John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Songs of Labor and ReformThe Voices
“W
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million’s feet?
The fools who know not ill from good:
Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take
Thine ease among the multitude.
Thy proper life no more; assume
The unconcern of sun and air,
For life or death, or blight or bloom.
The fires that scourge the plains below,
Nor heeds the eagle in the sun
The small birds piping in the snow!
Work out a change, if change must be:
The hand that planted best can trim
And nurse the old unfruitful tree.”
Of sun and stars had left the sky;
I listened, through the cloud and night,
And heard, methought, a voice reply:
Who scatterest in a thankless soil
Thy life as seed, with no reward
Save that which Duty gives to Toil.
To Heaven’s benign and just decree,
Which, linking thee with all thy kind,
Transmits their joys and griefs to thee.
Back on thyself thy love and care;
Be thou thine own mean idol, burn
Faith, Hope, and Trust, thy children, there.
Which shares the common bale and bliss,
No sadder lot could Folly draw,
Or Sin provoke from Fate, than this.
Thou hoard’st in vain what love should spend;
Self-ease is pain; thy only rest
Is labor for a worthy end;
And scatters to its own increase,
And hears, while sowing outward fields,
The harvest-song of inward peace.
Free shines for all the healthful ray;
The still pool stagnates in the sun,
The lurid earth-fire haunts decay!
Thy love with hate, thy truth with lies?
And but to faith, and not to sight,
The walls of Freedom’s temple rise?
In thine or in another’s day;
And, if denied the victor’s meed,
Thou shalt not lack the toiler’s pay.
Self-offering is a triumph won;
And each good thought or action moves
The dark world nearer to the sun.
Thy weakness; truth itself is strong;
The lion’s strength, the eagle’s speed,
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong.
To place or gain finds out its way,
Hath power to seek the highest good,
And duty’s holiest call obey!
In league with traitor thoughts within;
Thy night-watch kept with trembling Doubt
And pale Remorse the ghost of Sin?
Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair,
And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form
The curtains of its tent of prayer?
The wrong shall lose itself in right,
And all thy week-day darkness blend
With the long Sabbath of the light!”