THE PRESENT CRISIS.

21

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of

Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks on nation, standing with mute lips

apart,

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears

along,

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right

or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet humanity's vast

frame,

Through its ocean-sundered fibres, feels the gush of joy or shame;

In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal

claim.

Once, to every man and nation, comes the moment to

decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or

evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and

that light.

แ

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is strong;

And albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her

throng

Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

We see dimly, in the Present, what is small and what is

great;

Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm

of Fate;

But the soul is still oracular - amid the market's din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave

within:

"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with Sin!"

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant

brood,

Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,

Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey; Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play ?

'Tis as easy to be heroes, as to sit the idle slaves

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves; Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime.

Was the Mayflower launched by cowards? - steered by men behind their time?

Turn those tracks toward Past, or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime?

THE TWO FURROWS.

They were men of present valor

clasts;

23

stalwart old icono

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the

Past's;

But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that has made us free,

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.

New occasions teach new duties! Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's bloodrusted key.

THE TWO FURROWS.

BY C. H. WEBB.

THE spring-time came, but not with mirth;-
The banner of our trust,

And, with it, the best hopes of earth
Were trailing in the dust.

The farmer saw the shame from far,

And stopped his plough a-field;

"Not the blade of peace, but the brand of war,
This arm of mine must wield.

"When traitor hands that flag would stain,
Their homes let women keep;
Until its stars burn bright again,
Let others sow and reap."

The farmer sighed "A lifetime long
The plough has been my trust;
In truth it were an arrant wrong
To leave it now to rust."

With ready strength the farmer tore
The iron from the wood,

And to the village smith he bore

That ploughshare stout and good.

The blacksmith's arms were bare and brown, And loud the bellows roared;

The farmer flung his ploughshare down — "Now forge me out a sword!"

And then a merry, merry chime
The sounding anvil rung ;

Good sooth, it was a nobler rhyme

Than ever poet sung.

The blacksmith wrought with skill that day;
The blade was keen and bright;
And now, where thickest is the fray,
The farmer leads the fight.

Not as of old that blade he sways,

To break the meadow's sleep,
But through the rebel ranks he lays
A furrow broad and deep.

The farmer's face is burned and brown,
But light is on his brow;

“OUT IN THE COLD."

Right well he wots what blessings crown
The furrow of the Plough.

"But better is to-day's success,"
Thus ran the farmer's word;

"For nations yet unborn shall bless

This furrow of the Sword."

Harpers' Weekly.

"OUT IN THE COLD.”*

25

WHAT is the threat?

BY LUCY LARCOM.

"Leave her out in the cold!"

Loyal New England, too loyally bold:

Hater of treason, ah! that is her crime!
Lover of Freedom, — too true for her time!

Out in the cold? Oh, she chooses the place,
Rather than share in a sheltered disgrace;
Rather than sit at a cannibal feast;

Rather than mate with the blood-reeking beast!

Leave out New England? And what will she do,
Stormy-browed sisters, forsaken by you?

Sit on her Rock, her desertion to weep?
Or, like a Sappho, plunge thence in the deep?

--

No; our New England can put on no airs, —
Nothing will change the calm look that she wears:

* Among the many propositions for compromise after the outbreak of the rebellion, perhaps none was more persistently urged by a certain class of politicians than the formation of a new "Union," from which New England was to be excluded, left out in the cold, was the phrase. The proposers forgot that New England had stretched westward along the banks of the Ohio to the Mississippi.