the scruples and the fears     Of milder natures and serener years.     In the long strife with evil which began     With the first lapse of new-created man,     Wisely and well has Providence assigned     To each his part, some forward, some behind;     And they, too, serve who temper and restrain     The o'erwarm heart that sets on fire the brain.     True to yourselves, feed Freedom's altar-flame     With what you have; let others do the same.     Spare timid doubters; set like flint your face     Against the self-sold knaves of gain and place:     Pity the weak; but with unsparing hand     Cast out the traitors who infest the land;     From bar, press, pulpit, east them everywhere,     By dint of fasting, if you fail by prayer.     And in their place bring men of antique mould,     Like the grave fathers of your Age of Gold;     Statesmen like those who sought the primal fount     Of righteous law, the Sermon on the Mount;     Lawyers who prize, like Quincy, (to our day     Still spared, Heaven bless him!) honor more than pay,     And Christian jurists, starry-pure, like Jay;     Preachers like Woolman, or like them who bore     The faith of Wesley to our Western shore,     And held no convert genuine till he broke     Alike his servants' and the Devil's yoke;     And priests like him who Newport's market trod,     And o'er its slave-ships shook the bolts of God!     So shall your power, with a wise prudence used,     Strong but forbearing, firm but not abused,     In kindly keeping with the good of all,     The nobler maxims of the past recall,     Her natural home-born right to Freedom give,     And leave her foe his robber-right, to live.     Live, as the snake does in his noisome fen!     Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn den!     Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of flame,     The focal point of million-fingered shame!     Live, till the Southron, who, with all his faults,     Has manly instincts, in his pride revolts,     Dashes from off him, midst the glad world's cheers,     The hideous nightmare of his dream of years,     And lifts, self-prompted, with his own right hand,     The vile encumbrance from his glorious land!     "So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends forth     Its widening circles to the South or North,     Where'er our banner flaunts beneath the stars     Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike bars,     There shall Free Labor's hardy children stand     The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land.     And when at last the hunted bison tires,     And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's fires;     And westward, wave on wave, the living flood     Breaks on the snow-line of majestic Hood;     And lonely Shasta listening hears the tread     Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hesper-led;     And, gazing downward through his hoar-locks, sees     The tawny Asian climb his giant knees,     The Eastern sea shall hush his waves to hear     Pacific's surf-beat answer Freedom's cheer,     And one long rolling fire of triumph run     Between the sunrise and the sunset gun!"     -    -    -    -    -     My task is done. The Showman and his show,     Themselves but shadows, into shadows go;     And, if no song of idlesse I have sung,     Nor tints of beauty on the canvas flung;     If the harsh numbers grate on tender ears,     And the rough picture overwrought appears;     With deeper coloring, with a sterner blast,     Before my soul a voice and vision passed,     Such as might Milton's jarring trump require,     Or glooms of Dante fringed with lurid fire.     Oh; not of choice, for themes of public wrong     I leave the green and pleasant paths of song,     The mild, sweet words which soften and adorn,     For sharp rebuke and bitter laugh of scorn.     More dear to me some song of private worth,     Some homely idyl of my native North,     Some summer pastoral of her inland vales,     Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales     Haunted by ghosts of unreturning sails;     Lost barks at parting hung from stem to helm     With prayers of love like dreams on Virgil's elm.     Nor private grief nor malice holds my pen;     I owe but kindness to my fellow-men;     And, South or North, wherever hearts of prayer     Their woes and weakness to our Father bear,     Wherever fruits of Christian love are found     In holy lives, to me is holy ground.     But the time passes. It were vain to crave     A late indulgence. What I had I gave.     Forget the poet, but his warning heed,     And shame his poor word with your nobler deed.