FullReads

Written on reading pamphlets published by clergymen against the abolition of the gallows.

I.
THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone
Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made
The fisher’s boat, the cavern’s floor of stone,
And mountain moss, a pillow for His head;
And He, who wandered with the peasant Jew,
And broke with publicans the bread of shame,
And drank with blessings, in His Father’s name,
The water which Samaria’s outcast drew,
Hath now His temples upon every shore,
Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dim
Evermore rising, with low prayer and hymn,
From lips which press the temple’s marble floor,
Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.

II.
Yet as of old, when, meekly “doing good,”
He fed a blind and selfish multitude,
And even the poor companions of His lot
With their dim earthly vision knew Him not,
How ill are His high teachings understood
Where He hath spoken Liberty, the priest
At His own altar binds the chain anew;
Where He hath bidden to Life’s equal feast,
The starving many wait upon the few;
Where He hath spoken Peace, His name hath been
The loudest war-cry of contending men;
Priests, pale with vigils, in His name have blessed
The unsheathed sword, and laid the spear in rest,
Wet the war-banner with their sacred wine,
And crossed its blazon with the holy sign;
Yea, in His name who bade the erring live,
And daily taught His lesson, to forgive!
Twisted the cord and edged the murderous steel;
And, with His words of mercy on their lips,
Hung gloating o’er the pincer’s burning grips,
And the grim horror of the straining wheel;
Fed the slow flame which gnawed the victim’s limb,
Who saw before his searing eyeballs swim
The image of their Christ in cruel zeal,
Through the black torment-smoke, held mockingly to him!

III.
The blood which mingled with the desert sand,
And beaded with its red and ghastly dew
The vines and olives of the Holy Land;
The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew;
The white-sown bones of heretics, where’er
They sank beneath the Crusade’s holy spear;
Goa’s dark dungeons, Malta’s sea-washed cell,
Where with the hymns the ghostly fathers sung
Mingled the groans by subtle torture wrung,
Heaven’s anthem blending with the shriek of hell!
The midnight of Bartholomew, the stake
Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flame
Which Calvin kindled by Geneva’s lake;
New England’s scaffold, and the priestly sneer
Which mocked its victims in that hour of fear,
When guilt itself a human tear might claim,–
Bear witness, O Thou wronged and merciful One!
That Earth’s most hateful crimes have in Thy
name been done!

IV.
Thank God! that I have lived to see the time
When the great truth begins at last to find
An utterance from the deep heart of mankind,
Earnest and clear, that all Revenge is Crime,
That man is holier than a creed, that all
Restraint upon him must consult his good,
Hope’s sunshine linger on his prison wall,
And Love look in upon his solitude.
The beautiful lesson which our Saviour taught
Through long, dark centuries its way hath wrought
Into the common mind and popular thought;
And words, to which by Galilee’s lake shore
The humble fishers listened with hushed oar,
Have found an echo in the general heart,
And of the public faith become a living part.

V.
Who shall arrest this tendency? Bring back
The cells of Venice and the bigot’s rack?
Harden the softening human heart again
To cold indifference to a brother’s pain?
Ye most unhappy men! who, turned away
From the mild sunshine of the Gospel day,
Grope in the shadows of Man’s twilight time,
What mean ye, that with ghoul-like zest ye brood,
O’er those foul altars streaming with warm blood,
Permitted in another age and clime?
Why cite that law with which the bigot Jew
Rebuked the Pagan’s mercy, when he knew
No evil in the Just One? Wherefore turn
To the dark, cruel past? Can ye not learn
From the pure Teacher’s life how mildly free
Is the great Gospel of Humanity?
The Flamen’s knife is bloodless, and no more
Mexitli’s altars soak with human gore,
No more the ghastly sacrifices smoke
Through the green arches of the Druid’s oak;
And ye of milder faith, with your high claim
Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest name,
Will ye become the Druids of our time
Set up your scaffold-altars in our land,
And, consecrators of Law’s darkest crime,
Urge to its loathsome work the hangman’s hand?
Beware, lest human nature, roused at last,
From its peeled shoulder your encumbrance cast,
And, sick to loathing of your cry for blood,
Rank ye with those who led their victims round
The Celt’s red altar and the Indian’s mound,
Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, a pagan brotherhood!

1842.