A Greeting

To her who, in our evil time,

Dragged into light the nation’s crime

With strength beyond the strength of men,

And, mightier than their swords, her pen!

To her who world-wide entrance gave

To the log-cabin of the slave;

Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,

And all earth’s languages his own,—

North, South, and East and West, made all

The common air electrical,

Until the o’ercharged bolts of heaven

Blazed down, and every chain was riven!

Welcome from each and all to her

Whose Wooing of the Minister

Revealed the warm heart of the man

Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,

And taught the kinship of the love

Of man below and God above;

To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes

Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks;

Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,

In quaint Sam Lawson’s vagrant way,

With old New England’s flavor rife,

Waifs from her rude idyllic life,

Are racy as the legends old

By Chaucer or Boccaccio told;

To her who keeps, through change of place

And time, her native strength and grace,

Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,

Or where, by birchen-shaded isles,

Whose summer winds have shivered o’er

The icy drift of Labrador,

She lifts to light the priceless Pearl

Of Harpswell’s angel-beckoned girl!

To her at threescore years and ten

Be tributes of the tongue and pen;

Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given,

The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!

Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs

The air to-day, our love is hers!

She needs no guaranty of fame

Whose own is linked with Freedom’s name.

Long ages after ours shall keep

Her memory living while we sleep;

The waves that wash our gray coast lines,

The winds that rock the Southern pines,

Shall sing of her; the unending years

Shall tell her tale in unborn ears.

And when, with sins and follies past,

Are numbered color-hate and caste,

White, black, and red shall own as one

The noblest work by woman done.