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Title: Anti-Slavery Poems 1.

Author: John Greenleaf Whittier

Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9575]

Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9575

Credits: This eBook was produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 1. ***

This eBook was produced by David Widger

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

BY

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

CONTENTS:

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS:

TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE THE SLAVE-SHIPS EXPOSTULATION HYMN: "THOU, WHOSE PRESENCE WENT BEFORE" THE YANKEE GIRL THE HUNTERS OF MEN STANZAS FOR THE TIMES CLERICAL OPPRESSORS A SUMMONS TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS THE MORAL WARFARE RITNER THE PASTORAL LETTER HYMN: "O HOLY FATHER! JUST AND TRUE" THE FAREWELL OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER PENNSYLVANIA HALL THE NEW YEAR THE RELIC THE WORLD'S CONVENTION MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN

TEXAS

VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND

TO FANEUIL HALL

TO MASSACHUSETTS

NEW HAMPSHIRE

THE PINE-TREE

TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN

AT WASHINGTON

THE BRANDED HAND

THE FREED ISLANDS

A LETTER

LINES FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND

DANIEL NEALL

SONG OF SLAVES IN THE DESERT

To DELAWARE

YORKTOWN

RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE

THE LOST STATESMAN

THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE

THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS

PAEAN

THE CRISIS

LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER

DERNE A SABBATH SCENE IN THE EVIL DAY MOLOCH IN STATE STREET OFFICIAL PIETY THE RENDITION ARISEN AT LAST THE HASCHISH FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH, IN KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN BURIAL OF BARBER TO PENNSYLVANIA LE MARAIS DU CYGNE. THE PASS OF THE SIERRA A SONG FOR THE TIME WHAT OF THE DAY? A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS THE PANORAMA ON A PRAYER-BOOK THE SUMMONS TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD

IN WAR TIME. TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND HARRIET W. SEWALL THY WILL BE DONE A WORD FOR THE HOUR "EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT" TO JOHN C. FREMONT THE WATCHERS TO ENGLISHMEN MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS AT PORT ROYAL ASTRAEA AT THE CAPITOL THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862 OF ST. HELENA'S ISLAND, S. C. THE PROCLAMATION ANNIVERSARY POEM BARBARA FRIETCHIE HAT THE BIRDS SAID THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATRA LADS DEO! HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPATION AT NEWBURYPORT

AFTER THE WAR. THE PEACE AUTUMN TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG HOWARD AT ATLANTA THE EMANCIPATION GROUP THE JUBILEE SINGERS GARRISON

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM:

THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME DEMOCRACY THE GALLOWS SEED-TIME AND HARVEST TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND THE HUMAN SACRIFICE SONGS OF LABOR DEDICATION THE SHOEMAKERS THE FISHERMEN THE LUMBERMEN THE SHIP-BUILDERS THE DROVERS THE HUSKERS THE REFORMER THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS THE PRISONER FOR DEBT THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS THE MEN OF OLD TO PIUS IX. CALEF IN BOSTON OUR STATE THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES THE PEACE OF EUROPE ASTRAEA THE DISENTHRALLED THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY THE DREAM OF PIO NONO THE VOICES THE NEW EXODUS THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND THE EVE OF ELECTION FROM PERUGIA ITALY FREEDOM IN BRAZIL AFTER ELECTION DISARMAMENT THE PROBLEM OUR COUNTRY ON THE BIG HORN

NOTES

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

……….

TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

CHAMPION of those who groan beneath

Oppression's iron hand

In view of penury, hate, and death,

I see thee fearless stand.

Still bearing up thy lofty brow,

In the steadfast strength of truth,

In manhood sealing well the vow

And promise of thy youth.

Go on, for thou hast chosen well;

On in the strength of God!

Long as one human heart shall swell

Beneath the tyrant's rod.

Speak in a slumbering nation's ear,

As thou hast ever spoken,

Until the dead in sin shall hear,

The fetter's link be broken!

I love thee with a brother's love,

I feel my pulses thrill,

To mark thy spirit soar above

The cloud of human ill.

My heart hath leaped to answer thine,

And echo back thy words,

As leaps the warrior's at the shine

And flash of kindred swords!

They tell me thou art rash and vain,

A searcher after fame;

That thou art striving but to gain

A long-enduring name;

That thou hast nerved the Afric's hand

And steeled the Afric's heart,

To shake aloft his vengeful brand,

And rend his chain apart.

Have I not known thee well, and read

Thy mighty purpose long?

And watched the trials which have made

Thy human spirit strong?

And shall the slanderer's demon breath

Avail with one like me,

To dim the sunshine of my faith

And earnest trust in thee?

Go on, the dagger's point may glare

Amid thy pathway's gloom;

The fate which sternly threatens there

Is glorious martyrdom

Then onward with a martyr's zeal;

And wait thy sure reward

When man to man no more shall kneel,

And God alone be Lord!

1832.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the plantation "de Libertas," belonging to M. Bayou. When the rising of the negroes took place, in 1791, Toussaint refused to join them until he had aided M. Bayou and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man had discovered in Toussaint many noble qualities, and had instructed him in some of the first branches of education; and the preservation of his life was owing to the negro's gratitude for this kindness. In 1797, Toussaint L'Ouverture was appointed, by the French government, General-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, and, as such, signed the Convention with General Maitland for the evacuation of the island by the British. From this period, until 1801, the island, under the government of Toussaint, was happy, tranquil, and prosperous. The miserable attempt of Napoleon to re-establish slavery in St. Domingo, although it failed of its intended object, proved fatal to the negro chieftain. Treacherously seized by Leclerc, he was hurried on board a vessel by night, and conveyed to France, where he was confined in a cold subterranean dungeon, at Besancon, where, in April, 1803, he died. The treatment of Toussaint finds a parallel only in the murder of the Duke D'Enghien. It was the remark of Godwin, in his Lectures, that the West India Islands, since their first discovery by Columbus, could not boast of a single name which deserves comparison with that of Toussaint L'Ouverture.

'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight smile

With which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed down

Its beauty on the Indian isle,—

On broad green field and white-walled town;

And inland waste of rock and wood,

In searching sunshine, wild and rude,

Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam,

Soft as the landscape of a dream.

All motionless and dewy wet,

Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met

The myrtle with its snowy bloom,

Crossing the nightshade's solemn gloom,—

The white cecropia's silver rind

Relieved by deeper green behind,

The orange with its fruit of gold,

The lithe paullinia's verdant fold,

The passion-flower, with symbol holy,

Twining its tendrils long and lowly,

The rhexias dark, and cassia tall,

And proudly rising over all,

The kingly palm's imperial stem,

Crowned with its leafy diadem,

Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade,

The fiery-winged cucullo played!

How lovely was thine aspect, then,

Fair island of the Western Sea

Lavish of beauty, even when

Thy brutes were happier than thy men,

For they, at least, were free!

Regardless of thy glorious clime,

Unmindful of thy soil of flowers,

The toiling negro sighed, that Time

No faster sped his hours.

For, by the dewy moonlight still,

He fed the weary-turning mill,

Or bent him in the chill morass,

To pluck the long and tangled grass,

And hear above his scar-worn back

The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack

While in his heart one evil thought

In solitary madness wrought,

One baleful fire surviving still

The quenching of the immortal mind,

One sterner passion of his kind,

Which even fetters could not kill,

The savage hope, to deal, erelong,

A vengeance bitterer than his wrong!

Hark to that cry! long, loud, and shrill,

From field and forest, rock and hill,

Thrilling and horrible it rang,

Around, beneath, above;

The wild beast from his cavern sprang,

The wild bird from her grove!

Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony

Were mingled in that midnight cry;

But like the lion's growl of wrath,

When falls that hunter in his path

Whose barbed arrow, deeply set,

Is rankling in his bosom yet,

It told of hate, full, deep, and strong,

Of vengeance kindling out of wrong;

It was as if the crimes of years—

The unrequited toil, the tears,

The shame and hate, which liken well

Earth's garden to the nether hell—

Had found in nature's self a tongue,

On which the gathered horror hung;

As if from cliff, and stream, and glen

Burst on the' startled ears of men

That voice which rises unto God,

Solemn and stern,—the cry of blood!

It ceased, and all was still once more,

Save ocean chafing on his shore,

The sighing of the wind between

The broad banana's leaves of green,

Or bough by restless plumage shook,

Or murmuring voice of mountain brook.

Brief was the silence. Once again

Pealed to the skies that frantic yell,

Glowed on the heavens a fiery stain,

And flashes rose and fell;

And painted on the blood-red sky,

Dark, naked arms were tossed on high;

And, round the white man's lordly hall,

Trod, fierce and free, the brute he made;

And those who crept along the wall,

And answered to his lightest call

With more than spaniel dread,

The creatures of his lawless beck,

Were trampling on his very neck

And on the night-air, wild and clear,

Rose woman's shriek of more than fear;

For bloodied arms were round her thrown,

And dark cheeks pressed against her own!

Where then was he whose fiery zeal

Had taught the trampled heart to feel,

Until despair itself grew strong,

And vengeance fed its torch from wrong?

Now, when the thunderbolt is speeding;

Now, when oppression's heart is bleeding;

Now, when the latent curse of Time

Is raining down in fire and blood,

That curse which, through long years of crime,

Has gathered, drop by drop, its flood,—

Why strikes he not, the foremost one,

Where murder's sternest deeds are done?

He stood the aged palms beneath,

That shadowed o'er his humble door,

Listening, with half-suspended breath,

To the wild sounds of fear and death,

Toussaint L'Ouverture!

What marvel that his heart beat high!

The blow for freedom had been given,

And blood had answered to the cry

Which Earth sent up to Heaven!

What marvel that a fierce delight

Smiled grimly o'er his brow of night,

As groan and shout and bursting flame

Told where the midnight tempest came,

With blood and fire along its van,

And death behind! he was a Man!

Yes, dark-souled chieftain! if the light

Of mild Religion's heavenly ray

Unveiled not to thy mental sight

The lowlier and the purer way,

In which the Holy Sufferer trod,

Meekly amidst the sons of crime;

That calm reliance upon God

For justice in His own good time;

That gentleness to which belongs

Forgiveness for its many wrongs,

Even as the primal martyr, kneeling

For mercy on the evil-dealing;

Let not the favored white man name

Thy stern appeal, with words of blame.

Then, injured Afric! for the shame

Of thy own daughters, vengeance came

Full on the scornful hearts of those,

Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes,

And to thy hapless children gave

One choice,—pollution or the grave!

Has he not, with the light of heaven

Broadly around him, made the same?

Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven,

And gloried in his ghastly shame?

Kneeling amidst his brother's blood,

To offer mockery unto God,

As if the High and Holy One

Could smile on deeds of murder done!

As if a human sacrifice

Were purer in His holy eyes,

Though offered up by Christian hands,

Than the foul rites of Pagan lands!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Sternly, amidst his household band,

His carbine grasped within his hand,

The white man stood, prepared and still,

Waiting the shock of maddened men,

Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when

The horn winds through their caverned hill.

And one was weeping in his sight,

The sweetest flower of all the isle,

The bride who seemed but yesternight

Love's fair embodied smile.

And, clinging to her trembling knee,

Looked up the form of infancy,

With tearful glance in either face

The secret of its fear to trace.

"Ha! stand or die!" The white man's eye

His steady musket gleamed along,

As a tall Negro hastened nigh,

With fearless step and strong.

"What, ho, Toussaint!" A moment more,

His shadow crossed the lighted floor.

"Away!" he shouted; "fly with me,

The white man's bark is on the sea;

Her sails must catch the seaward wind,

For sudden vengeance sweeps behind.

Our brethren from their graves have spoken,

The yoke is spurned, the chain is broken;

On all the bills our fires are glowing,

Through all the vales red blood is flowing

No more the mocking White shall rest

His foot upon the Negro's breast;

No more, at morn or eve, shall drip

The warm blood from the driver's whip

Yet, though Toussaint has vengeance sworn

For all the wrongs his race have borne,

Though for each drop of Negro blood

The white man's veins shall pour a flood;

Not all alone the sense of ill

Around his heart is lingering still,

Nor deeper can the white man feel

The generous warmth of grateful zeal.

Friends of the Negro! fly with me,

The path is open to the sea:

Away, for life!" He spoke, and pressed

The young child to his manly breast,

As, headlong, through the cracking cane,

Down swept the dark insurgent train,

Drunken and grim, with shout and yell

Howled through the dark, like sounds from hell.

Far out, in peace, the white man's sail

Swayed free before the sunrise gale.

Cloud-like that island hung afar,

Along the bright horizon's verge,

O'er which the curse of servile war

Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge;

And he, the Negro champion, where

In the fierce tumult struggled he?

Go trace him by the fiery glare

Of dwellings in the midnight air,

The yells of triumph and despair,

The streams that crimson to the sea!

Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb,

Beneath Besancon's alien sky,

Dark Haytien! for the time shall come,

Yea, even now is nigh,

When, everywhere, thy name shall be

Redeemed from color's infamy;

And men shall learn to speak of thee

As one of earth's great spirits, born

In servitude, and nursed in scorn,

Casting aside the weary weight

And fetters of its low estate,

In that strong majesty of soul

Which knows no color, tongue, or clime,

Which still hath spurned the base control

Of tyrants through all time!

Far other hands than mine may wreathe

The laurel round thy brow of death,

And speak thy praise, as one whose word

A thousand fiery spirits stirred,

Who crushed his foeman as a worm,

Whose step on human hearts fell firm:

Be mine the better task to find

A tribute for thy lofty mind,

Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shone

Some milder virtues all thine own,

Some gleams of feeling pure and warm,

Like sunshine on a sky of storm,

Proofs that the Negro's heart retains

Some nobleness amid its chains,—

That kindness to the wronged is never

Without its excellent reward,

Holy to human-kind and ever

Acceptable to God.

1833.

THE SLAVE-SHIPS.

"That fatal, that perfidious bark,

Built I' the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."

MILTON'S Lycidas.

"The French ship Le Rodeur, with a crew of twenty-two men, and with one hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from Bonny, in Africa, April, 1819. On approaching the line, a terrible malady broke out,—an obstinate disease of the eyes,—contagious, and altogether beyond the resources of medicine. It was aggravated by the scarcity of water among the slaves (only half a wine-glass per day being allowed to an individual), and by the extreme impurity of the air in which they breathed. By the advice of the physician, they were brought upon deck occasionally; but some of the poor wretches, locking themselves in each other's arms, leaped overboard, in the hope, which so universally prevails among them, of being swiftly transported to their own homes in Africa. To check this, the captain ordered several who were stopped in the attempt to be shot, or hanged, before their companions. The disease extended to the crew; and one after another were smitten with it, until only one remained unaffected. Yet even this dreadful condition did not preclude calculation: to save the expense of supporting slaves rendered unsalable, and to obtain grounds for a claim against the underwriters, thirty-six of the negroes, having become blind, were thrown into the sea and drowned!" Speech of M. Benjamin Constant, in the French Chamber of Deputies, June 17, 1820.

In the midst of their dreadful fears lest the solitary individual, whose sight remained unaffected, should also be seized with the malady, a sail was discovered. It was the Spanish slaver, Leon. The same disease had been there; and, horrible to tell, all the crew had become blind! Unable to assist each other, the vessels parted. The Spanish ship has never since been heard of. The Rodeur reached Guadaloupe on the 21st of June; the only man who had escaped the disease, and had thus been enabled to steer the slaver into port, caught it in three days after its arrival.— Bibliotheque Ophthalmologique for November, 1819.

"ALL ready?" cried the captain;

"Ay, ay!" the seamen said;

"Heave up the worthless lubbers,—

The dying and the dead."

Up from the slave-ship's prison

Fierce, bearded heads were thrust:

"Now let the sharks look to it,—

Toss up the dead ones first!"

Corpse after corpse came up,

Death had been busy there;

Where every blow is mercy,

Why should the spoiler spare?

Corpse after corpse they cast

Sullenly from the ship,

Yet bloody with the traces

Of fetter-link and whip.

Gloomily stood the captain,

With his arms upon his breast,

With his cold brow sternly knotted,

And his iron lip compressed.

"Are all the dead dogs over?"

Growled through that matted lip;

"The blind ones are no better,

Let's lighten the good ship."

Hark! from the ship's dark bosom,

The very sounds of hell!

The ringing clank of iron,

The maniac's short, sharp yell!

The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled;

The starving infant's moan,

The horror of a breaking heart

Poured through a mother's groan.

Up from that loathsome prison

The stricken blind ones cane

Below, had all been darkness,

Above, was still the same.

Yet the holy breath of heaven

Was sweetly breathing there,

And the heated brow of fever

Cooled in the soft sea air.

"Overboard with them, shipmates!"

Cutlass and dirk were plied;

Fettered and blind, one after one,

Plunged down the vessel's side.

The sabre smote above,

Beneath, the lean shark lay,

Waiting with wide and bloody jaw

His quick and human prey.

God of the earth! what cries

Rang upward unto thee?

Voices of agony and blood,

From ship-deck and from sea.

The last dull plunge was heard,

The last wave caught its stain,

And the unsated shark looked up

For human hearts in vain.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Red glowed the western waters,

The setting sun was there,

Scattering alike on wave and cloud

His fiery mesh of hair.

Amidst a group in blindness,

A solitary eye

Gazed, from the burdened slaver's deck,

Into that burning sky.

"A storm," spoke out the gazer,

"Is gathering and at hand;

Curse on 't, I'd give my other eye

For one firm rood of land."

And then he laughed, but only

His echoed laugh replied,

For the blinded and the suffering

Alone were at his side.

Night settled on the waters,

And on a stormy heaven,

While fiercely on that lone ship's track

The thunder-gust was driven.

"A sail!—thank God, a sail!"

And as the helmsman spoke,

Up through the stormy murmur

A shout of gladness broke.

Down came the stranger vessel,

Unheeding on her way,

So near that on the slaver's deck

Fell off her driven spray.

"Ho! for the love of mercy,

We're perishing and blind!"

A wail of utter agony

Came back upon the wind.

"Help us! for we are stricken

With blindness every one;

Ten days we've floated fearfully,

Unnoting star or sun.

Our ship 's the slaver Leon,—

We've but a score on board;

Our slaves are all gone over,—

Help, for the love of God!"

On livid brows of agony

The broad red lightning shone;

But the roar of wind and thunder

Stifled the answering groan;

Wailed from the broken waters

A last despairing cry,

As, kindling in the stormy' light,

The stranger ship went by.

. . . . . . . . .

In the sunny Guadaloupe

A dark-hulled vessel lay,

With a crew who noted never

The nightfall or the day.

The blossom of the orange

Was white by every stream,

And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird

Were in the warns sunbeam.

And the sky was bright as ever,

And the moonlight slept as well,

On the palm-trees by the hillside,

And the streamlet of the dell:

And the glances of the Creole

Were still as archly deep,

And her smiles as full as ever

Of passion and of sleep.

But vain were bird and blossom,

The green earth and the sky,

And the smile of human faces,

To the slaver's darkened eye;

At the breaking of the morning,

At the star-lit evening time,

O'er a world of light and beauty

Fell the blackness of his crime.

1834.

EXPOSTULATION.

Dr. Charles Follen, a German patriot, who had come to America for the freedom which was denied him in his native land, allied himself with the abolitionists, and at a convention of delegates from all the anti- slavery organizations in New England, held at Boston in May, 1834, was chairman of a committee to prepare an address to the people of New England. Toward the close of the address occurred the passage which suggested these lines. "The despotism which our fathers could not bear in their native country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her reformed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the United States—the free United States, which could not bear the bonds of a king—cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?" —Dr. Follen's Address.

"Genius of America!—Spirit of our free institutions!—where art thou? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! son of the morning,—how art thou fallen from Heaven! Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming! The kings of the earth cry out to thee, Aha! Aha! Art thou become like unto us?"—Speech of Samuel J. May.

OUR fellow-countrymen in chains!

Slaves, in a land of light and law!

Slaves, crouching on the very plains

Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!

A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood,

A. wail where Camden's martyrs fell,

By every shrine of patriot blood,

From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well!

By storied hill and hallowed grot,

By mossy wood and marshy glen,

Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,

And hurrying shout of Marion's men!

The groan of breaking hearts is there,

The falling lash, the fetter's clank!

Slaves, slaves are breathing in that air

Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank!

What, ho! our countrymen in chains!

The whip on woman's shrinking flesh!

Our soil yet reddening with the stains

Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh!

What! mothers from their children riven!

What! God's own image bought and sold!

Americans to market driven,

And bartered as the brute for gold!

Speak! shall their agony of prayer

Come thrilling to our hearts in vain?

To us whose fathers scorned to bear

The paltry menace of a chain;

To us, whose boast is loud and long

Of holy Liberty and Light;

Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong

Plead vainly for their plundered Right?

What! shall we send, with lavish breath,

Our sympathies across the wave,

Where Manhood, on the field of death,

Strikes for his freedom or a grave?

Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung

For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning,

And millions hail with pen and tongue

Our light on all her altars burning?

Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France,

By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's wall,

And Poland, gasping on her lance,

The impulse of our cheering call?

And shall the slave, beneath our eye,

Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain?

And toss his fettered arms on high,

And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain?

Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be

A refuge for the stricken slave?

And shall the Russian serf go free

By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave?

And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane

Relax the iron hand of pride,

And bid his bondmen cast the chain

From fettered soul and limb aside?

Shall every flap of England's flag

Proclaim that all around are free,

From farthest Ind to each blue crag

That beetles o'er the Western Sea?

And shall we scoff at Europe's kings,

When Freedom's fire is dim with us,

And round our country's altar clings

The damning shade of Slavery's curse?

Go, let us ask of Constantine

To loose his grasp on Poland's throat;

And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line

To spare the struggling Suliote;

Will not the scorching answer come

From turbaned Turk, and scornful Russ

"Go, loose your fettered slaves at home,

Then turn, and ask the like of us!"

Just God! and shall we calmly rest,

The Christian's scorn, the heathen's mirth,

Content to live the lingering jest

And by-word of a mocking Earth?

Shall our own glorious land retain

That curse which Europe scorns to bear?

Shall our own brethren drag the chain

Which not even Russia's menials wear?

Up, then, in Freedom's manly part,

From graybeard eld to fiery youth,

And on the nation's naked heart

Scatter the living coals of Truth!

Up! while ye slumber, deeper yet

The shadow of our fame is growing!

Up! while ye pause, our sun may set

In blood, around our altars flowing!

Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth,

The gathered wrath of God and man,

Like that which wasted Egypt's earth,

When hail and fire above it ran.

Hear ye no warnings in the air?

Feel ye no earthquake underneath?

Up, up! why will ye slumber where

The sleeper only wakes in death?

Rise now for Freedom! not in strife

Like that your sterner fathers saw,

The awful waste of human life,

The glory and the guilt of war:'

But break the chain, the yoke remove,

And smite to earth Oppression's rod,

With those mild arms of Truth and Love,

Made mighty through the living God!

Down let the shrine of Moloch sink,

And leave no traces where it stood;

Nor longer let its idol drink

His daily cup of human blood;

But rear another altar there,

To Truth and Love and Mercy given,

And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's prayer,

Shall call an answer down from Heaven!

1834

HYMN.

Written for the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, at Chatham Street

Chapel, New York, held on the 4th of the seventh month, 1834.

O THOU, whose presence went before

Our fathers in their weary way,

As with Thy chosen moved of yore

The fire by night, the cloud by day!

When from each temple of the free,

A nation's song ascends to Heaven,

Most Holy Father! unto Thee

May not our humble prayer be given?

Thy children all, though hue and form

Are varied in Thine own good will,

With Thy own holy breathings warm,

And fashioned in Thine image still.

We thank Thee, Father! hill and plain

Around us wave their fruits once more,

And clustered vine, and blossomed grain,

Are bending round each cottage door.

And peace is here; and hope and love

Are round us as a mantle thrown,

And unto Thee, supreme above,

The knee of prayer is bowed alone.

But oh, for those this day can bring,

As unto us, no joyful thrill;

For those who, under Freedom's wing,

Are bound in Slavery's fetters still:

For those to whom Thy written word

Of light and love is never given;

For those whose ears have never heard

The promise and the hope of heaven!

For broken heart, and clouded mind,

Whereon no human mercies fall;

Oh, be Thy gracious love inclined,

Who, as a Father, pitiest all!

And grant, O Father! that the time

Of Earth's deliverance may be near,

When every land and tongue and clime

The message of Thy love shall hear;

When, smitten as with fire from heaven,

The captive's chain shall sink in dust,

And to his fettered soul be given

The glorious freedom of the just,

THE YANKEE GIRL.

SHE sings by her wheel at that low cottage-door,

Which the long evening shadow is stretching before,

With a music as sweet as the music which seems

Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams!

How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,

Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!

And lightly and freely her dark tresses play

O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!

Who comes in his pride to that low cottage-door,

The haughty and rich to the humble and poor?

'T is the great Southern planter, the master who waves

His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of slaves.

"Nay, Ellen, for shame! Let those Yankee fools spin,

Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin;

Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,

Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!

"But thou art too lovely and precious a gem

To be bound to their burdens and sullied by them;

For shame, Ellen, shame, cast thy bondage aside,

And away to the South, as my blessing and pride.

"Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong,

But where flowers are blossoming all the year long,

Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,

And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!

"Oh, come to my home, where my servants shall all

Depart at thy bidding and come at thy call;

They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe,

And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law."

"Oh, could ye have seen her—that pride of our girls—

Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,

With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel,

And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!

"Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of gold

Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou halt sold;

Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear

The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!

"And the sky of thy South may be brighter than ours,

And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy' flowers;

But dearer the blast round our mountains which raves,

Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves!

"Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,

With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel;

Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be

In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee!"

1835.

THE HUNTERS OF MEN.

These lines were written when the orators of the American Colonization Society were demanding that the free blacks should be sent to Africa, and opposing Emancipation unless expatriation followed. See the report of the proceedings of the society at its annual meeting in 1834.

HAVE ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain and glen,

Through cane-brake and forest,—the hunting of men?

The lords of our land to this hunting have gone,

As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn;

Hark! the cheer and the hallo! the crack of the whip,

And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip!

All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match,

Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch.

So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain and glen,

Through cane-brake and forest,—the hunting of men!

Gay luck to our hunters! how nobly they ride

In the glow of their zeal, and the strength of their pride!

The priest with his cassock flung back on the wind,

Just screening the politic statesman behind;

The saint and the sinner, with cursing and prayer,

The drunk and the sober, ride merrily there.

And woman, kind woman, wife, widow, and maid,

For the good of the hunted, is lending her aid

Her foot's in the stirrup, her hand on the rein,

How blithely she rides to the hunting of men!

Oh, goodly and grand is our hunting to see,

In this "land of the brave and this home of the free."

Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Georgia to Maine,

All mounting the saddle, all grasping the rein;

Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sin

Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin!

Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at bay

Will our hunters be turned from their purpose and prey?

Will their hearts fail within them? their nerves tremble, when

All roughly they ride to the hunting of men?

Ho! alms for our hunters! all weary and faint,

Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer of the saint.

The horn is wound faintly, the echoes are still,

Over cane-brake and river, and forest and hill.

Haste, alms for our hunters! the hunted once more

Have turned from their flight with their backs to the shore

What right have they here in the home of the white,

Shadowed o'er by our banner of Freedom and Right?

Ho! alms for the hunters! or never again

Will they ride in their pomp to the hunting of men!

Alms, alms for our hunters! why will ye delay,

When their pride and their glory are melting away?

The parson has turned; for, on charge of his own,

Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone?

The politic statesman looks back with a sigh,

There is doubt in his heart, there is fear in his eye.

Oh, haste, lest that doubting and fear shall prevail,

And the head of his steed take the place of the tail.

Oh, haste, ere he leave us! for who will ride then,

For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of men?

1835.

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

The "Times" referred to were those evil times of the pro-slavery meeting in Faneuil Hall, August 21, 1835, in which a demand was made for the suppression of free speech, lest it should endanger the foundation of commercial society.

Is this the land our fathers loved,

The freedom which they toiled to win?

Is this the soil whereon they moved?

Are these the graves they slumber in?

Are we the sons by whom are borne

The mantles which the dead have worn?

And shall we crouch above these graves,

With craven soul and fettered lip?

Yoke in with marked and branded slaves,

And tremble at the driver's whip?

Bend to the earth our pliant knees,

And speak but as our masters please.

Shall outraged Nature cease to feel?

Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow?

Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel,

The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow,

Turn back the spirit roused to save

The Truth, our Country, and the Slave?

Of human skulls that shrine was made,

Round which the priests of Mexico

Before their loathsome idol prayed;

Is Freedom's altar fashioned so?

And must we yield to Freedom's God,

As offering meet, the negro's blood?

Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought

Which well might shame extremest hell?

Shall freemen lock the indignant thought?

Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell?

Shall Honor bleed?—shall Truth succumb?

Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?

No; by each spot of haunted ground,

Where Freedom weeps her children's fall;

By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's mound;

By Griswold's stained and shattered wall;

By Warren's ghost, by Langdon's shade;

By all the memories of our dead.

By their enlarging souls, which burst

The bands and fetters round them set;

By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed

Within our inmost bosoms, yet,

By all above, around, below,

Be ours the indignant answer,—No!

No; guided by our country's laws,

For truth, and right, and suffering man,

Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause,

As Christians may, as freemen can!

Still pouring on unwilling ears

That truth oppression only fears.

What! shall we guard our neighbor still,

While woman shrieks beneath his rod,

And while he tramples down at will

The image of a common God?

Shall watch and ward be round him set,

Of Northern nerve and bayonet?

And shall we know and share with him

The danger and the growing shame?

And see our Freedom's light grow dim,

Which should have filled the world with flame?

And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn,

A world's reproach around us burn?

Is 't not enough that this is borne?

And asks our haughty neighbor more?

Must fetters which his slaves have worn

Clank round the Yankee farmer's door?

Must he be told, beside his plough,

What he must speak, and when, and how?

Must he be told his freedom stands

On Slavery's dark foundations strong;

On breaking hearts and fettered hands,

On robbery, and crime, and wrong?

That all his fathers taught is vain,—

That Freedom's emblem is the chain?

Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn!

False, foul, profane! Go, teach as well

Of holy Truth from Falsehood born!

Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell!

Of Virtue in the arms of Vice!

Of Demons planting Paradise!

Rail on, then, brethren of the South,

Ye shall not hear the truth the less;

No seal is on the Yankee's mouth,

No fetter on the Yankee's press!

From our Green Mountains to the sea,

One voice shall thunder, We are free!

CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.

In the report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in Charleston, S.C., on the 4th of the ninth month, 1835, published in the Courier of that city, it is stated: "The clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene!"

JUST God! and these are they

Who minister at thine altar, God of Right!

Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay

On Israel's Ark of light!

What! preach, and kidnap men?

Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?

Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then

Bolt hard the captive's door?

What! servants of thy own

Merciful Son, who came to seek and save

The homeless and the outcast, fettering down

The tasked and plundered slave!

Pilate and Herod, friends!

Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!

Just God and holy! is that church, which lends

Strength to the spoiler, thine?

Paid hypocrites, who turn

Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book

Of those high words of truth which search and burn

In warning and rebuke;

Feed fat, ye locusts, feed!

And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord

That, from the toiling bondman's utter need,

Ye pile your own full board.

How long, O Lord! how long

Shall such a priesthood barter truth away,

And in Thy name, for robbery and wrong

At Thy own altars pray?

Is not Thy hand stretched forth

Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite?

Shall not the living God of all the earth,

And heaven above, do right?

Woe, then, to all who grind

Their brethren of a common Father down!

To all who plunder from the immortal mind

Its bright and glorious crown!

Woe to the priesthood! woe

To those whose hire is with the price of blood;

Perverting, darkening, changing, as they go,

The searching truths of God!

Their glory and their might

Shall perish; and their very names shall be

Vile before all the people, in the light

Of a world's liberty.

Oh, speed the moment on

When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and Love

And Truth and Right throughout the earth be known

As in their home above.

1836.

A SUMMONS

Written on the adoption of Pinckney's Resolutions in the House of Representatives, and the passage of Calhoun's "Bill for excluding Papers written or printed, touching the subject of Slavery, from the U. S. Post-office," in the Senate of the United States. Mr. Pinckney's resolutions were in brief that Congress had no authority to interfere in any way with slavery in the States; that it ought not to interfere with it in the District of Columbia, and that all resolutions to that end should be laid on the table without printing. Mr. Calhoun's bill made it a penal offence for post-masters in any State, District, or Territory "knowingly to deliver, to any person whatever, any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or other printed paper or pictorial representation, touching the subject of slavery, where, by the laws of the said State, District, or Territory, their circulation was prohibited."

MEN of the North-land! where's the manly spirit

Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?

Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit

Their names alone?

Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us,

Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low,

That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us

To silence now?

Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,

In God's name, let us speak while there is time!

Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,

Silence is crime!

What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors

Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter,

For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us,

God and our charter?

Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters,

Here the false jurist human rights deny,

And in the church, their proud and skilled abettors

Make truth a lie?

Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,

To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood?

And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel

Both man and God?

Shall our New England stand erect no longer,

But stoop in chains upon her downward way,

Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger

Day after day?

Oh no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains;

From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie;

From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,

And clear, cold sky;

From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean

Gnaws with his surges; from the fisher's skiff,

With white sail swaying to the billows' motion

Round rock and cliff;

From the free fireside of her untought farmer;

From her free laborer at his loom and wheel;

From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer,

Rings the red steel;

From each and all, if God hath not forsaken

Our land, and left us to an evil choice,

Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken

A People's voice.

Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it

Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;

And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it

Within her grave.

Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing

By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,

Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,

Revive again.

Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing

Sadly upon us from afar shall smile,

And unto God devout thanksgiving raising

Bless us the while.

Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,

For the deliverance of a groaning earth,

For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,

Let it go forth!

Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter

With all they left ye perilled and at stake?

Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar

The fire awake.

Prayer-strenthened for the trial, come together,

Put on the harness for the moral fight,

And, with the blessing of your Heavenly Father,

Maintain the right

1836.

TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS SHIPLEY.

Thomas Shipley of Philadelphia was a lifelong Christian philanthropist, and advocate of emancipation. At his funeral thousands of colored people came to take their last look at their friend and protector. He died September 17, 1836.

GONE to thy Heavenly Father's rest!

The flowers of Eden round thee blowing,

And on thine ear the murmurs blest

Of Siloa's waters softly flowing!

Beneath that Tree of Life which gives

To all the earth its healing leaves

In the white robe of angels clad,

And wandering by that sacred river,

Whose streams of holiness make glad

The city of our God forever!

Gentlest of spirits! not for thee

Our tears are shed, our sighs are given;

Why mourn to know thou art a free

Partaker of the joys of heaven?

Finished thy work, and kept thy faith

In Christian firmness unto death;

And beautiful as sky and earth,

When autumn's sun is downward going,

The blessed memory of thy worth

Around thy place of slumber glowing!

But woe for us! who linger still

With feebler strength and hearts less lowly,

And minds less steadfast to the will

Of Him whose every work is holy.

For not like thine, is crucified

The spirit of our human pride

And at the bondman's tale of woe,

And for the outcast and forsaken,

Not warm like thine, but cold and slow,

Our weaker sympathies awaken.

Darkly upon our struggling way

The storm of human hate is sweeping;

Hunted and branded, and a prey,

Our watch amidst the darkness keeping,

Oh, for that hidden strength which can

Nerve unto death the inner man

Oh, for thy spirit, tried and true,

And constant in the hour of trial,

Prepared to suffer, or to do,

In meekness and in self-denial.

Oh, for that spirit, meek and mild,

Derided, spurned, yet uncomplaining;

By man deserted and reviled,

Yet faithful to its trust remaining.

Still prompt and resolute to save

From scourge and chain the hunted slave;

Unwavering in the Truth's defence,

Even where the fires of Hate were burning,

The unquailing eye of innocence

Alone upon the oppressor turning!

O loved of thousands! to thy grave,

Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore thee.

The poor man and the rescued slave

Wept as the broken earth closed o'er thee;

And grateful tears, like summer rain,

Quickened its dying grass again!

And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine,

Shall cone the outcast and the lowly,

Of gentle deeds and words of thine

Recalling memories sweet and holy!

Oh, for the death the righteous die!

An end, like autumn's day declining,

On human hearts, as on the sky,

With holier, tenderer beauty shining;

As to the parting soul were given

The radiance of an opening heaven!

As if that pure and blessed light,

From off the Eternal altar flowing,

Were bathing, in its upward flight,

The spirit to its worship going!

1836.

THE MORAL WARFARE.

WHEN Freedom, on her natal day,

Within her war-rocked cradle lay,

An iron race around her stood,

Baptized her infant brow in blood;

And, through the storm which round her swept,

Their constant ward and watching kept.

Then, where our quiet herds repose,

The roar of baleful battle rose,

And brethren of a common tongue

To mortal strife as tigers sprung,

And every gift on Freedom's shrine

Was man for beast, and blood for wine!

Our fathers to their graves have gone;

Their strife is past, their triumph won;

But sterner trials wait the race

Which rises in their honored place;

A moral warfare with the crime

And folly of an evil time.

So let it be. In God's own might

We gird us for the coming fight,

And, strong in Him whose cause is ours

In conflict with unholy powers,

We grasp the weapons He has given,—

The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven.

1836.

RITNER.

Written on reading the Message of Governor Ritner, of Pennsylvania, 1836. The fact redounds to the credit and serves to perpetuate the memory of the independent farmer and high-souled statesman, that he alone of all the Governors of the Union in 1836 met the insulting demands and menaces of the South in a manner becoming a freeman and hater of Slavery, in his message to the Legislature of Pennsylvania.

THANK God for the token! one lip is still free,

One spirit untrammelled, unbending one knee!

Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted and firm,

Erect, when the multitude bends to the storm;

When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, and God,

Are bowed at an Idol polluted with blood;

When the recreant North has forgotten her trust,

And the lip of her honor is low in the dust,—

Thank God, that one arm from the shackle has broken!

Thank God, that one man as a freeman has spoken!

O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has been blown!

Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the murmur has gone!

To the land of the South, of the charter and chain,

Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's pain;

Where the cant of Democracy dwells on the lips

Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders of whips!

Where "chivalric" honor means really no more

Than scourging of women, and robbing the poor!

Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth on high,

And the words which he utters, are—Worship, or die!

Right onward, oh, speed it! Wherever the blood

Of the wronged and the guiltless is crying to God;

Wherever a slave in his fetters is pining;

Wherever the lash of the driver is twining;

Wherever from kindred, torn rudely apart,

Comes the sorrowful wail of the broken of heart;

Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind,

In silence and darkness, the God-given mind;

There, God speed it onward! its truth will be felt,

The bonds shall be loosened, the iron shall melt.

And oh, will the land where the free soul of Penn

Still lingers and breathes over mountain and glen;

Will the land where a Benezet's spirit went forth

To the peeled and the meted, and outcast of Earth;

Where the words of the Charter of Liberty first

From the soul of the sage and the patriot burst;

Where first for the wronged and the weak of their kind,

The Christian and statesman their efforts combined;

Will that land of the free and the good wear a chain?

Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be vain?

No, Ritner! her "Friends" at thy warning shall stand

Erect for the truth, like their ancestral band;

Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past time,

Counting coldness injustice, and silence a crime;

Turning back front the cavil of creeds, to unite

Once again for the poor in defence of the Right;

Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full tide of Wrong,

Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges along;

Unappalled by the danger, the shame, and the pain,

And counting each trial for Truth as their gain!

And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true,

Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;

Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert with thine,

On the banks of Swetara, the songs of the Rhine,—

The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to brave

The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave;

Will the sons of such men yield the lords of the South

One brow for the brand, for the padlock one mouth?

They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain,

Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?

No, never! one voice, like the sound in the cloud,

When the roar of the storm waxes loud and more loud,

Wherever the foot of the freeman hath pressed

From the Delaware's marge to the Lake of the West,

On the South-going breezes shall deepen and grow

Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble below!

The voice of a people, uprisen, awake,

Pennsylvania's watchword, with Freedom at stake,

Thrilling up from each valley, flung down from each height,

"Our Country and Liberty! God for the Right!"

THE PASTORAL LETTER

The General Association of Congregational ministers in Massachusetts met at Brookfield, June 27, 1837, and issued a Pastoral Letter to the churches under its care. The immediate occasion of it was the profound sensation produced by the recent public lecture in Massachusetts by Angelina and Sarah Grimke, two noble women from South Carolina, who bore their testimony against slavery. The Letter demanded that "the perplexed and agitating subjects which are now common amongst us… should not be forced upon any church as matters for debate, at the hazard of alienation and division," and called attention to the dangers now seeming "to threaten the female character with widespread and permanent injury."

So, this is all,—the utmost reach

Of priestly power the mind to fetter!

When laymen think, when women preach,

A war of words, a "Pastoral Letter!"

Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes!

Was it thus with those, your predecessors,

Who sealed with racks, and fire, and ropes

Their loving-kindness to transgressors?

A "Pastoral Letter," grave and dull;

Alas! in hoof and horns and features,

How different is your Brookfield bull

From him who bellows from St. Peter's

Your pastoral rights and powers from harm,

Think ye, can words alone preserve them?

Your wiser fathers taught the arm

And sword of temporal power to serve them.

Oh, glorious days, when Church and State

Were wedded by your spiritual fathers!

And on submissive shoulders sat

Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers.

No vile "itinerant" then could mar

The beauty of your tranquil Zion,

But at his peril of the scar

Of hangman's whip and branding-iron.

Then, wholesome laws relieved the Church

Of heretic and mischief-maker,

And priest and bailiff joined in search,

By turns, of Papist, witch, and Quaker

The stocks were at each church's door,

The gallows stood on Boston Common,

A Papist's ears the pillory bore,—

The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman!

Your fathers dealt not as ye deal

With "non-professing" frantic teachers;

They bored the tongue with red-hot steel,

And flayed the backs of "female preachers."

Old Hampton, had her fields a tongue,

And Salem's streets could tell their story,

Of fainting woman dragged along,

Gashed by the whip accursed and gory!

And will ye ask me, why this taunt

Of memories sacred from the scorner?

And why with reckless hand I plant

A nettle on the graves ye honor?

Not to reproach New England's dead

This record from the past I summon,

Of manhood to the scaffold led,

And suffering and heroic woman.

No, for yourselves alone, I turn

The pages of intolerance over,

That, in their spirit, dark and stern,

Ye haply may your own discover!

For, if ye claim the "pastoral right"

To silence Freedom's voice of warning,

And from your precincts shut the light

Of Freedom's day around ye dawning;

If when an earthquake voice of power

And signs in earth and heaven are showing

That forth, in its appointed hour,

The Spirit of the Lord is going

And, with that Spirit, Freedom's light

On kindred, tongue, and people breaking,

Whose slumbering millions, at the sight,

In glory and in strength are waking!

When for the sighing of the poor,

And for the needy, God bath risen,

And chains are breaking, and a door

Is opening for the souls in prison!

If then ye would, with puny hands,

Arrest the very work of Heaven,

And bind anew the evil bands

Which God's right arm of power hath riven;

What marvel that, in many a mind,

Those darker deeds of bigot madness

Are closely with your own combined,

Yet "less in anger than in sadness"?

What marvel, if the people learn

To claim the right of free opinion?

What marvel, if at times they spurn

The ancient yoke of your dominion?

A glorious remnant linger yet,

Whose lips are wet at Freedom's fountains,

The coming of whose welcome feet

Is beautiful upon our mountains!

Men, who the gospel tidings bring

Of Liberty and Love forever,

Whose joy is an abiding spring,

Whose peace is as a gentle river!

But ye, who scorn the thrilling tale

Of Carolina's high-souled daughters,

Which echoes here the mournful wail

Of sorrow from Edisto's waters,

Close while ye may the public ear,

With malice vex, with slander wound them,

The pure and good shall throng to hear,

And tried and manly hearts surround them.

Oh, ever may the power which led

Their way to such a fiery trial,

And strengthened womanhood to tread

The wine-press of such self-denial,

Be round them in an evil land,

With wisdom and with strength from Heaven,

With Miriam's voice, and Judith's hand,

And Deborah's song, for triumph given!

And what are ye who strive with God

Against the ark of His salvation,

Moved by the breath of prayer abroad,

With blessings for a dying nation?

What, but the stubble and the hay

To perish, even as flax consuming,

With all that bars His glorious way,

Before the brightness of His coming?

And thou, sad Angel, who so long

Hast waited for the glorious token,

That Earth from all her bonds of wrong

To liberty and light has broken,—

Angel of Freedom! soon to thee

The sounding trumpet shall be given,

And over Earth's full jubilee

Shall deeper joy be felt in Heaven!

1837.

HYMN

As children of Thy gracious care,

We veil the eye, we bend the knee,

With broken words of praise and prayer,

Father and God, we come to Thee.

For Thou hast heard, O God of Right,

The sighing of the island slave;

And stretched for him the arm of might,

Not shortened that it could not save.

The laborer sits beneath his vine,

The shackled soul and hand are free;

Thanksgiving! for the work is Thine!

Praise! for the blessing is of Thee!

And oh, we feel Thy presence here,

Thy awful arm in judgment bare!

Thine eye bath seen the bondman's tear;

Thine ear hath heard the bondman's prayer.

Praise! for the pride of man is low,

The counsels of the wise are naught,

The fountains of repentance flow;

What hath our God in mercy wrought?

HYMN

Written for the celebration of the third anniversary of British emancipation at the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, first of August, 1837.

O HOLY FATHER! just and true

Are all Thy works and words and ways,

And unto Thee alone are due

Thanksgiving and eternal praise!

As children of Thy gracious care,

We veil the eye, we bend the knee,

With broken words of praise and prayer,

Father and God, we come to Thee.

For Thou hast heard, O God of Right,

The sighing of the island slave;

And stretched for him the arm of might,

Not shortened that it could not save.

The laborer sits beneath his vine,

The shackled soul and hand are free;

Thanksgiving! for the work is Thine!

Praise! for the blessing is of Thee!

And oh, we feel Thy presence here,

Thy awful arm in judgment bare!

Thine eye hath seen the bondman's tear;

Thine ear hath heard the bondman's prayer.

Praise! for the pride of man is low,

The counsels of the wise are naught,

The fountains of repentance flow;

What hath our God in mercy wrought?

Speed on Thy work, Lord God of Hosts

And when the bondman's chain is riven,

And swells from all our guilty coasts

The anthem of the free to Heaven,

Oh, not to those whom Thou hast led,

As with Thy cloud and fire before,

But unto Thee, in fear and dread,

Be praise and glory evermore.

THE FAREWELL OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE.

GONE, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,

Where the noisome insect stings,

Where the fever demon strews

Poison with the falling dews,

Where the sickly sunbeams glare

Through the hot and misty air;

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia's hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

There no mother's eye is near them,

There no mother's ear can hear them;

Never, when the torturing lash

Seams their back with many a gash,

Shall a mother's kindness bless them,

Or a mother's arms caress them.

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia's hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,

From the fields at night they go,

Faint with toil, and racked with pain,

To their cheerless homes again,

There no brother's voice shall greet them;

There no father's welcome meet them.

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia's hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

From the tree whose shadow lay

On their childhood's place of play;

From the cool spring where they drank;

Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank;

From the solemn house of prayer,

And the holy counsels there;

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia's hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone;

Toiling through the weary day,

And at night the spoiler's prey.

Oh, that they had earlier died,

Sleeping calmly, side by side,

Where the tyrant's power is o'er,

And the fetter galls no more

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia's hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

By the holy love He beareth;

By the bruised reed He spareth;

Oh, may He, to whom alone

All their cruel wrongs are known,

Still their hope and refuge prove,

With a more than mother's love.

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia's hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

1838.

PENNSYLVANIA HALL.

Read at the dedication of Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, May 15, 1838. The building was erected by an association of gentlemen, irrespective of sect or party, "that the citizens of Philadelphia should possess a room wherein the principles of Liberty, and Equality of Civil Rights, could be freely discussed, and the evils of slavery fearlessly portrayed." On the evening of the 17th it was burned by a mob, destroying the office of the Pennsylvania Freeman, of which I was editor, and with it my books and papers.

NOT with the splendors of the days of old,

The spoil of nations, and barbaric gold;

No weapons wrested from the fields of blood,

Where dark and stern the unyielding Roman stood,

And the proud eagles of his cohorts saw

A world, war-wasted, crouching to his law;

Nor blazoned car, nor banners floating gay,

Like those which swept along the Appian Way,

When, to the welcome of imperial Rome,

The victor warrior came in triumph home,

And trumpet peal, and shoutings wild and high,

Stirred the blue quiet of the Italian sky;

But calm and grateful, prayerful and sincere,

As Christian freemen only, gathering here,

We dedicate our fair and lofty Hall,

Pillar and arch, entablature and wall,

As Virtue's shrine, as Liberty's abode,

Sacred to Freedom, and to Freedom's God

Far statelier Halls, 'neath brighter skies than these,

Stood darkly mirrored in the AEgean seas,

Pillar and shrine, and life-like statues seen,

Graceful and pure, the marble shafts between;

Where glorious Athens from her rocky hill

Saw Art and Beauty subject to her will;

And the chaste temple, and the classic grove,

The hall of sages, and the bowers of love,

Arch, fane, and column, graced the shores, and gave

Their shadows to the blue Saronic wave;

And statelier rose, on Tiber's winding side,

The Pantheon's dome, the Coliseum's pride,

The Capitol, whose arches backward flung

The deep, clear cadence of the Roman tongue,

Whence stern decrees, like words of fate, went forth

To the awed nations of a conquered earth,

Where the proud Caesars in their glory came,

And Brutus lightened from his lips of flame!

Yet in the porches of Athena's halls,

And in the shadow of her stately walls,

Lurked the sad bondman, and his tears of woe

Wet the cold marble with unheeded flow;

And fetters clanked beneath the silver dome

Of the proud Pantheon of imperious Rome.

Oh, not for hint, the chained and stricken slave,

By Tiber's shore, or blue AEgina's wave,

In the thronged forum, or the sages' seat,

The bold lip pleaded, and the warm heart beat;

No soul of sorrow melted at his pain,

No tear of pity rusted on his chain!

But this fair Hall to Truth and Freedom given,

Pledged to the Right before all Earth and Heaven,

A free arena for the strife of mind,

To caste, or sect, or color unconfined,

Shall thrill with echoes such as ne'er of old

From Roman hall or Grecian temple rolled;

Thoughts shall find utterance such as never yet

The Propylea or the Forum met.

Beneath its roof no gladiator's strife

Shall win applauses with the waste of life;

No lordly lictor urge the barbarous game,

No wanton Lais glory in her shame.

But here the tear of sympathy shall flow,

As the ear listens to the tale of woe;

Here in stern judgment of the oppressor's wrong

Shall strong rebukings thrill on Freedom's tongue,

No partial justice hold th' unequal scale,

No pride of caste a brother's rights assail,

No tyrant's mandates echo from this wall,

Holy to Freedom and the Rights of All!

But a fair field, where mind may close with mind,

Free as the sunshine and the chainless wind;

Where the high trust is fixed on Truth alone,

And bonds and fetters from the soul are thrown;

Where wealth, and rank, and worldly pomp, and might,

Yield to the presence of the True and Right.

And fitting is it that this Hall should stand

Where Pennsylvania's Founder led his band,

From thy blue waters, Delaware!—to press

The virgin verdure of the wilderness.

Here, where all Europe with amazement saw

The soul's high freedom trammelled by no law;

Here, where the fierce and warlike forest-men

Gathered, in peace, around the home of Penn,

Awed by the weapons Love alone had given

Drawn from the holy armory of Heaven;

Where Nature's voice against the bondman's wrong

First found an earnest and indignant tongue;

Where Lay's bold message to the proud was borne;

And Keith's rebuke, and Franklin's manly scorn!

Fitting it is that here, where Freedom first

From her fair feet shook off the Old World's dust,

Spread her white pinions to our Western blast,

And her free tresses to our sunshine cast,

One Hall should rise redeemed from Slavery's ban,

One Temple sacred to the Rights of Man!

Oh! if the spirits of the parted come,

Visiting angels, to their olden home

If the dead fathers of the land look forth

From their fair dwellings, to the things of earth,

Is it a dream, that with their eyes of love,

They gaze now on us from the bowers above?

Lay's ardent soul, and Benezet the mild,

Steadfast in faith, yet gentle as a child,

Meek-hearted Woolman, and that brother-band,

The sorrowing exiles from their "Father land,"

Leaving their homes in Krieshiem's bowers of vine,

And the blue beauty of their glorious Rhine,

To seek amidst our solemn depths of wood

Freedom from man, and holy peace with God;

Who first of all their testimonial gave

Against the oppressor, for the outcast slave,

Is it a dream that such as these look down,

And with their blessing our rejoicings crown?

Let us rejoice, that while the pulpit's door

Is barred against the pleaders for the poor;

While the Church, wrangling upon points of faith,

Forgets her bondmen suffering unto death;

While crafty Traffic and the lust of Gain

Unite to forge Oppression's triple chain,

One door is open, and one Temple free,

As a resting-place for hunted Liberty!

Where men may speak, unshackled and unawed,

High words of Truth, for Freedom and for God.

And when that truth its perfect work hath done,

And rich with blessings o'er our land hath gone;

When not a slave beneath his yoke shall pine,

From broad Potomac to the far Sabine

When unto angel lips at last is given

The silver trump of Jubilee in Heaven;

And from Virginia's plains, Kentucky's shades,

And through the dim Floridian everglades,

Rises, to meet that angel-trumpet's sound,

The voice of millions from their chains unbound;

Then, though this Hall be crumbling in decay,

Its strong walls blending with the common clay,

Yet, round the ruins of its strength shall stand

The best and noblest of a ransomed land—

Pilgrims, like these who throng around the shrine

Of Mecca, or of holy Palestine!

A prouder glory shall that ruin own

Than that which lingers round the Parthenon.

Here shall the child of after years be taught

The works of Freedom which his fathers wrought;

Told of the trials of the present hour,

Our weary strife with prejudice and power;

How the high errand quickened woman's soul,

And touched her lip as with a living coal;

How Freedom's martyrs kept their lofty faith

True and unwavering, unto bonds and death;

The pencil's art shall sketch the ruined Hall,

The Muses' garland crown its aged wall,

And History's pen for after times record

Its consecration unto Freedom's God!

THE NEW YEAR.

Addressed to the Patrons of the Pennsylvania Freeman.

THE wave is breaking on the shore,

The echo fading from the chime

Again the shadow moveth o'er

The dial-plate of time!

O seer-seen Angel! waiting now

With weary feet on sea and shore,

Impatient for the last dread vow

That time shall be no more!

Once more across thy sleepless eye

The semblance of a smile has passed:

The year departing leaves more nigh

Time's fearfullest and last.

Oh, in that dying year hath been

The sum of all since time began;

The birth and death, the joy and pain,

Of Nature and of Man.

Spring, with her change of sun and shower,

And streams released from Winter's chain,

And bursting bud, and opening flower,

And greenly growing grain;

And Summer's shade, and sunshine warm,

And rainbows o'er her hill-tops bowed,

And voices in her rising storm;

God speaking from His cloud!

And Autumn's fruits and clustering sheaves,

And soft, warm days of golden light,

The glory of her forest leaves,

And harvest-moon at night;

And Winter with her leafless grove,

And prisoned stream, and drifting snow,

The brilliance of her heaven above

And of her earth below;

And man, in whom an angel's mind

With earth's low instincts finds abode,

The highest of the links which bind

Brute nature to her God;

His infant eye bath seen the light,

His childhood's merriest laughter rung,

And active sports to manlier might

The nerves of boyhood strung!

And quiet love, and passion's fires,

Have soothed or burned in manhood's breast,

And lofty aims and low desires

By turns disturbed his rest.

The wailing of the newly-born

Has mingled with the funeral knell;

And o'er the dying's ear has gone

The merry marriage-bell.

And Wealth has filled his halls with mirth,

While Want, in many a humble shed,

Toiled, shivering by her cheerless hearth,

The live-long night for bread.

And worse than all, the human slave,

The sport of lust, and pride, and scorn!

Plucked off the crown his Maker gave,

His regal manhood gone!

Oh, still, my country! o'er thy plains,

Blackened with slavery's blight and ban,

That human chattel drags his chains,

An uncreated man!

And still, where'er to sun and breeze,

My country, is thy flag unrolled,

With scorn, the gazing stranger sees

A stain on every fold.

Oh, tear the gorgeous emblem down!

It gathers scorn from every eye,

And despots smile and good men frown

Whene'er it passes by.

Shame! shame! its starry splendors glow

Above the slaver's loathsome jail;

Its folds are ruffling even now

His crimson flag of sale.

Still round our country's proudest hall

The trade in human flesh is driven,

And at each careless hammer-fall

A human heart is riven.

And this, too, sanctioned by the men

Vested with power to shield the right,

And throw each vile and robber den

Wide open to the light.

Yet, shame upon them! there they sit,

Men of the North, subdued and still;

Meek, pliant poltroons, only fit

To work a master's will.

Sold, bargained off for Southern votes,

A passive herd of Northern mules,

Just braying through their purchased throats

Whate'er their owner rules.

And he, [2] the basest of the base,

The vilest of the vile, whose name,

Embalmed in infinite disgrace,

Is deathless in its shame!

A tool, to bolt the people's door

Against the people clamoring there,

An ass, to trample on their floor

A people's right of prayer!

Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast,

Self-pilloried to the public view,

A mark for every passing blast

Of scorn to whistle through;

There let him hang, and hear the boast

Of Southrons o'er their pliant tool,—

A new Stylites on his post,

"Sacred to ridicule!"

Look we at home! our noble hall,

To Freedom's holy purpose given,

Now rears its black and ruined wall,

Beneath the wintry heaven,

Telling the story of its doom,

The fiendish mob, the prostrate law,

The fiery jet through midnight's gloom,

Our gazing thousands saw.

Look to our State! the poor man's right

Torn from him: and the sons of those

Whose blood in Freedom's sternest fight

Sprinkled the Jersey snows,

Outlawed within the land of Penn,

That Slavery's guilty fears might cease,

And those whom God created men

Toil on as brutes in peace.

Yet o'er the blackness of the storm

A bow of promise bends on high,

And gleams of sunshine, soft and warm,

Break through our clouded sky.

East, West, and North, the shout is heard,

Of freemen rising for the right

Each valley hath its rallying word,

Each hill its signal light.

O'er Massachusetts' rocks of gray,

The strengthening light of freedom shines,

Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay,

And Vermont's snow-hung pines!

From Hudson's frowning palisades

To Alleghany's laurelled crest,

O'er lakes and prairies, streams and glades,

It shines upon the West.

Speed on the light to those who dwell

In Slavery's land of woe and sin,

And through the blackness of that bell,

Let Heaven's own light break in.

So shall the Southern conscience quake

Before that light poured full and strong,

So shall the Southern heart awake

To all the bondman's wrong.

And from that rich and sunny land

The song of grateful millions rise,

Like that of Israel's ransomed band

Beneath Arabia's skies:

And all who now are bound beneath

Our banner's shade, our eagle's wing,

From Slavery's night of moral death

To light and life shall spring.

Broken the bondman's chain, and gone

The master's guilt, and hate, and fear,

And unto both alike shall dawn

A New and Happy Year.

1839.

THE RELIC. Written on receiving a cane wrought from a fragment of the wood-work of Pennsylvania Hall which the fire had spared.

TOKEN of friendship true and tried,

From one whose fiery heart of youth

With mine has beaten, side by side,

For Liberty and Truth;

With honest pride the gift I take,

And prize it for the giver's sake.

But not alone because it tells

Of generous hand and heart sincere;

Around that gift of friendship dwells

A memory doubly dear;

Earth's noblest aim, man's holiest thought,

With that memorial frail in wrought!

Pure thoughts and sweet like flowers unfold,

And precious memories round it cling,

Even as the Prophet's rod of old

In beauty blossoming:

And buds of feeling, pure and good,

Spring from its cold unconscious wood.

Relic of Freedom's shrine! a brand

Plucked from its burning! let it be

Dear as a jewel from the hand

Of a lost friend to me!

Flower of a perished garland left,

Of life and beauty unbereft!

Oh, if the young enthusiast bears,

O'er weary waste and sea, the stone

Which crumbled from the Forum's stairs,

Or round the Parthenon;

Or olive-bough from some wild tree

Hung over old Thermopylae:

If leaflets from some hero's tomb,

Or moss-wreath torn from ruins hoary;

Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom

On fields renowned in story;

Or fragment from the Alhambra's crest,

Or the gray rock by Druids blessed;

Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growing

Where Freedom led her stalwart kern,

Or Scotia's "rough bur thistle" blowing

On Bruce's Bannockburn;

Or Runnymede's wild English rose,

Or lichen plucked from Sempach's snows!

If it be true that things like these

To heart and eye bright visions bring,

Shall not far holier memories

To this memorial cling

Which needs no mellowing mist of time

To hide the crimson stains of crime!

Wreck of a temple, unprofaned;

Of courts where Peace with Freedom trod,

Lifting on high, with hands unstained,

Thanksgiving unto God;

Where Mercy's voice of love was pleading

For human hearts in bondage bleeding;

Where, midst the sound of rushing feet

And curses on the night-air flung,

That pleading voice rose calm and sweet

From woman's earnest tongue;

And Riot turned his scowling glance,

Awed, from her tranquil countenance!

That temple now in ruin lies!

The fire-stain on its shattered wall,

And open to the changing skies

Its black and roofless hall,

It stands before a nation's sight,

A gravestone over buried Right!

But from that ruin, as of old,

The fire-scorched stones themselves are crying,

And from their ashes white and cold

Its timbers are replying!

A voice which slavery cannot kill

Speaks from the crumbling arches still!

And even this relic from thy shrine,

O holy Freedom! Hath to me

A potent power, a voice and sign

To testify of thee;

And, grasping it, methinks I feel

A deeper faith, a stronger zeal.

And not unlike that mystic rod,

Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian wave,

Which opened, in the strength of God,

A pathway for the slave,

It yet may point the bondman's way,

And turn the spoiler from his prey.

1839.

THE WORLD'S CONVENTION

OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION, HELD IN LONDON IN 1840.

Joseph Sturge, the founder of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, proposed the calling of a world's anti-slavery convention, and the proposal was promptly seconded by the American Anti-Slavery Society. The call was addressed to "friends of the slave of every nation and of every clime."

YES, let them gather! Summon forth

The pledged philanthropy of Earth.

From every land, whose hills have heard

The bugle blast of Freedom waking;

Or shrieking of her symbol-bird

From out his cloudy eyrie breaking

Where Justice hath one worshipper,

Or truth one altar built to her;

Where'er a human eye is weeping

O'er wrongs which Earth's sad children know;

Where'er a single heart is keeping

Its prayerful watch with human woe

Thence let them come, and greet each other,

And know in each a friend and brother!

Yes, let them come! from each green vale

Where England's old baronial halls

Still bear upon their storied walls

The grim crusader's rusted mail,

Battered by Paynim spear and brand

On Malta's rock or Syria's sand!

And mouldering pennon-staves once set

Within the soil of Palestine,

By Jordan and Gennesaret;

Or, borne with England's battle line,

O'er Acre's shattered turrets stooping,

Or, midst the camp their banners drooping,

With dews from hallowed Hermon wet,

A holier summons now is given

Than that gray hermit's voice of old,

Which unto all the winds of heaven

The banners of the Cross unrolled!

Not for the long-deserted shrine;

Not for the dull unconscious sod,

Which tells not by one lingering sign

That there the hope of Israel trod;

But for that truth, for which alone

In pilgrim eyes are sanctified

The garden moss, the mountain stone,

Whereon His holy sandals pressed,—

The fountain which His lip hath blessed,—

Whate'er hath touched His garment's hem

At Bethany or Bethlehem,

Or Jordan's river-side.

For Freedom in the name of Him

Who came to raise Earth's drooping poor,

To break the chain from every limb,

The bolt from every prison door!

For these, o'er all the earth hath passed

An ever-deepening trumpet blast,

As if an angel's breath had lent

Its vigor to the instrument.

And Wales, from Snowden's mountain wall,

Shall startle at that thrilling call,

As if she heard her bards again;

And Erin's "harp on Tara's wall"

Give out its ancient strain,

Mirthful and sweet, yet sad withal,—

The melody which Erin loves,

When o'er that harp, 'mid bursts of gladness

And slogan cries and lyke-wake sadness,

The hand of her O'Connell moves!

Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill,

And mountain hold, and heathery bill,

Shall catch and echo back the note,

As if she heard upon the air

Once more her Cameronian's prayer

And song of Freedom float.

And cheering echoes shall reply

From each remote dependency,

Where Britain's mighty sway is known,

In tropic sea or frozen zone;

Where'er her sunset flag is furling,

Or morning gun-fire's smoke is curling;

From Indian Bengal's groves of palm

And rosy fields and gales of balm,

Where Eastern pomp and power are rolled

Through regal Ava's gates of gold;

And from the lakes and ancient woods

And dim Canadian solitudes,

Whence, sternly from her rocky throne,

Queen of the North, Quebec looks down;

And from those bright and ransomed Isles

Where all unwonted Freedom smiles,

And the dark laborer still retains

The scar of slavery's broken chains!

From the hoar Alps, which sentinel

The gateways of the land of Tell,

Where morning's keen and earliest glance

On Jura's rocky wall is thrown,

And from the olive bowers of France

And vine groves garlanding the Rhone,—

"Friends of the Blacks," as true and tried

As those who stood by Oge's side,

And heard the Haytien's tale of wrong,

Shall gather at that summons strong;

Broglie, Passy, and he whose song

Breathed over Syria's holy sod,

And, in the paths which Jesus trod,

And murmured midst the hills which hem

Crownless and sad Jerusalem,

Hath echoes whereso'er the tone

Of Israel's prophet-lyre is known.

Still let them come; from Quito's walls,

And from the Orinoco's tide,

From Lima's Inca-haunted halls,

From Santa Fe and Yucatan,—

Men who by swart Guerrero's side

Proclaimed the deathless rights of man,

Broke every bond and fetter off,

And hailed in every sable serf

A free and brother Mexican!

Chiefs who across the Andes' chain

Have followed Freedom's flowing pennon,

And seen on Junin's fearful plain,

Glare o'er the broken ranks of Spain

The fire-burst of Bolivar's cannon!

And Hayti, from her mountain land,

Shall send the sons of those who hurled

Defiance from her blazing strand,

The war-gage from her Petion's hand,

Alone against a hostile world.

Nor all unmindful, thou, the while,

Land of the dark and mystic Nile!

Thy Moslem mercy yet may shame

All tyrants of a Christian name,

When in the shade of Gizeh's pile,

Or, where, from Abyssinian hills

El Gerek's upper fountain fills,

Or where from Mountains of the Moon

El Abiad bears his watery boon,

Where'er thy lotus blossoms swim

Within their ancient hallowed waters;

Where'er is beard the Coptic hymn,

Or song of Nubia's sable daughters;

The curse of slavery and the crime,

Thy bequest from remotest time,

At thy dark Mehemet's decree

Forevermore shall pass from thee;

And chains forsake each captive's limb

Of all those tribes, whose hills around

Have echoed back the cymbal sound

And victor horn of Ibrahim.

And thou whose glory and whose crime

To earth's remotest bound and clime,

In mingled tones of awe and scorn,

The echoes of a world have borne,

My country! glorious at thy birth,

A day-star flashing brightly forth,

The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn!

Oh, who could dream that saw thee then,

And watched thy rising from afar,

That vapors from oppression's fen

Would cloud the upward tending star?

Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which heard,

Awe-struck, the shout which hailed thy dawning,

Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and king,

To mock thee with their welcoming,

Like Hades when her thrones were stirred

To greet the down-cast Star of Morning!

"Aha! and art thou fallen thus?

Art thou become as one of us?"

Land of my fathers! there will stand,

Amidst that world-assembled band,

Those owning thy maternal claim

Unweakened by thy, crime and shame;

The sad reprovers of thy wrong;

The children thou hast spurned so long.

Still with affection's fondest yearning

To their unnatural mother turning.

No traitors they! but tried and leal,

Whose own is but thy general weal,

Still blending with the patriot's zeal

The Christian's love for human kind,

To caste and climate unconfined.

A holy gathering! peaceful all

No threat of war, no savage call

For vengeance on an erring brother!

But in their stead the godlike plan

To teach the brotherhood of man

To love and reverence one another,

As sharers of a common blood,

The children of a common God

Yet, even at its lightest word,

Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred:

Spain, watching from her Moro's keep

Her slave-ships traversing the deep,

And Rio, in her strength and pride,

Lifting, along her mountain-side,

Her snowy battlements and towers,

Her lemon-groves and tropic bowers,

With bitter hate and sullen fear

Its freedom-giving voice shall hear;

And where my country's flag is flowing,

On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing,

Above the Nation's council halls,

Where Freedom's praise is loud and long,

While close beneath the outward walls

The driver plies his reeking thong;

The hammer of the man-thief falls,

O'er hypocritic cheek and brow

The crimson flush of shame shall glow

And all who for their native land

Are pledging life and heart and hand,

Worn watchers o'er her changing weal,

Who fog her tarnished honor feel,

Through cottage door and council-hall

Shall thunder an awakening call.

The pen along its page shall burn

With all intolerable scorn;

An eloquent rebuke shall go

On all the winds that Southward blow;

From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb,

Warning and dread appeal shall come,

Like those which Israel heard from him,

The Prophet of the Cherubim;

Or those which sad Esaias hurled

Against a sin-accursed world!

Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling

Unceasing from its iron wing,

With characters inscribed thereon,

As fearful in the despot's ball

As to the pomp of Babylon

The fire-sign on the palace wall!

And, from her dark iniquities,

Methinks I see my country rise

Not challenging the nations round

To note her tardy justice done;

Her captives from their chains unbound;

Her prisons opening to the sun

But tearfully her arms extending

Over the poor and unoffending;

Her regal emblem now no longer

A bird of prey, with talons reeking,

Above the dying captive shrieking,

But, spreading out her ample wing,

A broad, impartial covering,

The weaker sheltered by the stronger

Oh, then to Faith's anointed eyes

The promised token shall be given;

And on a nation's sacrifice,

Atoning for the sin of years,

And wet with penitential tears,

The fire shall fall from Heaven!

1839.

MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.

Written on reading an account of the proceedings of the citizens of Norfolk, Va., in reference to George Latimer, the alleged fugitive slave, who was seized in Boston without warrant at the request of James B. Grey, of Norfolk, claiming to be his master. The case caused great excitement North and South, and led to the presentation of a petition to Congress, signed by more than fifty thousand citizens of Massachusetts, calling for such laws and proposed amendments to the Constitution as should relieve the Commonwealth from all further participation in the crime of oppression. George Latimer himself was finally given free papers for the sum of four hundred dollars.

THE blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way,

Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay.

No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,

Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel.

No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go;

Around our! silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow;

And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far,

A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are spread for war.

We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy words and high,

Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our sky;

Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes its honest labor here,

No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends his axe in fear.

Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's bank;

Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and dank;

Through storm, and wave, and blinding mist, stout

are the hearts which man

The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.

The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms,

Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms;

Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam,

They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.

What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day

When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?

How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men

Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then?

Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the call

Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from Faneuil Hall?

When, echoing back her Henry's cry, came pulsing on each breath

Of Northern winds, the thrilling sounds of "Liberty or Death!"

What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved

False to their fathers' memory, false to the faith they loved;

If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn,

Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?

We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell;

Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound's yell;

We gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves,

From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves!

Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow;

The spirit of her early time is with her even now;

Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow and calm and cool,

She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister's slave and tool!

All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may,

Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day;

But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone,

And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!

Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air

With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair;

Cling closer to the "cleaving curse" that writes upon your plains

The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains.

Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old,

By watching round the shambles where human flesh is sold;

Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count his market value, when

The maddened mother's cry of woe shall pierce the slaver's den!

Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the Virginia name;

Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with rankest weeds of shame;

Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair universe;

We wash our hands forever of your sin and shame and curse.

A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been,

Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire's mountain men:

The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still

In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.

And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his prey

Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft of gray,

How, through the free lips of the son, the father's warning spoke;

How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke!

A hundred thousand right arms were lifted up on high,

A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud reply;

Through the thronged towns of Essex the startling summons rang,

And up from bench and loom and wheel her young mechanics sprang!

The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of thousands as of one,

The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lexington;

From Norfolk's ancient villages, from Plymouth's rocky bound

To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close her round;

From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose

Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua flows,

To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the mountain larches stir,

Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of "God save Latimer!"

And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray;

And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay

Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,

And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill.

The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and daughters,

Deep calling unto deep aloud, the sound of many waters!

Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand?

No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land!

Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne,

In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn;

You've spurned our kindest counsels; you've hunted for our lives;

And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves!

We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within

The fire-clamps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin;

We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can,

With the strong upward tendencies and godlike soul of man!

But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given

For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven;

No slave-hunt in our borders,—no pirate on our strand!

No fetters in the Bay State,—no slave upon our land!

1843.

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.

In a publication of L. F. Tasistro—Random Shots and Southern Breezes— is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as "A GOOD CHRISTIAN!" It was not uncommon to see advertisements of slaves for sale, in which they were described as pious or as members of the church. In one advertisement a slave was noted as "a Baptist preacher."

A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!

Who bids for God's own image? for his grace,

Which that poor victim of the market-place

Hath in her suffering won?

My God! can such things be?

Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done

Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one

Is even done to Thee?

In that sad victim, then,

Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee stand;

Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,

Bound, sold, and scourged again!

A Christian up for sale!

Wet with her blood your whips, o'ertask her frame,

Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame,

Her patience shall not fail!

A heathen hand might deal

Back on your heads the gathered wrong of years:

But her low, broken prayer and nightly tears,

Ye neither heed nor feel.

Con well thy lesson o'er,

Thou prudent teacher, tell the toiling slave

No dangerous tale of Him who came to save

The outcast and the poor.

But wisely shut the ray

Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart,

And to her darkened mind alone impart

One stern command, Obey! [3]

So shalt thou deftly raise

The market price of human flesh; and while

On thee, their pampered guest, the planters smile,

Thy church shall praise.

Grave, reverend men shall tell

From Northern pulpits how thy work was blest,

While in that vile South Sodom first and best,

Thy poor disciples sell.

Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall,

Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels,

While turning to the sacred Kebla feels

His fetters break and fall.

Cheers for the turbaned Bey

Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath torn

The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne

Their inmates into day:

But our poor slave in vain

Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes;

Its rites will only swell his market price,

And rivet on his chain.

God of all right! how long

Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand,

Lifting in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand

And haughty brow of wrong?

1843

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN

Oh, from the fields of cane,

From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cell;

From the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell,

And coffle's weary chain;

Hoarse, horrible, and strong,

Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,

Filling the arches of the hollow sky,

How long, O God, how long?

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN.

John L. Brown, a young white man of South Carolina, was in 1844 sentenced to death for aiding a young slave woman, whom he loved and had married, to escape from slavery. In pronouncing the sentence Judge O'Neale addressed to the prisoner these words of appalling blasphemy:

You are to die! To die an ignominious death—the death on the gallows! This announcement is, to you, I know, most appalling. Little did you dream of it when you stepped into the bar with an air as if you thought it was a fine frolic. But the consequences of crime are just such as you are realizing. Punishment often comes when it is least expected. Let me entreat you to take the present opportunity to commence the work of reformation. Time will be furnished you to prepare for the great change just before you. Of your past life I know nothing, except what your trial furnished. That told me that the crime for which you are to suffer was the consequence of a want of attention on your part to the duties of life. The strange woman snared you. She flattered you with her word; and you became her victim. The consequence was, that, led on by a desire to serve her, you committed the offence of aid in a slave to run away and depart from her master's service; and now, for it you are to die! You are a young man, and I fear you have been dissolute; and if so, these kindred vices have contributed a full measure to your ruin. Reflect on your past life, and make the only useful devotion of the remnant of your days in preparing for death. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth is the language of inspired wisdom. This comes home appropriately to you in this trying moment. You are young; quite too young to be where you are. If you had remembered your Creator in your past days, you would not now be in a felon's place, to receive a felon's judgment. Still, it is not too late to remember your Creator. He calls early, and He calls late. He stretches out the arms of a Father's love to you—to the vilest sinner—and says: "Come unto me and be saved." You can perhaps read. If so, read the Scriptures; read them without note, and without comment; and pray to God for His assistance; and you will be able to say when you pass from prison to execution, as a poor slave said under similar circumstances: "I am glad my Friday has come." If you cannot read the Scriptures, the ministers of our holy religion will be ready to aid you. They will read and explain to you until you will be able to understand; and understanding, to call upon the only One who can help you and save you—Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. To Him I commend you. And through Him may you have that opening of the Day-Spring of mercy from on high, which shall bless you here, and crown you as a saint in an everlasting world, forever and ever. The sentence of the law is that you be taken hence to the place from whence you came last; thence to the jail of Fairfield District; and that there you be closely and securely confined until Friday, the 26th day of April next; on which day, between the hours of ten in the forenoon and two in the afternoon, you will be taken to the place of public execution, and there be hanged by the neck till your body be dead. And may God have mercy on your soul!

No event in the history of the anti-slavery struggle so stirred the two hemispheres as did this dreadful sentence. A cry of horror was heard from Europe. In the British House of Lords, Brougham and Denman spoke of it with mingled pathos and indignation. Thirteen hundred clergymen and church officers in Great Britain addressed a memorial to the churches of South Carolina against the atrocity. Indeed, so strong was the pressure of the sentiment of abhorrence and disgust that South Carolina yielded to it, and the sentence was commuted to scourging and banishment.

Ho! thou who seekest late and long

A License from the Holy Book

For brutal lust and fiendish wrong,

Man of the Pulpit, look!

Lift up those cold and atheist eyes,

This ripe fruit of thy teaching see;

And tell us how to heaven will rise

The incense of this sacrifice—

This blossom of the gallows tree!

Search out for slavery's hour of need

Some fitting text of sacred writ;

Give heaven the credit of a deed

Which shames the nether pit.

Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him

Whose truth is on thy lips a lie;

Ask that His bright winged cherubim

May bend around that scaffold grim

To guard and bless and sanctify.

O champion of the people's cause

Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke

Of foreign wrong and Old World's laws,

Man of the Senate, look!

Was this the promise of the free,

The great hope of our early time,

That slavery's poison vine should be

Upborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed tree

O'erclustered with such fruits of crime?

Send out the summons East and West,

And South and North, let all be there

Where he who pitied the oppressed

Swings out in sun and air.

Let not a Democratic hand

The grisly hangman's task refuse;

There let each loyal patriot stand,

Awaiting slavery's command,

To twist the rope and draw the noose!

But vain is irony—unmeet

Its cold rebuke for deeds which start

In fiery and indignant beat

The pulses of the heart.

Leave studied wit and guarded phrase

For those who think but do not feel;

Let men speak out in words which raise

Where'er they fall, an answering blaze

Like flints which strike the fire from steel.

Still let a mousing priesthood ply

Their garbled text and gloss of sin,

And make the lettered scroll deny

Its living soul within:

Still let the place-fed, titled knave

Plead robbery's right with purchased lips,

And tell us that our fathers gave

For Freedom's pedestal, a slave,

The frieze and moulding, chains and whips!

But ye who own that Higher Law

Whose tablets in the heart are set,

Speak out in words of power and awe

That God is living yet!

Breathe forth once more those tones sublime

Which thrilled the burdened prophet's lyre,

And in a dark and evil time

Smote down on Israel's fast of crime

And gift of blood, a rain of fire!

Oh, not for us the graceful lay

To whose soft measures lightly move

The footsteps of the faun and fay,

O'er-locked by mirth and love!

But such a stern and startling strain

As Britain's hunted bards flung down

From Snowden to the conquered plain,

Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain,

On trampled field and smoking town.

By Liberty's dishonored name,

By man's lost hope and failing trust,

By words and deeds which bow with shame

Our foreheads to the dust,

By the exulting strangers' sneer,

Borne to us from the Old World's thrones,

And by their victims' grief who hear,

In sunless mines and dungeons drear,

How Freedom's land her faith disowns!

Speak out in acts. The time for words

Has passed, and deeds suffice alone;

In vain against the clang of swords

The wailing pipe is blown!

Act, act in God's name, while ye may!

Smite from the church her leprous limb!

Throw open to the light of day

The bondman's cell, and break away

The chains the state has bound on him!

Ho! every true and living soul,

To Freedom's perilled altar bear

The Freeman's and the Christian's whole

Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer!

One last, great battle for the right—

One short, sharp struggle to be free!

To do is to succeed—our fight

Is waged in Heaven's approving sight;

The smile of God is Victory.

1844.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 1. ***

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Table of Contents

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

CONTENTS:

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS:

DERNE A SABBATH SCENE IN THE EVIL DAY MOLOCH IN STATE STREET OFFICIAL PIETY THE RENDITION ARISEN AT LAST THE HASCHISH FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH, IN KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN BURIAL OF BARBER TO PENNSYLVANIA LE MARAIS DU CYGNE. THE PASS OF THE SIERRA A SONG FOR THE TIME WHAT OF THE DAY? A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS THE PANORAMA ON A PRAYER-BOOK THE SUMMONS TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM:

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

THE SLAVE-SHIPS.

EXPOSTULATION.

HYMN.

THE YANKEE GIRL.

THE HUNTERS OF MEN.

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.

A SUMMONS

TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS SHIPLEY.

THE MORAL WARFARE.

RITNER.

THE PASTORAL LETTER

HYMN

THE FAREWELL OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE.

PENNSYLVANIA HALL.

THE NEW YEAR.

THE WORLD'S CONVENTION

MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN.

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