He knew the locust swarm that cursed
The harvest-fields of God.
On these pale lips, the smothered thought
Which England’s millions feel,
A fierce and fearful splendor caught,
As from his forge the steel.
Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire
His smitten anvil flung;
God’s curse, Earth’s wrong, dumb Hunger’s
ire,
He gave them all a tongue!
Then let the poor man’s horny hands
Bear up the mighty dead,
And labor’s swart and stalwart bands
Behind as mourners tread.
Leave cant and craft their baptized bounds,
Leave rank its minster floor;
Give England’s green and daisied grounds
The poet of the poor!
Lay down upon his Sheaf’s green verge
That brave old heart of oak,
With fitting dirge from sounding forge,
And pall of furnace smoke!
Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds,
And axe and sledge are swung,
And, timing to their stormy sounds,
His stormy lays are sung.
There let the peasant’s step be heard,
The grinder chant his rhyme,
Nor patron’s praise nor dainty word
Befits the man or time.
No soft lament nor dreamer’s sigh
For him whose words were bread;
The Runic rhyme and spell whereby
The foodless poor were fed!
Pile up the tombs of rank and pride,
O England, as thou wilt!
With pomp to nameless worth denied,
Emblazon titled guilt!
No part or lot in these we claim;
But, o’er the sounding wave,
A common right to Elliott’s name,
A freehold in his grave!
1850
This poem was the outcome of the surprise
and grief and forecast of evil consequences which
I felt on reading the seventh of March speech
of Daniel Webster in support of the “compromise,”
and the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan
or personal enmity dictated it. On the contrary
my admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual
power of the great Senator was never stronger than
when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the
saddest moments of my life, penned my protest.
I saw, as I wrote, with painful clearness its
sure results,—the Slave Power arrogant and
defiant, strengthened and encouraged to carry
out its scheme for the extension of its baleful
system, or the dissolution of the Union, the
guaranties of personal liberty in the free States broken
down, and the whole country made the hunting-ground
of slave-catchers. In the horror of such
a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one spoke
at all, he could only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful
rebuke. But death softens all resentments,
and the consciousness of a common inheritance
of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of
judgment. Years after, in The Lost Occasion
I gave utterance to an almost universal regret
that the great statesman did not live to see
the flag which he loved trampled under the feet of
Slavery, and, in view of this desecration, make
his last days glorious in defence of “Liberty
and Union, one and inseparable.”
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!
