Were born in those three bitter days
Of Mary’s deep despair?
O mourning mothers, so many,
Weeping in woe and pain,
Think on the joy of Mary’s heart
In a Son that is risen again.
Have faith in a third-day morning,
In a resurrection-hour;
For what ye sow in weakness,
He can raise again in power.
Have faith in the Lord of that thorny crown,
In the Lord of the pierced hand;
For he reigneth now o’er earth and heaven,
And his power who may withstand?
And the hopes that never on earth shall bloom,
The sorrows forever new,
Lay silently down at the feet of Him
Who died and is risen for you.
DAY DAWN.
THE dim gray dawn, upon die eastern hills,
Brings back to light once more the cheerless scene;
But oh! no morning in my Father’s house
Is dawning now, for there no night hath been.
Ten thousand thousand now, on Zion’s hills,
All robed in white, with palmy crowns, do stray,
While I, an exile, far from fatherland,
Still wandering, faint along the desert way.
O home! dear home! my own, my native home!
O Father, friends! when shall I look on you?
When shall these weary wanderings be o’er,
And I be gathered back to stray no more?
O Thou, the brightness of whose gracious face
These weary, longing eyes have never seen, —
By whose dear thought, for whose beloved sake,
My course, through toil and tears, I daily take, —
I think of thee when the myrrh-dropping morn
Steps forth upon the purple eastern steep;
I think of thee in the fair eventide,
When the bright-sandalled stars their watches keep.
And trembling hope, and fainting, sorrowing love,
On thy dear word for comfort doth rely;
And clear-eyed Faith, with strong forereaching gaze,
Beholds thee here, unseen, but ever nigh.
Walking in white with thee, she dimly sees,
All beautiful, these lovely ones withdrawn,
With whom my heart went upward, as they rose,
Like morning stars, to light a coming dawn.
All sinless now, and crowned and glorified,
Where’er thou movest move they still with thee,
As erst, in sweet communion by thy side,
Walked John and Mary in old Galilee.
But hush, my heart. ‘T is but a day or two
Divides thee from that bright, immortal shore.
Rise up! rise up! and gird thee for the race!
Fast fly the hours, and all will soon be o’er.
Thou hast the new name written in thy soul;
Thou hast the mystic stone He gives his own.
Thy soul, made one with him, shall feel no more
That she is walking on her path alone.
WHEN I AWAKE I AM STILL WITH THEE.
STILL, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh,
When the bird waketh and the shadows flee;
Fairer than morning, lovelier than the daylight,
Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee!
Alone with Thee, amid the mystic shadows,
The solemn hush of nature newly born;
Alone with Thee in breathless adoration,
In the calm dew and freshness of the morn.
As in the dawning o’er the waveless ocean
The image of the morning star doth rest,
So in this stillness Thou beholdest only
Thine image in the waters of my breast.
Still, still with Thee! as to each new-born morning
A fresh and solemn splendor still is given,
So doth this blessed consciousness, awaking,
Breathe, each day, nearness unto Thee and heaven.
When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber,
Its closing eye looks up to Thee in prayer;
Sweet the repose beneath the wings o’ershading,
But sweeter still to wake and find Thee there.
So shall it be at last, in that bright morning
When the soul waketh and life’s shadows flee;
O, in that hour, fairer than daylight dawning,
Shall rise the glorious thought, I am with Thee!
PRESSED FLOWERS FROM ITALY.
A DAY IN THE PAMFILI DORIA.
THOUGH the hills are cold and snowy,
And the wind drives chill to-day,
My heart goes back to a spring-time,
Far, far in the past away.
And I see a quaint old city,
Weary and worn and brown,
Where the spring and the birds are so early,
And the sun in such light goes down.
I remember that old-times villa,
Where our afternoons went by,
Where the suns of March flushed warmly,
And spring was in earth and sky.
Out of the mouldering city,
Mouldering, old, and gray,
We sped, with a lightsome heart-thrill,
For a sunny, gladsome day, —
For a revel of fresh spring verdure,
For a race ‘mid springing flowers,
For a vision of plashing fountains,
Of birds and blossoming bowers.
There were violet banks in the shadows,
Violets white and blue;
And a world of bright anemones,
That over the terrace grew, —
Blue and orange and purple,
Rosy and yellow and white,
Rising in rainbow bubbles,
Streaking the lawns with light.
And down from the old stone pine-trees,
Those far off islands of air,
The birds are flinging the tidings
Of a joyful revel up there.
And now for the grand old fountains,
Tossing their silvery spray,
Those fountains so quaint and so many,
That are leaping and singing all day.
Those fountains of strange weird sculpture,
With lichens and moss o’ergrown,
Are they marble greening in moss-wreaths?
Or moss-wreaths whitening to stone?
Down many a wild, dim pathway
We ramble from morning till noon;
We linger, upheeding the hours,
Till evening comes all too soon.
And from out the ilex alleys,
Where lengthening shadows play,
We look on the dreamy Campagna,
All glowing with setting day, —
All melting in bands of purple,
In swathings and foldings of gold,
In ribands of azure and lilac,
Like a princely banner unrolled.
And the smoke of each distant cottage,
And the flash of each villa white,
Shines out with an opal glimmer,
Like gems in a casket of light.
And the dome of old St. Peter’s
With a strange translucence glows,
Like a mighty bubble of amethyst
Floating in waves of rose.
In a trance of dreamy vagueness
We, gazing and yearning, behold
That city beheld by the prophet,
Whose walls were transparent gold.
And, dropping all solemn and slowly,
To hallow the softening spell,
There falls on the dying twilight
The Ave Maria bell.
With a mournful motherly softness,
With a weird and weary care,
That strange and ancient city
Seems calling the nations to prayer.
To the mother of Jesus brought,
Rise like a new evangel,
To hallow the trance of our thought.
With the smoke of the evening incense,
Our thoughts are ascending then
To Mary, the mother of Jesus,
To Jesus, the Master of men.
O city of prophets and martyrs,
O shrines of the sainted dead,
When, when shall the living day-spring
Once more on your towers be spread
When He who is meek and lowly
Shall rule in those lordly halls,
And shall stand and feed as a shepherd
The flock which his mercy calls, —
O, then to those noble churches,
To picture and statue and gem,
To the pageant of solemn worship,
Shall the meaning come back again.
And this strange and ancient city,
In that reign of His truth and love,
Shall be what it seems in the twilight,
The type of that City above.
THE GARDENS OF THE VATICAN.
SWEET fountains, plashing with a dreamy fall,
And mosses green, and tremulous veils of fern,
And banks of blowing cyclamen, and stars,
Blue as the skies, of myrtle blossoming,
The twilight shade of ilex overhead
O’erbubbling with sweet song of nightingale,
With walks of strange, weird stillness, leading on
‘Mid sculptured fragments half to green moss gone,
Or breaking forth amid the violet leaves
With some white gleam of an old world gone by.
Ah! strange, sweet quiet! wilderness of calm,
Gardens of dreamy rest, I long to lay
Beneath your shade the last long sigh, and say,
Here is my home, my Lord, thy home and mine;
And I, having searched the world with many a tear,
At last have found thee and will stray no more.
But vainly here I seek the Gardener
That Mary saw. These lovely halls beyond,
That airy, sky-like dome, that lofty fane,
Is as a palace whence the king is gone
And taken all the sweetness with himself.
Turn again, Jesus, and possess thine own!
Come to thy temple once more as of old!
Drive forth the money-changers, let it be
A house of prayer for nations. Even so,
Amen! Amen!
ST. PETER’S CHURCH.
HOLY WEEK, APRIL, 1860.
O FAIREST mansion of a Father’s Jove,
Harmonious! hospitable J with thine arms
Outspread to all, thy fountains ever full,
And, fair as heaven, thy misty, sky-like dome
Hung like the firmament with circling sweep
Above the constellated golden lamps
That burn forever round the holy tomb.
Most meet art thou to be the Father’s house,
The house of prayer for nations. Come the time
When thou shalt be so! when a liberty,
Wide as thine arms, high as thy lofty dome,
Shall be proclaimed, by thy loud singing choirs,
Like voice of many waters! Then the Lord
Shall come into his temple, and make pure
The sons of Levi; then, as once of old,
The blind shall see, the lame leap as an hart,
And to the poor the Gospel shall be preached,
And Easter’s silver-sounding trumpets tell,
“The Lord is risen indeed,” to die no more.
Hasten it in its time. Amen! Amen!
THE MISERERE
NOT of the earth that music! all things fade;
Vanish the pictured walls! and, one by one,
The starry candles silently expire!
And now, O Jesus! round that silent cross
A moment’s pause, a hush as of the grave.
Now rises slow a silver mist of sound,
And all the heavens break out in drops of grief;
A rain of sobbing sweetness, swelling, dying,
Voice into voice inweaving with sweet throbs,
And fluttering pulses of impassioned moan, —
Veiled voices, in whose wailing there is awe,
And mysteries of love and agony,
A yearning anguish of celestial souls,
A shiver as of wings trembling the air,
As if God’s shining doves, his spotless birds,
Wailed with a nightingale’s heart-break of grief,
In this their starless night, when for our sins
Their sun, their life, their love, hangs darkly there,
Like a slain lamb, bleeding his life away!
The Non-Fiction
Stowe’s last home in Hartford, Connecticut
A KEY TO UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
PRESENTING THE ORIGINAL FACTS AND DOCUMENTS UPON WHICH THE STORY IS FOUNDED TOGETHER WITH CORROBORATIVE STATEMENTS VERIFYING THE TRUTH OF THE WORK
A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1853 by Jewett, Proctor and Worthington and sold 90,000 copies in the first month. Stowe produced the work in an attempt to refute allegations that her depiction of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin was inaccurate or that she had exaggerated the brutality of the system. The author had received an aggressive response from certain slave owners in the South, accusing her of lying about slavery and presenting it, and them, in an unfair and untrue light. There were more than thirty pro-slavery books written which depicted kind, paternal white slave masters and their sweet, pure wives who treated their slaves like extended family. The works infantilised African Americans and presented a picture of benevolent whites, who guided and cared for their slaves as the slaves were incapable of managing their own lives.
A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin was received in a similar manner to Uncle Tom’s Cabin; it drew strong opinions both positively and negatively. Those who had admired Stowe’s original book heralded this new work and hailed it as proof of the evils of slavery. However, the pro-slavery faction were infuriated and continued to insist that even with these documents Stowe was misrepresenting slavery and unfairly portraying slave owners as malicious. Her opponents did not accuse her of using false documents or fabricating the facts, but they maintained that Stowe deliberately found the worst, most extreme, and therefore rare, examples of cruelty to besmirch the institution of slavery. The backlash to the work included personal attacks and smears about her character and insinuations about whether it was decent for a woman to write about some of the incidents Stowe chronicled, not least prostitution.
The first edition
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
PART II
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
PART III.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
PAR
T IV.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
The original title page
PREFACE.
THE work which the writer here presents to the public is one which has been written with no pleasure, and with much pain.
In fictitious writing, it is possible to find refuge from the hard and the terrible, by inventing scenes and characters of a more pleasing nature. No such resource is open in a work of fact; and the subject of this work is one on which the truth, if told at all, must needs be very dreadful. There is no bright aide to slavery, as such. Those scenes which are made bright by the generosity and kindness of masters and mistresses, would be brighter still if the element of slavery were withdrawn. There is nothing picturesque or beautiful, in the family attachment of old servants, which is not to be found in countries where these servants are legally free. The tenants on an English estate are often more fond and faithful than if they were slaves. Slavery, therefore, is not the element which forms the picturesque and beautiful of Southern life. What is peculiar to slavery, and distinguishes it from free servitude, is evil, and only evil, and that continually.
In preparing this work, it has grown much beyond the author’s original design. It has so far overrun its limits that she has been obliged to omit one whole department; — that of the characteristics and developments of the colored race in various countries and circumstances. This is more properly the subject for a volume ; and she hopes that such an one will soon be prepared by a friend to whom she has transferred her materials.
The author desires to express her thanks particularly to those legal gentlemen who have given her their assistance and support in the legal part of the discussion. She also desires to thank those, at the North and at the South, who have kindly furnished materials for her use. Many more have been supplied than could possibly be used. The book is actually selected out of a mountain of materials.
The great object of the author in writing has been to bring this subject of slavery, as a moral and religious question, before the minds of all those who profess to be followers of Christ, in this country. A minute history has been given of the action of the various denominations on this subject.
The writer has aimed, as far as possible, to say what is true, and only that, without regard to the effect which it may have upon any person or party. She hopes that what she has said will be examined without bitterness, — in that serious and earnest spirit which is appropriate for the examination of so very serious a subject. It would be vain for her to indulge the hope of being wholly free from error. In the wide field which she has been called to go over, there is a possibility of many mistakes. She can only say that she has used the most honest and earnest endeavors to learn the truth.
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