Heaven mend her faults!--I will not pause To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws, Or waste my pity when some fool Provokes her measureless ridicule. Strong-minded is she? Better so Than dulness set for sale or show, A household folly, capped and belled In fashion's dance of puppets held, Or poor pretence of womanhood, Whose formal, flavorless platitude Is warranted from all offence Of robust meaning's violence. Give me the wine of thought whose head Sparkles along the page I read,-- Electric words in which I find The tonic of the northwest wind; The wisdom which itself allies To sweet and pure humanities, Where scorn of meanness, hate of wrong, Are underlaid by love as strong; The genial play of mirth that lights Grave themes of thought, as when, on nights Of summer-time, the harmless blaze Of thunderless heat-lightning plays, And tree and hill-top resting dim And doubtful on the sky's vague rim, Touched by that soft and lambent gleam, Start sharply outlined from their dream. Talk not to me of woman's sphere, Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer, Nor wrong the manliest saint of all By doubt, if he were here, that Paul Would own the heroines who have lent Grace to truth's stern arbitrament, Foregone the praise to woman sweet, And cast their crowns at Duty's feet; Like her, who by her strong Appeal Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel, Who, earliest summoned to withstand The color-madness of the land, Counted her life-long losses gain, And made her own her sisters' pain; Or her who, in her greenwood shade, Heard the sharp call that Freedom made, And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre Of love the Tyrtman carmen's fire Or that young girl,--Domremy's maid Revived a nobler cause to aid,-- Shaking from warning finger-tips The doom of her apocalypse; Or her, who world-wide entrance gave To the log-cabin of the slave, Made all his want and sorrow known, And all earth's languages his own. 1866. GEORGE L. STEARNS No man rendered greater service to the cause of freedom than Major Stearns in the great struggle between invading slave-holders and the free settlers of Kansas. He has done the work of a true man,-- Crown him, honor him, love him. Weep, over him, tears of woman, Stoop manliest brows above him! O dusky mothers and daughters, Vigils of mourning keep for him! Up in the mountains, and down by the waters, Lift up your voices and weep for him, For the warmest of hearts is frozen, The freest of hands is still; And the gap in our picked and chosen The long years may not fill. No duty could overtask him, No need his will outrun; Or ever our lips could ask him, His hands the work had done. He forgot his own soul for others, Himself to his neighbor lending; He found the Lord in his suffering brothers, And not in the clouds descending. So the bed was sweet to die on, Whence he saw the doors wide swung Against whose bolted iron The strength of his life was flung.