That I was sinning against light, to stay
And turn the accursèd fibre into cloth
For human wearing. I have hailed one name—
You know it—‘Garrison’—as a soul might hail
His soul’s deliverer.”[4]
Whenever a petition for the abolition of slavery was circulated, to be sent to Congress, it was always sure to have the name of Lucy Larcom upon it. The poetry of Mr. Whittier had aroused her spirit, and though she does not seem to have written any of her stirring anti-slavery verses until years later, she was nursing the spark that during the Civil War blew into a flame.
It was in 1843, while in Lowell, that she first met Mr. Whittier, who was editing the “Middlesex Standard.” Being present at one of the meetings of the “Improvement Circle,” he heard her read one of her poems, “Sabbath Bells:”—
“List! a faint, a far-off chime!
’Tis the knell of holy time,
Chiming from the city’s spires,