The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1863-07-03
BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

And, on the sweet spring airs, the breath
Ofwar floats by.
Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
Nor pain from chance;
Tn Eternal order circles round,
And wave and storm find mete and bound
In Providence.
Full long our feet the fiowery 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 boasts offull 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.
Professions quiet sleep is DER,
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 whrlwind- blast,
The thunder and the shadow cast
From Heavens dark frOwn.
The land is red with judgments. Who
Stands guiltless forth?
Have ace been faithful as we knew,
To God op6 o,r brnfbor fr,,o
To Heaven and Earth?
How faint through din Of merchandise
And count of gain
Has seemed to us the captives' cries!
How far away the tears and sighs
Ofsouls 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 leveled 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 pain.
Shall are 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 swervc
Its smiling sword.
And light is mingled with the gloom,
And Joy with grief;
Divinest cOmpensatiOns come,
Through thorns of judgment mercies come
In sweet relief.
Thanks for our privilege to bless,
By word and deed,
The widow in her keen distress,
The childless and the fatherlcss:
The hearts that bleed.
For fields of duty, opening wide,
Where all our powers
Are tasked the eager steps to guide
vi mlluOnS ON pain untrled:
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 tile 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?
Gods 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
Z On mortal issue vast and grand
AS ours to-day.
Already, on the sable ground
Ofman's despair,
Is freedoms 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
A large section Of the rock OF tn
north, or Canada side of Niagara Falls
near the Table Rock Hotel, fell into th
yawning abyss below, last Saturday night
giving the falls ON that side a more decid
ed hOrsa-shoo onDooronoo fhon fbov 10.