Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide Between the right and wrong; but give the heart

The freedom of its fair inheritance;
Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved
so long,

At Nature's table feast his ear and eye
With joy and wonder; let all harmonies 140
Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon
The princely guest, whether in soft attire
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil,
And, lending life to the dead form of faith,
Give human nature reverence for the sake
Of One who bore it, making it divine
With the ineffable tenderness of God;
Let common need, the brotherhood of
prayer,

149

The heirship of an unknown destiny,
The unsolved mystery round about us, make
A man more precious than the gold of Ophir.
Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things
Should minister, as outward types and signs
Of the eternal beauty which fulfils
The one great purpose of creation, Love,
The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven!

All hearts to her inclining;

Not less for him his household light That others share its shining.'

460

170

·

10

1 See the note on Longfellow's Evangeline,' p. 121. Whittier wrote to Mrs. Fields in November, 1870: You know that a thousand of the Acadians were distributed among the towns of Massachusetts, where they were mostly treated as paupers.' In the letter already quoted in the note on Evangeline, he says: The children were bound out to the families in the localities in which they resided; and I wrote a poem upon finding, in the records of Haverhill, the indenture that bound an Acadian girl as a servant in one of the families of that neighborhood. Gathering the story of her death, I wrote "Marguerite."'