Songs of Labor and Reform / Part 5 From Volume III of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier

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THE Quaker of the olden time! How calm and firm and true, Unspotted by its wrong and crime, He walked the dark earth through. The lust of power, the love of gain, The thousand lures of sin Around him, had no power to stain The purity within.
With that deep insight which detects All great things in the small, And knows how each man's life affects The spiritual life of all, He walked by faith and not by sight, By love and not by law; The presence of the wrong or right He rather felt than saw.
He felt that wrong with wrong partakes, That nothing stands alone, That whoso gives the motive, makes His brother's sin his own. And, pausing not for doubtful choice Of evils great or small, He listened to that inward voice Which called away from all.
O Spirit of that early day, So pure and strong and true, Be with us in the narrow way Our faithful fathers knew. Give strength the evil to forsake, The cross of Truth to bear, And love and reverent fear to make Our daily lives a prayer! 1838.
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.—MATTHEW vii. 12.
BEARER of Freedom's holy light, Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod, The foe of all which pains the sight, Or wounds the generous ear of God!
Beautiful yet thy temples rise, Though there profaning gifts are thrown; And fires unkindled of the skies Are glaring round thy altar-stone.
Still sacred, though thy name be breathed By those whose hearts thy truth deride; And garlands, plucked from thee, are wreathed Around the haughty brows of Pride.
Oh, ideal of my boyhood's time! The faith in which my father stood, Even when the sons of Lust and Crime Had stained thy peaceful courts with blood!
Still to those courts my footsteps turn, For through the mists which darken there, I see the flame of Freedom burn,— The Kebla of the patriot's prayer!
The generous feeling, pure and warm, Which owns the right of all divine; The pitying heart, the helping arm, The prompt self-sacrifice, are thine.