The Moral Warfare.
John G. Whittier.
When Freedom on her natal day
Within her war-rocked cradle lay,
An iron race around her stood,
Baptized her infant brow in blood;
And through the storm which round her swept
Their constant ward and watching kept.
Then, where our quiet herds repose
The roar of baleful battle rose,
And brethren of a common tongue
To mortal strife as tigers sprung;
And every gift on Freedom’s shrine
Was man for beast, and blood for wine!
Our fathers to their graves have gone:
Their strife is past—their triumph won;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honored place—
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.
So let it be. In God’s own might
We gird us for the coming fight,
And, strong in Him whose cause is ours,
In conflict with unholy powers,
We grasp the weapon He has given—
The light, and truth, and love of heaven.
Recently a number of school-children of Girard, Pa., wrote a letter to John G. Whittier, the Quaker poet, telling him that they had learned to recite “The Barefoot Boy,” “The Huskers,” and “Maud Muller,” and closing thus: “If it would not be too much trouble, please write a verse for us—something that we could learn and always remember as having been written by you especially for us.” In response he sent the following:
“Faint not and falter not, nor plead
Your weakness. Truth itself is strong;
The lion’s strength, the eagle’s speed,
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong.
“Your nature, which, through fire and blood,
To place or gain can find its way,
Has power to seek the highest good,
And duty’s holiest call obey.”