The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[381] Brutal alike in deed and word,
     With callous heart and hand of strife,
How like a fiend may man be made,
     Plying the foul and monstrous trade
Whose harvest-field is human life,
     Whose sickle is the reeking sword!
Quenching, with reckless hand in bloods
     Sparks kindled by the breath of God;
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven,
     Of open guilt or secret sin,
Before the bar of that pure Heaven
     The holy only enter in!
Oh, by the widow's sore distress,
     The orphan's wailing wretchedness,
By Virtue struggling in the accursed
     Embraces of polluting Lust,
By the fell discord of the Pit,
     And the pained souls that people it,
And by the blessed peace which fills
     The Paradise of God forever,
Resting on all its holy hills,
     And flowing with its crystal river,—
Let Christian hands no longer bear
     In triumph on his crimson car
The foul and idol god of war;
     No more the purple wreaths prepare
To bind amid his snaky hair;
     Nor Christian bards his glories tell,
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell

Through the gun-smoke wreathing white,
     Glimpses on the soldiers' sight
A thing of human shape I ween,
     For a moment only seen,
With its loose hair backward streaming,
     And its eyeballs madly gleaming,
Shrieking, like a soul in pain,
     From the world of light and breath,
Hurrying to its place again,
     Spectre-like it vanisheth!

Wretched girl! one eye alone
     Notes the way which thou hast gone.
That great Eye, which slumbers never
     Watching o'er a lost world ever,
Tracks thee over vale and mountain,
     By the gushing forest-fountain,
Plucking from the vine its fruit,
     Searching for the ground-nut's root,
Peering in the she-wolf's den,
     Wading through the marshy fen,
Where the sluggish water-snake