(Fourth poem in a group Songs of Labor poems) WILDLY round our woodland quarters Sad-voiced Autumn grieves; Thickly down these swelling waters Float his fallen leaves. Through the tall and naked timber, Column-like and old, Gleam the sunsets of November, From their skies of gold. O’er us, to the southland heading, Screams the gray wild-goose; […]

(Fifth poem in a group Songs of Labor poems) THE sky is ruddy in the east, The earth is gray below, And, spectral in the river-mist, The ship’s white timbers show. Then let the sounds of measured stroke And grating saw begin; The broad-axe to the gnarled oak, The mallet to the pin! Hark! roars […]

(Sixth poem in a group Songs of Labor poems) THROUGH heat and cold, and shower and sun, Still onward cheerly driving There’s life alone in duty done, And rest alone in striving. But see! the day is closing cool, The woods are dim before us; The white fog of the wayside pool Is creeping slowly […]

(Seventh poem in a group Songs of Labor poems) IT was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again; The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay With the hues of summer’s rainbow, or the meadow-flowers of May. Through a thin, […]

ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan, I saw a Strong One, in his wrath, Smiting the godless shrines of man Along his path. The Church, beneath her trembling dome, Essayed in vain her ghostly charm Wealth shook within his gilded home With strange alarm. Fraud from his secret chambers fled Before the sunlight […]

STILL in thy streets, O Paris! doth the stain Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain; Still breaks the smoke Messina’s ruins through, And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew, When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread, At a crowned murderer’s beck of license, fed The yawning trenches with her noble dead; Still, doomed Vienna, […]

Before the law authorizing imprisonment for debt had been abolished in Massachusetts, a revolutionary pensioner was confined in Charlestown jail for a debt of fourteen dollars, and on the fourth of July was seen waving a handkerchief from the bars of his cell in honor of the day. Look on him! through his dungeon grate, […]

The reader of the biography of William Allen, the philanthropic associate of Clarkson and Romilly, cannot fail to admire his simple and beautiful record of a tour through Europe, in the years 1818 and 1819, in the company of his American friend, Stephen Grellett. No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest Goaded from shore to […]

“WELL speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast! Yet all unworthy of its trust thou art, If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving heart, Thou tread’st the solemn Pantheon of the Past, By the great Future’s dazzling hope made blind To all the beauty, power, and truth behind. Not without reverent awe shouldst thou put by The […]

The writer of these lines is no enemy of Catholics. He has, on more than one occasion, exposed himself to the censures of his Protestant brethren, by his strenuous endeavors to procure indemnification for the owners of the convent destroyed near Boston. He defended the cause of the Irish patriots long before it had become […]

1692. IN the solemn days of old, Two men met in Boston town, One a tradesman frank and bold, One a preacher of renown. Cried the last, in bitter tone: “Poisoner of the wells of truth Satan’s hireling, thou hast sown With his tares the heart of youth!” Spake the simple tradesman then, “God be […]

THE South-land boasts its teeming cane, The prairied West its heavy grain, And sunset’s radiant gates unfold On rising marts and sands of gold. Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State Is scant of soil, of limits strait; Her yellow sands are sands alone, Her only mines are ice and stone! From Autumn frost to […]

I HAVE been thinking of the victims bound In Naples, dying for the lack of air And sunshine, in their close, damp cells of pain, Where hope is not, and innocence in vain Appeals against the torture and the chain! Unfortunates! whose crime it was to share Our common love of freedom, and to dare, […]

“GREAT peace in Europe! Order reigns From Tiber’s hills to Danube’s plains!” So say her kings and priests; so say The lying prophets of our day. Go lay to earth a listening ear; The tramp of measured marches hear; The rolling of the cannon’s wheel, The shotted musket’s murderous peal, The night alarm, the sentry’s […]

HE had bowed down to drunkenness, An abject worshipper The pride of manhood’s pulse had grown Too faint and cold to stir; And he had given his spirit up To the unblessed thrall, And bowing to the poison cup, He gloried in his fall! There came a change–the cloud rolled off, And light fell on […]

THE proudest now is but my peer, The highest not more high; To-day, of all the weary year, A king of men am I. To-day, alike are great and small, The nameless and the known; My palace is the people’s hall, The ballot-box my throne! Who serves to-day upon the list Beside the served shall […]

IT chanced that while the pious troops of France Fought in the crusade Pio Nono preached, What time the holy Bourbons stayed his hands (The Hun and Aaron meet for such a Moses), Stretched forth from Naples towards rebellious Rome To bless the ministry of Oudinot, And sanctify his iron homilies And sharp persuasions of […]

WHY urge the long, unequal fight, Since Truth has fallen in the street, Or lift anew the trampled light, Quenched by the heedless million’s feet? “Give o’er the thankless task; forsake The fools who know not ill from good Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take Thine ease among the multitude. “Live out thyself; with […]

Written upon hearing that slavery had been formally abolished in Egypt. Unhappily, the professions and pledges of the vacillating government of Egypt proved unreliable. BY fire and cloud, across the desert sand, And through the parted waves, From their long bondage, with an outstretched hand, God led the Hebrew slaves! Dead as the letter of […]

“Joseph Sturge, with a companion, Thomas Harvey, has been visiting the shores of Finland, to ascertain the amount of mischief and loss to poor and peaceable sufferers, occasioned by the gun-boats of the allied squadrons in the late war, with a view to obtaining relief for them.”– Friends’ Review. ACROSS the frozen marshes The winds […]