He defended the cause of the Irish patriots long before it had become popular in this country; and he was one of the first to urge the most liberal aid to the suffering and starving population of the Catholic island.

The severity of his language finds its ample apology in the reluctant confession of one of the most eminent Romish priests, the eloquent and devoted Father Ventura.
THE cannon's brazen lips are cold; No red shell blazes down the air; And street and tower, and temple old, Are silent as despair.
The Lombard stands no more at bay, Rome's fresh young life has bled in vain; The ravens scattered by the day Come back with night again.
Now, while the fratricides of France Are treading on the neck of Rome, Hider at Gaeta, seize thy chance! Coward and cruel, come! Creep now from Naples' bloody skirt; Thy mummer's part was acted well, While Rome, with steel and fire begirt, Before thy crusade fell! Her death-groans answered to thy prayer; Thy chant, the drum and bugle-call; Thy lights, the burning villa's glare; Thy beads, the shell and ball! Let Austria clear thy way, with hands Foul from Ancona's cruel sack, And Naples, with his dastard bands Of murderers, lead thee back! Rome's lips are dumb; the orphan's wail, The mother's shriek, thou mayst not hear Above the faithless Frenchman's hail, The unsexed shaveling's cheer! Go, bind on Rome her cast-off weight, The double curse of crook and crown, Though woman's scorn and manhood's hate From wall and roof flash down! Nor heed those blood-stains on the wall, Not Tiber's flood can wash away, Where, in thy stately Quirinal, Thy mangled victims lay! Let the world murmur; let its cry Of horror and disgust be heard; Truth stands alone; thy coward lie Is backed by lance and sword! The cannon of St.Angelo, And chanting priest and clanging bell, And beat of drum and bugle blow, Shall greet thy coming well! Let lips of iron and tongues of slaves Fit welcome give thee; for her part, Rome, frowning o'er her new-made graves, Shall curse thee from her heart! No wreaths of sad Campagna's flowers Shall childhood in thy pathway fling; No garlands from their ravaged bowers Shall Terni's maidens bring; But, hateful as that tyrant old, The mocking witness of his crime, In thee shall loathing eyes behold The Nero of our time! Stand where Rome's blood was freest shed, Mock Heaven with impious thanks, and call Its curses on the patriot dead, Its blessings on the Gaul! Or sit upon thy throne of lies, A poor, mean idol, blood-besmeared, Whom even its worshippers despise, Unhonored, unrevered! Yet, Scandal of the World! from thee One needful truth mankind shall learn That kings and priests to Liberty And God are false in turn.
Earth wearies of them; and the long Meek sufferance of the Heavens doth fail; Woe for weak tyrants, when the strong Wake, struggle, and prevail! Not vainly Roman hearts have bled To feed the Crosier and the Crown, If, roused thereby, the world shall tread The twin-born vampires down.
1849.
CALEF IN BOSTON.
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 judge 'twixt thee and me; All thou knowed of truth hath been Once a lie to men like thee.
"Falsehoods which we spurn to-day Were the truths of long ago; Let the dead boughs fall away, Fresher shall the living grow.
"God is good and God is light, In this faith I rest secure; Evil can but serve the right, Over all shall love endure.
"Of your spectral puppet play I have traced the cunning wires; Come what will, I needs must say, God is true, and ye are liars." When the thought of man is free, Error fears its lightest tones; So the priest cried, "Sadducee!" And the people took up stones.
In the ancient burying-ground, Side by side the twain now lie; One with humble grassy mound, One with marbles pale and high.
But the Lord hath blest the seed Which that tradesman scattered then, And the preacher's spectral creed Chills no more the blood of men.
Let us trust, to one is known Perfect love which casts out fear, While the other's joys atone For the wrong he suffered here.
1849.
OUR STATE.
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 April rain, Too long her winter woods complain; From budding flower to falling leaf, Her summer time is all too brief.
Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands, And wintry hills, the school-house stands, And what her rugged soil denies, The harvest of the mind supplies.
The riches of the Commonwealth Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health; And more to her than gold or grain, The cunning hand and cultured brain.
For well she keeps her ancient stock, The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock; And still maintains, with milder laws, And clearer light, the Good Old Cause.
Nor heeds the skeptic's puny hands, While near her school the church-spire stands; Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule, While near her church-spire stands the school.
1849.
THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES.
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, In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple-crowned, And her base pander, the most hateful thing Who upon Christian or on Pagan ground Makes vile the old heroic name of king.
O God most merciful! Father just and kind Whom man hath bound let thy right hand unbind.
Or, if thy purposes of good behind Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers find Strong consolations; leave them not to doubt Thy providential care, nor yet without The hope which all thy attributes inspire, That not in vain the martyr's robe of fire Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting chain; Since all who suffer for thy truth send forth, Electrical, with every throb of pain, Unquenchable sparks, thy own baptismal rain Of fire and spirit over all the earth, Making the dead in slavery live again.
Let this great hope be with them, as they lie Shut from the light, the greenness, and the sky; From the cool waters and the pleasant breeze, The smell of flowers, and shade of summer trees; Bound with the felon lepers, whom disease And sins abhorred make loathsome; let them share Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear Years of unutterable torment, stern and still, As the chained Titan victor through his will! Comfort them with thy future; let them see The day-dawn of Italian liberty; For that, with all good things, is hid with Thee, And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its time to be.
I, who have spoken for freedom at the cost Of some weak friendships, or some paltry prize Of name or place, and more than I have lost Have gained in wider reach of sympathies, And free communion with the good and wise; May God forbid that I should ever boast Such easy self-denial, or repine That the strong pulse of health no more is mine; That, overworn at noonday, I must yield To other hands the gleaning of the field; A tired on-looker through the day's decline.
For blest beyond deserving still, and knowing That kindly Providence its care is showing In the withdrawal as in the bestowing, Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray.
Beautiful yet for me this autumn day Melts on its sunset hills; and, far away, For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm, To me the pine-woods whisper; and for me Yon river, winding through its vales of calm, By greenest banks, with asters purple-starred, And gentian bloom and golden-rod made gay, Flows down in silent gladness to the sea, Like a pure spirit to its great reward! Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near and dear, Whose love is round me like this atmosphere, Warm, soft, and golden.

For such gifts to me What shall I render, O my God, to thee?
Let me not dwell upon my lighter share Of pain and ill that human life must bear; Save me from selfish pining; let my heart, Drawn from itself in sympathy, forget The bitter longings of a vain regret, The anguish of its own peculiar smart.
Remembering others, as I have to-day, In their great sorrows, let me live alway Not for myself alone, but have a part, Such as a frail and erring spirit may, In love which is of Thee, and which indeed Thou art! 1851.
THE PEACE OF EUROPE.
"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 call, The quick-eared spy in hut and hall! From Polar sea and tropic fen The dying-groans of exiled men! The bolted cell, the galley's chains, The scaffold smoking with its stains! Order, the hush of brooding slaves Peace, in the dungeon-vaults and graves! O Fisher! of the world-wide net, With meshes in all waters set, Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell, And open wide the banquet-hall, Where kings and priests hold carnival! Weak vassal tricked in royal guise, Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies; Base gambler for Napoleon's crown, Barnacle on his dead renown! Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan, Crowned scandal, loathed of God and man And thou, fell Spider of the North! Stretching thy giant feelers forth, Within whose web the freedom dies Of nations eaten up like flies! Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and Czar I If this be Peace, pray what is War?
White Angel of the Lord! unmeet That soil accursed for thy pure feet.
Never in Slavery's desert flows The fountain of thy charmed repose; No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves Of lilies and of olive-leaves; Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell, Thus saith the Eternal Oracle; Thy home is with the pure and free! Stern herald of thy better day, Before thee, to prepare thy way, The Baptist Shade of Liberty, Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, must press With bleeding feet the wilderness! Oh that its voice might pierces the ear Of princes, trembling while they hear A cry as of the Hebrew seer Repent! God's kingdom draweth near! 1852.
ASTRAEA.
"Jove means to settle Astraea in her seat again, And let down from his golden chain An age of better metal." BEN JONSON, 1615.
O POET rare and old! Thy words are prophecies; Forward the age of gold, The new Saturnian lies.
The universal prayer And hope are not in vain; Rise, brothers! and prepare The way for Saturn's reign.
Perish shall all which takes From labor's board and can; Perish shall all which makes A spaniel of the man! Free from its bonds the mind, The body from the rod; Broken all chains that bind The image of our God.
Just men no longer pine Behind their prison-bars; Through the rent dungeon shine The free sun and the stars.
Earth own, at last, untrod By sect, or caste, or clan, The fatherhood of God, The brotherhood of man! Fraud fail, craft perish, forth The money-changers driven, And God's will done on earth, As now in heaven.
1852.
THE DISENTHRALLED.
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 his brain-- And like the passing of a dream That cometh not again, The shadow of the spirit fled.
He saw the gulf before, He shuddered at the waste behind, And was a man once more.
He shook the serpent folds away, That gathered round his heart, As shakes the swaying forest-oak Its poison vine apart; He stood erect; returning pride Grew terrible within, And conscience sat in judgment, on His most familiar sin.
The light of Intellect again Along his pathway shone; And Reason like a monarch sat Upon his olden throne.
The honored and the wise once more Within his presence came; And lingered oft on lovely lips His once forbidden name.
There may be glory in the might, That treadeth nations down; Wreaths for the crimson conqueror, Pride for the kingly crown; But nobler is that triumph hour, The disenthralled shall find, When evil passion boweth down, Unto the Godlike mind.
THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY.
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 stand; Alike the brown and wrinkled fist, The gloved and dainty hand! The rich is level with the poor, The weak is strong to-day; And sleekest broadcloth counts no more Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretence My stubborn right abide; I set a plain man's common sense Against the pedant's pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try The strength of gold and land; The wide world has not wealth to buy The power in my right hand! While there's a grief to seek redress, Or balance to adjust, Where weighs our living manhood less Than Mammon's vilest dust,-- While there's a right to need my vote, A wrong to sweep away, Up! clouted knee and ragged coat A man's a man to-day.
1848.
THE DREAM OF PIO NONO.
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 the bayonet, That the great pontiff fell asleep, and dreamed.
He stood by Lake Tiberias, in the sun Of the bight Orient; and beheld the lame, The sick, and blind, kneel at the Master's feet, And rise up whole.

And, sweetly over all, Dropping the ladder of their hymn of praise From heaven to earth, in silver rounds of song, He heard the blessed angels sing of peace, Good-will to man, and glory to the Lord.
Then one, with feet unshod, and leathern face Hardened and darkened by fierce summer suns And hot winds of the desert, closer drew His fisher's haick, and girded up his loins, And spake, as one who had authority "Come thou with me." Lakeside and eastern sky And the sweet song of angels passed away, And, with a dream's alacrity of change, The priest, and the swart fisher by his side, Beheld the Eternal City lift its domes And solemn fanes and monumental pomp Above the waste Campagna.

On the hills The blaze of burning villas rose and fell, And momently the mortar's iron throat Roared from the trenches; and, within the walls, Sharp crash of shells, low groans of human pain, Shout, drum beat, and the clanging larum-bell, And tramp of hosts, sent up a mingled sound, Half wail and half defiance.