| The Present Crisis |
| WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast | |
| Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, | |
| And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb | |
| To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime | |
| Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. | 5 |
| 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 at nation, standing with mute lips apart, | |
| And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart. | 10 |
| So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, | |
| Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, | |
| And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God | |
| In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod, | |
| Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod. | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| 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. | 25 |
| 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. | 30 |
| Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, | |
| That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; | |
| Not an ear in court or market for the low, foreboding cry | |
| Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; | |
| Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. | 35 |
| Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record | |
| One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; | |
| Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— | |
| Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, | |
| Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. | 40 |
| 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." | 45 |
| 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? | 50 |
| Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, | |
| Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just; | |
| Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, | |
| Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, | |
| And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. | 55 |
| Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,—they were souls that stood alone, | |
| While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, | |
| Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline | |
| To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, | |
| By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design. | 60 |
| By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, | |
| Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back, | |
| And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned | |
| One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned | |
| Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned. | 65 |
| For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, | |
| On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; | |
| Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, | |
| While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return | |
| To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. | 70 |
| 'T is 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 made Plymouth Rock sublime? | 75 |
| They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, | |
| Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; | |
| But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath 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. | 80 |
| They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, | |
| Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires; | |
| Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, | |
| From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away | |
| To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day? | 85 |
| 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 blood-rusted key. | 90 |
