Let us not weakly weep Nor rashly threaten.

Give us grace to keep Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap On one hand into fratricidal fight, Or, on the other, yield eternal right, Frame lies of law, and good and ill confound?
What fear we?
Safe on freedom's vantage-ground Our feet are planted: let us there remain In unrevengeful calm, no means untried Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied, The sad spectators of a suicide! They break the links of Union: shall we light The fires of hell to weld anew the chain On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
Draw we not even now a freer breath, As from our shoulders falls a load of death Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim bore When keen with life to a dead horror bound?
Why take we up the accursed thing again?
Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag With its vile reptile-blazon.

Let us press The golden cluster on our brave old flag In closer union, and, if numbering less, Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain.
16th First mo., 1861.
"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT." LUTHER'S HYMN.
WE wait beneath the furnace-blast The pangs of transformation; Not painlessly doth God recast And mould anew the nation.
Hot burns the fire Where wrongs expire; Nor spares the hand That from the land Uproots the ancient evil.
The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared Its bloody rain is dropping; The poison plant the fathers spared All else is overtopping.
East, West, South, North, It curses the earth; All justice dies, And fraud and lies Live only in its shadow.
What gives the wheat-field blades of steel?
What points the rebel cannon?
What sets the roaring rabble's heel On the old star-spangled pennon?
What breaks the oath Of the men o' the South?
What whets the knife For the Union's life ?-- Hark to the answer: Slavery! Then waste no blows on lesser foes In strife unworthy freemen.
God lifts to-day the veil, and shows The features of the demon O North and South, Its victims both, Can ye not cry, "Let slavery die!" And union find in freedom?
What though the cast-out spirit tear The nation in his going?
We who have shared the guilt must share The pang of his o'erthrowing! Whate'er the loss, Whate'er the cross, Shall they complain Of present pain Who trust in God's hereafter?
For who that leans on His right arm Was ever yet forsaken?
What righteous cause can suffer harm If He its part has taken?
Though wild and loud, And dark the cloud, Behind its folds His hand upholds The calm sky of to-morrow! Above the maddening cry for blood, Above the wild war-drumming, Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good The evil overcoming.
Give prayer and purse To stay the Curse Whose wrong we share, Whose shame we bear, Whose end shall gladden Heaven! In vain the bells of war shall ring Of triumphs and revenges, While still is spared the evil thing That severs and estranges.
But blest the ear That yet shall hear The jubilant bell That rings the knell Of Slavery forever! Then let the selfish lip be dumb, And hushed the breath of sighing; Before the joy of peace must come The pains of purifying.
God give us grace Each in his place To bear his lot, And, murmuring not, Endure and wait and labor! 1861.
TO JOHN C.FREMONT.
On the 31st of August, 1861, General Fremont, then in charge of the Western Department, issued a proclamation which contained a clause, famous as the first announcement of emancipation: "The property," it declared, "real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri, who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." Mr.Lincoln regarded the proclamation as premature and countermanded it, after vainly endeavoring to persuade Fremont of his own motion to revoke it.
THY error, Fremont, simply was to act A brave man's part, without the statesman's tact, And, taking counsel but of common sense, To strike at cause as well as consequence.
Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own, Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn It had been safer, doubtless, for the time, To flatter treason, and avoid offence To that Dark Power whose underlying crime Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence.
But if thine be the fate of all who break The ground for truth's seed, or forerun their years Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make A lane for freedom through the level spears, Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee, Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free! The land shakes with them, and the slave's dull ear Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear.
Who would recall them now must first arrest The winds that blow down from the free Northwest, Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back The Mississippi to its upper springs.
Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack But the full time to harden into things.
1861.
THE WATCHERS.
BESIDE a stricken field I stood; On the torn turf, on grass and wood, Hung heavily the dew of blood.
Still in their fresh mounds lay the slain, But all the air was quick with pain And gusty sighs and tearful rain.
Two angels, each with drooping head And folded wings and noiseless tread, Watched by that valley of the dead.
The one, with forehead saintly bland And lips of blessing, not command, Leaned, weeping, on her olive wand.
The other's brows were scarred and knit, His restless eyes were watch-fires lit, His hands for battle-gauntlets fit.
"How long!"-- I knew the voice of Peace,-- "Is there no respite?
no release?
When shall the hopeless quarrel cease?
"O Lord, how long!! One human soul Is more than any parchment scroll, Or any flag thy winds unroll.
"What price was Ellsworth's, young and brave?
How weigh the gift that Lyon gave, Or count the cost of Winthrop's grave?
"O brother! if thine eye can see, Tell how and when the end shall be, What hope remains for thee and me." Then Freedom sternly said: "I shun No strife nor pang beneath the sun, When human rights are staked and won.
"I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock, I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock, I walked with Sidney to the block.
"The moor of Marston felt my tread, Through Jersey snows the march I led, My voice Magenta's charges sped.
"But now, through weary day and night, I watch a vague and aimless fight For leave to strike one blow aright.
"On either side my foe they own One guards through love his ghastly throne, And one through fear to reverence grown.
"Why wait we longer, mocked, betrayed, By open foes, or those afraid To speed thy coming through my aid?
"Why watch to see who win or fall?
I shake the dust against them all, I leave them to their senseless brawl." "Nay," Peace implored: "yet longer wait; The doom is near, the stake is great God knoweth if it be too late.
"Still wait and watch; the way prepare Where I with folded wings of prayer May follow, weaponless and bare." "Too late!" the stern, sad voice replied, "Too late!" its mournful echo sighed, In low lament the answer died.
A rustling as of wings in flight, An upward gleam of lessening white, So passed the vision, sound and sight.
But round me, like a silver bell Rung down the listening sky to tell Of holy help, a sweet voice fell.
"Still hope and trust," it sang; "the rod Must fall, the wine-press must be trod, But all is possible with God!" 1862.
TO ENGLISHMEN.
Written when, in the stress of our terrible war, the English ruling class, with few exceptions, were either coldly indifferent or hostile to the party of freedom.

Their attitude was illustrated by caricatures of America, among which was one of a slaveholder and cowhide, with the motto, "Haven't I a right to wallop my nigger ?" You flung your taunt across the wave We bore it as became us, Well knowing that the fettered slave Left friendly lips no option save To pity or to blame us.
You scoffed our plea.

"Mere lack of will, Not lack of power," you told us We showed our free-state records; still You mocked, confounding good and ill, Slave-haters and slaveholders.
We struck at Slavery; to the verge Of power and means we checked it; Lo!--presto, change! its claims you urge, Send greetings to it o'er the surge, And comfort and protect it.
But yesterday you scarce could shake, In slave-abhorring rigor, Our Northern palms for conscience' sake To-day you clasp the hands that ache With "walloping the nigger!" O Englishmen!--in hope and creed, In blood and tongue our brothers! We too are heirs of Runnymede; And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed Are not alone our mother's.
"Thicker than water," in one rill Through centuries of story Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still We share with you its good and ill, The shadow and the glory.
Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave Nor length of years can part us Your right is ours to shrine and grave, The common freehold of the brave, The gift of saints and martyrs.
Our very sins and follies teach Our kindred frail and human We carp at faults with bitter speech, The while, for one unshared by each, We have a score in common.
We bowed the heart, if not the knee, To England's Queen, God bless her We praised you when your slaves went free We seek to unchain ours.