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Home  »  The Poetical Works In Four Volumes  »  The Relic

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Anti-Slavery Poems

The Relic

  • Written on receiving a cane wrought from a fragment of the wood-work of Pennsylvania Hall which the fire had spared.


  • TOKEN of friendship true and tried,

    From one whose fiery heart of youth

    With mine has beaten, side by side,

    For Liberty and Truth;

    With honest pride the gift I take,

    And prize it for the giver’s sake.

    But not alone because it tells

    Of generous hand and heart sincere;

    Around that gift of friendship dwells

    A memory doubly dear;

    Earth’s noblest aim, man’s holiest thought,

    With that memorial frail inwrought!

    Pure thoughts and sweet like flowers unfold,

    And precious memories round it cling,

    Even as the Prophet’s rod of old

    In beauty blossoming:

    And buds of feeling, pure and good,

    Spring from its cold unconscious wood.

    Relic of Freedom’s shrine! a brand

    Plucked from its burning! let it be

    Dear as a jewel from the hand

    Of a lost friend to me!

    Flower of a perished garland left,

    Of life and beauty unbereft!

    Oh, if the young enthusiast bears,

    O’er weary waste and sea, the stone

    Which crumbled from the Forum’s stairs,

    Or round the Parthenon;

    Or olive-bough from some wild tree

    Hung over old Thermopylæ:

    If leaflets from some hero’s tomb,

    Or moss-wreath torn from ruins hoary;

    Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom

    On fields renowned in story;

    Or fragment from the Alhambra’s crest,

    Or the gray rock by Druids blessed;

    Sad Erin’s shamrock greenly growing

    Where Freedom led her stalwart kern,

    Or Scotia’s “rough bur thistle” blowing

    On Bruce’s Bannockburn;

    Or Runnymede’s wild English rose,

    Or lichen plucked from Sempach’s snows!

    If it be true that things like these

    To heart and eye bright visions bring,

    Shall not far holier memories

    To this memorial cling?

    Which needs no mellowing mist of time

    To hide the crimson stains of crime!

    Wreck of a temple, unprofaned;

    Of courts where Peace with Freedom trod,

    Lifting on high, with hands unstained,

    Thanksgiving unto God;

    Where Mercy’s voice of love was pleading

    For human hearts in bondage bleeding!

    Where, midst the sound of rushing feet

    And curses on the night-air flung,

    That pleading voice rose calm and sweet

    From woman’s earnest tongue;

    And Riot turned his scowling glance,

    Awed, from her tranquil countenance!

    That temple now in ruin lies!

    The fire-stain on its shattered wall,

    And open to the changing skies

    Its black and roofless hall,

    It stands before a nation’s sight,

    A gravestone over buried Right!

    But from that ruin, as of old,

    The fire-scorched stones themselves are crying,

    And from their ashes white and cold

    Its timbers are replying!

    A voice which slavery cannot kill

    Speaks from the crumbling arches still!

    And even this relic from thy shrine,

    O holy Freedom! hath to me

    A potent power, a voice and sign

    To testify of thee;

    And, grasping it, methinks I feel

    A deeper faith, a stronger zeal.

    And not unlike that mystic rod,

    Of old stretched o’er the Egyptian wave,

    Which opened, in the strength of God,

    A pathway for the slave,

    It yet may point the bondman’s way,

    And turn the spoiler from his prey.

    1839.