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

THE VOICES.

"WHY urge the long, unequal fight, Since Truth has fallen in the street, Or lift anew the trampled light, Quenched by the heedless million's feet?

"Give o'er the thankless task; forsake The fools who know not ill from good: Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take Thine ease among the multitude.

"Live out thyself; with others share Thy proper life no more; assume

The unconcern of sun and air, For life or death, or blight or bloom.

"The mountain pine looks calmly on The fires that scourge the plains below, Nor heeds the eagle in the sun The small birds piping in the snow!

"The world is God's, not thine; let Him Work out a change, if change must be: The hand that planted best can trim And nurse the old unfruitful tree."

So spake the Tempter, when the light Of sun and stars had left the sky; I listened, through the cloud and night, And heard, methought, a voice reply:

"Thy task may well seem over-hard, Who scatterest in a thankless soil Thy life as seed, with no reward Save that which Duty gives to Toil.

"Not wholly is thy heart resigned To Heaven's benign and just decree, Which, linking thee with all thy kind, Transmits their joys and griefs to thee.

"Break off that sacred chain, and turn Back on thyself thy love and care; Be thou thine own mean idol, burn Faith, Hope, and Trust, thy children, there.

"Released from that fraternal law Which shares the common bale and bliss, No sadder lot could Folly draw, Or Sin provoke from Fate, than this.

"The meal unshared is food unblest: Thou hoard'st in vain what love should spend; Self-ease is pain; thy only rest Is labor for a worthy end;

"A toil that gains with what it yields, And scatters to its own increase, And hears, while sowing outward fields, The harvest-song of inward peace.

"Free-lipped the liberal streamlets run, Free shines for all the healthful ray;. The still pool stagnates in the sun, The lurid earth-fire haunts decay!

"What is it that the crowd requite Thy love with hate, thy truth with lies? And but to faith, and not to sight, The walls of Freedom's temple rise?

"Yet do thy work; it shall succeed In thine or in another's day; And, if denied the victor's meed, Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay.

"Faith shares the future's promise; Love's Self-offering is a triumph won; And each good thought or action moves The dark world nearer to the sun.

"Then faint not, falter not, nor plead Thy weakness; truth itself is strong; The lion's strength, the eagle's speed, Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong.

"Thy nature, which, through fire and flood, To place or gain finds out its way, Hath power to seek the highest good, And duty's holiest call obey!

"Strivest thou in darkness? — Foes without In league with traitor thoughts within; Thy night-watch kept with trembling Doubt And pale Remorse the ghost of Sin?

"Hast thou not, on some week of storm, Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair, And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form The curtains of its tent of prayer?

"So, haply, when thy task shall end, The wrong shall lose itself in right, And all thy week-day darkness blend With the long Sabbath of the light!"

1854.