From the chalk-white wall Of England, from the black Carpathian range, Along the Danube and the Theiss, through all The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees, And from the Seine's thronged banks, a murmur strange And glad floats to thee o'er thy summer seas On the salt wind that stirs thy whitening hair,-- The song of freedom's bloodless victories! Rejoice, O Garibaldi! Though thy sword Failed at Rome's gates, and blood seemed vainly poured Where, in Christ's name, the crowned infidel Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell On that sad mountain slope whose ghostly dead, Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban, Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican, And draw the curtains of Napoleon's bed! God's providence is not blind, but, full of eyes, It searches all the refuges of lies; And in His time and way, the accursed things Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age Shall perish.

All men shall be priests and kings, One royal brotherhood, one church made free By love, which is the law of liberty.
1869.
TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD, ON READING HER POEM IN "THE STANDARD." Mrs.Child wrote her lines, beginning, "Again the trees are clothed in vernal green," May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis Gray Loring's death, but did not publish them for some years afterward, when I first read them, or I could not have made the reference which I did to the extinction of slavery.
The sweet spring day is glad with music, But through it sounds a sadder strain; The worthiest of our narrowing circle Sings Loring's dirges o'er again.
O woman greatly loved! I join thee In tender memories of our friend; With thee across the awful spaces The greeting of a soul I send! What cheer hath he?
How is it with him?
Where lingers he this weary while?
Over what pleasant fields of Heaven Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile?
Does he not know our feet are treading The earth hard down on Slavery's grave?
That, in our crowning exultations, We miss the charm his presence gave?
Why on this spring air comes no whisper From him to tell us all is well?
Why to our flower-time comes no token Of lily and of asphodel?
I feel the unutterable longing, Thy hunger of the heart is mine; I reach and grope for hands in darkness, My ear grows sharp for voice or sign.
Still on the lips of all we question The finger of God's silence lies; Will the lost hands in ours be folded?
Will the shut eyelids ever rise?
O friend! no proof beyond this yearning, This outreach of our hearts, we need; God will not mock the hope He giveth, No love He prompts shall vainly plead.
Then let us stretch our hands in darkness, And call our loved ones o'er and o'er; Some day their arms shall close about us, And the old voices speak once more.
No dreary splendors wait our coming Where rapt ghost sits from ghost apart; Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving, The harvest-gathering of the heart.
1870.
THE SINGER.
This poem was written on the death of Alice Cary.

Her sister Phoebe, heart-broken by her loss, followed soon after.

Noble and richly gifted, lovely in person and character, they left behind them only friends and admirers.
Years since (but names to me before), Two sisters sought at eve my door; Two song-birds wandering from their nest, A gray old farm-house in the West.
How fresh of life the younger one, Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun! Her gravest mood could scarce displace The dimples of her nut-brown face.
Wit sparkled on her lips not less For quick and tremulous tenderness; And, following close her merriest glance, Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance.
Timid and still, the elder had Even then a smile too sweetly sad; The crown of pain that all must wear Too early pressed her midnight hair.
Yet ere the summer eve grew long, Her modest lips were sweet with song; A memory haunted all her words Of clover-fields and singing birds.
Her dark, dilating eyes expressed The broad horizons of the west; Her speech dropped prairie flowers; the gold Of harvest wheat about her rolled.
Fore-doomed to song she seemed to me I queried not with destiny I knew the trial and the need, Yet, all the more, I said, God speed?
What could I other than I did?
Could I a singing-bird forbid?
Deny the wind-stirred leaf?
Rebuke The music of the forest brook?
She went with morning from my door, But left me richer than before; Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer, The welcome of her partial ear.
Years passed: through all the land her name A pleasant household word became All felt behind the singer stood A sweet and gracious womanhood.
Her life was earnest work, not play; Her tired feet climbed a weary way; And even through her lightest strain We heard an undertone of pain.
Unseen of her her fair fame grew, The good she did she rarely knew, Unguessed of her in life the love That rained its tears her grave above.
When last I saw her, full of peace, She waited for her great release; And that old friend so sage and bland, Our later Franklin, held her hand.
For all that patriot bosoms stirs Had moved that woman's heart of hers, And men who toiled in storm and sun Found her their meet companion.
Our converse, from her suffering bed To healthful themes of life she led The out-door world of bud and bloom And light and sweetness filled her room.
Yet evermore an underthought Of loss to come within us wrought, And all the while we felt the strain Of the strong will that conquered pain.
God giveth quietness at last! The common way that all have passed She went, with mortal yearnings fond, To fuller life and love beyond.
Fold the rapt soul in your embrace, My dear ones! Give the singer place To you, to her,--I know not where,-- I lift the silence of a prayer.
For only thus our own we find; The gone before, the left behind, All mortal voices die between; The unheard reaches the unseen.
Again the blackbirds sing; the streams Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, And tremble in the April showers The tassels of the maple flowers.
But not for her has spring renewed The sweet surprises of the wood; And bird and flower are lost to her Who was their best interpreter.
What to shut eyes has God revealed?
What hear the ears that death has sealed?
What undreamed beauty passing show Requites the loss of all we know?
O silent land, to which we move, Enough if there alone be love, And mortal need can ne'er outgrow What it is waiting to bestow! O white soul! from that far-off shore Float some sweet song the waters o'er.
Our faith confirm, our fears dispel, With the old voice we loved so well! 1871.
HOW MARY GREW.
These lines were in answer to an invitation to hear a lecture of Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, before the Boston Radical Club.

The reference in the last stanza is to an essay on Sappho by T.W.Higginson, read at the club the preceding month.
With wisdom far beyond her years, And graver than her wondering peers, So strong, so mild, combining still The tender heart and queenly will, To conscience and to duty true, So, up from childhood, Mary Grew! Then in her gracious womanhood She gave her days to doing good.
She dared the scornful laugh of men, The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen.
She did the work she found to do,-- A Christian heroine, Mary Grew! The freed slave thanks her; blessing comes To her from women's weary homes; The wronged and erring find in her Their censor mild and comforter.
The world were safe if but a few Could grow in grace as Mary Grew! So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say, By this low wood-fire, ashen gray; Just wishing, as the night shuts down, That I could hear in Boston town, In pleasant Chestnut Avenue, From her own lips, how Mary Grew! And hear her graceful hostess tell The silver-voiced oracle Who lately through her parlors spoke As through Dodona's sacred oak, A wiser truth than any told By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold,-- The way to make the world anew, Is just to grow--as Mary Grew.
1871.
SUMNER "I am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct, or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave; but, by the grace of God, I have kept my life unsullied." -- MILTON'S _Defence of the People of England_.
O Mother State! the winds of March Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God, Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch Of sky, thy mourning children trod.
And now, with all thy woods in leaf, Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief, A Rachel yet uncomforted! And once again the organ swells, Once more the flag is half-way hung, And yet again the mournful bells In all thy steeple-towers are rung.
And I, obedient to thy will, Have come a simple wreath to lay, Superfluous, on a grave that still Is sweet with all the flowers of May.
I take, with awe, the task assigned; It may be that my friend might miss, In his new sphere of heart and mind, Some token from my band in this.
By many a tender memory moved, Along the past my thought I send; The record of the cause he loved Is the best record of its friend.
No trumpet sounded in his ear, He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame, But never yet to Hebrew seer A clearer voice of duty came.
God said: "Break thou these yokes; undo These heavy burdens.