Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Personal Poems

Within the Gate

L. M. C.

I have more fully expressed my admiration and regard for Lydia Maria Child in the biographical introduction which I wrote for the volume of Letters, published after her death.

WE sat together, last May-day, and talked

Of the dear friends who walked

Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears

Of five and forty years,

Since first we met in Freedom’s hope forlorn,

And heard her battle-horn

Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North,

Calling her children forth,

And youth pressed forward with hope-lighted eyes,

And age, with forecast wise

Of the long strife before the triumph won,

Girded his armor on.

Sadly, as name by name we called the roll,

We heard the dead-bells toll

For the unanswering many, and we knew

The living were the few.

And we, who waited our own call before

The inevitable door,

Listened and looked, as all have done, to win

Some token from within.

No sign we saw, we heard no voices call;

The impenetrable wall

Cast down its shadow, like an awful doubt,

On all who sat without.

Of many a hint of life beyond the veil,

And many a ghostly tale

Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf between

The seen and the unseen,

Seeking from omen, trance, and dream to gain

Solace to doubtful pain,

And touch, with groping hands, the garment hem

Of truth sufficing them,

We talked; and, turning from the sore unrest

Of an all-baffling quest,

We thought of holy lives that from us passed

Hopeful unto the last,

As if they saw beyond the river of death,

Like Him of Nazareth,

The many mansions of the Eternal days

Lift up their gates of praise.

And, hushed to silence by a reverent awe,

Methought, O friend, I saw

In thy true life of word, and work, and thought

The proof of all we sought.

Did we not witness in the life of thee

Immortal prophecy?

And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod

An everlasting road?

Not for brief days thy generous sympathies,

Thy scorn of selfish ease;

Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal

Thy strong uplift of soul.

Than thine was never turned a fonder heart

To nature and to art

In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime,

Thy Philothea’s time.

Yet, loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by,

And for the poor deny

Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet flower of fame

Wither in blight and blame.

Sharing His love who holds in His embrace

The lowliest of our race,

Sure the Divine economy must be

Conservative of thee!

For truth must live with truth, self-sacrifice

Seek out its great allies;

Good must find good by gravitation sure,

And love with love endure.

And so, since thou hast passed within the gate

Whereby awhile I wait,

I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie:

Thou hast not lived to die!

1881.