In War Time

Anniversary Poem

Read before the Alumni of the Friends’ Yearly Meeting School, at the Annual Meeting at Newport, R. I., 15th 6th Mo., 1863.

John Greenleaf Whittier


ONCE MORE, dear friends, you meet beneath
        A clouded sky
Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
And on the sweet spring airs the breath
        Of war floats by.

Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
        Nor pain from chance;
The Eternal order circles round,
And wave and storm find mete and bound
        In Providence.

Full long our feet the flowery ways
        Of peace have trod,
Content with creed and garb and phrase:
A harder path in earlier days
        Led up to God.

Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,
        Are made our own;
Too long the world has smiled to hear
Our boast of full corn in the ear
        By others sown;

To see us stir the martyr fires
        Of long ago,
And wrap our satisfied desires
In the singed mantles that our sires
        Have dropped below.

But now the cross our worthies bore
        On us is laid;
Profession’s quiet sleep is o’er,
And in the scale of truth once more
        Our faith is weighed.

The cry of innocent blood at last
        Is calling down
An answer in the whirlwind-blast,
The thunder and the shadow cast
        From Heaven’s dark frown.

The land is red with judgments. Who
        Stands guiltless forth?
Have we been faithful as we knew,
To God and to our brother true,
        To Heaven and Earth.

How faint, through din of merchandise
        And count of gain,
Have seemed to us the captive’s cries!
How far away the tears and sighs
        Of souls in pain!

This day the fearful reckoning comes
        To each and all;
We hear amidst our peaceful homes
The summons of the conscript drums,
        The bugle’s call.

Our path is plain; the war-net draws
        Round us in vain,
While, faithful to the Higher Cause,
We keep our fealty to the laws
        Through patient pain.

The levelled gun, the battle-brand,
        We may not take
But, calmly loyal, we can stand
And suffer with our suffering land
        For conscience’ sake.

Why ask for ease where all is pain?
        Shall we alone
Be left to add our gain to gain,
When over Armageddon’s plain
        The trump is blown?

To suffer well is well to serve;
        Safe in our Lord
The rigid lines of law shall curve
To spare us; from our heads shall swerve
        Its smiting sword.

And light is mingled with the gloom,
        And joy with grief;
Divinest compensations come,
Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom
        In sweet relief.

Thanks for our privilege to bless,
        By word and deed,
The widow in her keen distress,
The childless and the fatherless,
        The hearts that bleed!

For fields of duty, opening wide,
        Where all our powers
Are tasked the eager steps to guide
Of millions on a path untried:
        THE SLAVE IS OURS!

Ours by traditions dear and old,
        Which make the race
Our wards to cherish and uphold,
And cast their freedom in the mould
        Of Christian grace.

And we may tread the sick-bed floors
        Where strong men pine,
And, down the groaning corridors,
Pour freely from our liberal stores
        The oil and wine.

Who murmurs that in these dark days
        His lot is cast?
God’s hand within the shadow lays
The stones whereon His gates of praise
        Shall rise at last.

Turn and o’erturn, O outstretched Hand
        Nor stint, nor stay;
The years have never dropped their sand
On mortal issue vast and grand
        As ours to-day.

Already, on the sable ground
        Of man’s despair
Is Freedom’s glorious picture found,
With all its dusky hands unbound
        Upraised in prayer.

Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice
        And pain and loss,
When God shall wipe the weeping eyes,
For suffering give the victor’s prize,
        The crown for cross.


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