Anti-slavery poems : songs of labor and reform / by John Greenleaf Whittier [electronic text]

DEDICATION.

Prefixed to the volume of which the group of six poems following this prelude constituted the first portion.

I WOULD the gift I offer here Might graces from thy favor take, And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere, On softened lines and coloring, wear The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake.

Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain: But what I have I give to thee, The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain, And paler flowers, the latter rain Calls from the westering slope of life's autumnal lea.

Above the fallen groves of green, Where youth's enchanted forest stood, Dry root and mossëd trunk between, A sober after-growth is seen, As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple wood!

Yet birds will sing, and breezes play Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree;

And through the bleak and wintry day It keeps its steady green alway, — So, even my after-thoughts may have a charm for thee.

Art's perfect forms no moral need, And beauty is its own excuse;11But for the dull and flowerless weed Some healing virtue still must plead, And the rough ore must find its honors in its use.

So haply these, my simple lays Of homely toil, may serve to show The orchard bloom and tasselled maize That skirt and gladden duty's ways, The unsung beauty hid life's common things below.

Haply from them the toiler, bent Above his forge or plough, may gain, A manlier spirit of content, And feel that life is wisest spent Where the strong working hand makes strong the working brain.

The doom which to the guilty pair Without the walls of Eden came, Transforming sinless ease to care And rugged toil, no more shall bear The burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame.

A blessing now, a curse no more; Since He, whose name we breathe with awe,

The coarse mechanic vesture wore, A poor man toiling with the poor, In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law.

1850.

Notes

• 11

  Note 11, page 290. For the idea of this line, I am indebted to Emerson, in his inimitable sonnet to the Rhodora, —

  " If eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being."