The Human Sacrifice

FAR from his close and noisome cell,By grassy lane and sunny stream,Blown clover field and strawberry dell,And green and meadow freshness, fellThe footsteps of his dream.Again from careless feet the dewOf summer's misty morn he shook;Again with merry heart he threwHis light line in the rippling brook.Back crowded all his school-day joys;He urged the ball and quoit again,And heard the shout of laughing boysCome ringing down the walnut glen.Again he felt the western breeze,With scent of flowers and crisping hay;And down again through wind-stirred treesHe saw the quivering sunlight play.An angel in home's vine-hung door,He saw his sister smile once more;Once more the truant's brown-locked headUpon his mother's knees was laid,And sweetly lulled to slumber there,With evening's holy hymn and prayer!

He woke. At once on heart and brainThe present Terror rushed again;Clanked on his limbs the felon's chainHe woke, to hear the church-tower tellTime's footfall on the conscious bell,And, shuddering, feel that clanging dinHis life's last hour had ushered in;To see within his prison-yard,Through the small window, iron barred,The gallows shadow rising dimBetween the sunrise heaven and him;A horror in God's blessed air;A blackness in his morning light;Like some foul devil-altar thereBuilt up by demon hands at night.And, maddened by that evil sight,Dark, horrible, confused, and strange,A chaos of wild, weltering change,All power of check and guidance gone,Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on.In vain he strove to breathe a prayer,In vain he turned the Holy Book,He only heard the gallows-stairCreak as the wind its timbers shook.No dream for him of sin forgiven,While still that baleful spectre stood,With its hoarse murmur, "Blood for Blood!"Between him and the pitying Heaven.

Low on his dungeon floor he knelt,And smote his breast, and on his chain,Whose iron clasp he always felt,His hot tears fell like rain;And near him, with the cold, calm lookAnd tone of one whose formal part,Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart,Is measured out by rule and book,With placid lip and tranquil blood,The hangman's ghostly ally stood,Blessing with solemn text and wordThe gallows-drop and strangling cord;Lending the sacred Gospel's aweAnd sanction to the crime of Law.

He saw the victim's tortured brow,The sweat of anguish starting there,The record of a nameless woeIn the dim eye's imploring stare,Seen hideous through the long, damp hair,--Fingers of ghastly skin and boneWorking and writhing on the stone!And heard, by mortal terror wrungFrom heaving breast and stiffened tongue,The choking sob and low hoarse prayer;As o'er his half-crazed fancy cameA vision of the eternal flame,Its smoking cloud of agonies,Its demon-worm that never dies,The everlasting rise and fallOf fire-waves round the infernal wall;While high above that dark red flood,Black, giant-like, the gallows stood;Two busy fiends attending thereOne with cold mocking rite and prayer,The other with impatient grasp,Tightening the death-rope's strangling clasp.

The unfelt rite at length was done,The prayer unheard at length was said,An hour had passed: the noonday sunSmote on the features of the dead!And he who stood the doomed beside,Calm gauger of the swelling tideOf mortal agony and fear,Heeding with curious eye and earWhate'er revealed the keen excessOf man's extremest wretchednessAnd who in that dark anguish sawAn earnest of the victim's fate,The vengeful terrors of God's law,The kindlings of Eternal hate,The first drops of that fiery rainWhich beats the dark red realm of pain,Did he uplift his earnest criesAgainst the crime of Law, which gaveHis brother to that fearful grave,Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies,And Faith's white blossoms never waveTo the soft breath of Memory's sighs;Which sent a spirit marred and stained,By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,In madness and in blindness stark,Into the silent, unknown dark?No, from the wild and shrinking dread,With which he saw the victim ledBeneath the dark veil which dividesEver the living from the dead,And Nature's solemn secret hides,The man of prayer can only drawNew reasons for his bloody law;New faith in staying Murder's handBy murder at that Law's command;New reverence for the gallows-rope,As human nature's latest hope;Last relic of the good old time,When Power found license for its crime,And held a writhing world in checkBy that fell cord about its neck;Stifled Sedition's rising shout,Choked the young breath of Freedom out,And timely checked the words which sprungFrom Heresy's forbidden tongue;While in its noose of terror bound,The Church its cherished union found,Conforming, on the Moslem plan,The motley-colored mind of man,Not by the Koran and the Sword,But by the Bible and the Cord.

O Thou at whose rebuke the graveBack to warm life its sleeper gave,Beneath whose sad and tearful glanceThe cold and changed countenanceBroke the still horror of its trance,And, waking, saw with joy above,A brother's face of tenderest love;Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,And from Thy very garment's hemDrew life and healing unto them,The burden of Thy holy faithWas love and life, not hate and death;Man's demon ministers of pain,The fiends of his revenge, were sentFrom thy pure Gospel's elementTo their dark home again.Thy name is Love! What, then, is he,Who in that name the gallows rears,An awful altar built to Thee,With sacrifice of blood and tears?Oh, once again Thy healing layOn the blind eyes which knew Thee not,And let the light of Thy pure dayMelt in upon his darkened thought.Soften his hard, cold heart, and showThe power which in forbearance lies,And let him feel that mercy nowIs better than old sacrifice.

As on the White Sea's charmed shore,The Parsee sees his holy hillWith dunnest smoke-clouds curtained o'er,Yet knows beneath them, evermore,The low, pale fire is quivering still;So, underneath its clouds of sin,The heart of man retaineth yetGleams of its holy origin;And half-quenched stars that never set,Dim colors of its faded bow,And early beauty, linger there,And o'er its wasted desert blowFaint breathings of its morning air.Oh, never yet upon the scrollOf the sin-stained, but priceless soul,Hath Heaven inscribed "Despair!"Cast not the clouded gem away,Quench not the dim but living ray,--My brother man, Beware!With that deep voice which from the skiesForbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,God's angel cries, Forbear.