Saint Paul weekly Minnesotian. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1858-1859, 1859-08-06
NEW POEM BY WHITTIER.
IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH srURGE.

IN REMEMBRANCE JOSEPH sTURGE.
In the fair land oerwatched by lschias mountains,
Across the charmed bay
Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver foun
tainS
Perpetual holiday.
4 king lies dead. his wafer duly eaten,
His gold bought masses given;
And Romes great altar smokes with gums to
sweeten
\ name that stinks to Heaven.
And, while all Naples thrills with mute thanksgiv
ing,
The Court of England's queen,
For the dead monster so abhorred while living,
In mourning garb is seen.
Wits a true sorrow God rebukes that feigning;
BY lone Edgbaston's side
Stands great city in the Sky'S sad raining,
Bare-headed and weteved!
Silent, for once, the restless hive Of labor
Save the low funeral tread
Or voice of craftsman whispering TO his nelghbor
The good deeds OF the dead.
For him no minister's chant of the immortals
Rose from the lips of sin;
No mitred priest swung back the heavenly portals
To let the white soul in.
But Age and Sickness from their fearful faces
In the low novels door,
And prayers sent up from all the dark by-places
And Ghettos of the poor.
The palid toiler and the negro chattel,
The vagrant of the street,
The human dice wherewith in games OF battle
The lords of earth compete.
Touched with grief that needs no outward drap-
ing
All swelled the long lament,
of grateful hearts. instead of marble, shaping,
Shaping his viewless monument!
For never yet, with ritual pomp and spleAdor,
In the long heretofore,
\ heart more loyal, warm and true and tender
Has England turf closed Ger.
And if there fell from out her grand old steeples
No crash OF brazen WILL
The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and
peoples,
Swept in on every gale.
1t came from Holstein's birchen -belted meadows,
And from the t.opc calms
Of Indian islands in the sun smit shadows
Of Occidental palms.
From the locked roadsteads of the Bothnian pea.
SAINTS
And harbors Of the Finn,
Where wars worn victims saw his gentle presence
Come saing Christlke, In.
To seek the lost, to build the old waste places,
To link the hostile shores
vi Sc'eTiUp SedS, anu SOW WIFI EHSlauu ualSleS
The moss of Finland's moors
Thanks for the good mans beautiful example,
Who in the vieSt saw
Some sacred crypt or altar of temple
Still vocal with Gods law.
And heard, with tender ear, the spirit sghing
As from its prison cell,
Praying for pity, like the mourniul crying
OF Jonah out of hell.
Not his the golden pens or lips persuasion,
But fine sense of right,
And truths drectneSs, meeting each occasion
Straight as a line OF light
His faith and works. like streams that intermingle
Ia the same channel ran;
The crystal clearneSs of an eye kept single
Shamed all the frauds of man.
The very gentlest of all human natures
He joined to courage strcng
And love outreaching unto all Gods creatures
With sturdy hate of wrong.
Tender as woman; manlincss and meekness
In MIN were so allied
That they whojudged him by his strength or weak
ness,
Saw but single side.
Men -aiIed, betrayed him. but his zeal seemed
nourished
BY failure and by fall
Still large faith in human kind he cherished
I'D In Goa S love for all.
And now he rests; his greatness and his sweet
No more shall seem at strife,
And death has moulded into calm completeness
The statue of his life.
Where the dews glisten and the ong-birds warblt
His dust to dust Is laid,
In Natures keeping, with no pomp of marble
To shame his modest shade.
The fcrges glow, the hammers are all ringing;
Beneath its smoky veil,
Hard by, the city of his love is swinging
- Its camorous iron fail.
But round his grave are quietude and beauty,
And the sweet heaven above
The fitting symbol Of life of duty
Iransfgured into Olove! J. C. W.
-hadependent, July 2l.