The Project Gutenberg eBook of Anti-Slavery Poems 2.

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Title: Anti-Slavery Poems 2.

Author: John Greenleaf Whittier

Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9576]

Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9576

Credits: This eBook was produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 2. ***

This eBook was produced by David Widger

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

BY

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

CONTENTS:

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

TEXAS

VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND.

The five poems immediately following indicate the intense feeling of the friends of freedom in view of the annexation of Texas, with its vast territory sufficient, as was boasted, for six new slave States.

Up the hillside, down the glen,

Rouse the sleeping citizen;

Summon out the might of men!

Like a lion growling low,

Like a night-storm rising slow,

Like the tread of unseen foe;

It is coming, it is nigh!

Stand your homes and altars by;

On your own free thresholds die.

Clang the bells in all your spires;

On the gray hills of your sires

Fling to heaven your signal-fires.

From Wachuset, lone and bleak,

Unto Berkshire's tallest peak,

Let the flame-tongued heralds speak.

Oh, for God and duty stand,

Heart to heart and hand to hand,

Round the old graves of the land.

Whoso shrinks or falters now,

Whoso to the yoke would bow,

Brand the craven on his brow!

Freedom's soil hath only place

For a free and fearless race,

None for traitors false and base.

Perish party, perish clan;

Strike together while ye can,

Like the arm of one strong man.

Like that angel's voice sublime,

Heard above a world of crime,

Crying of the end of time;

With one heart and with one mouth,

Let the North unto the South

Speak the word befitting both.

"What though Issachar be strong

Ye may load his back with wrong

Overmuch and over long:

"Patience with her cup o'errun,

With her weary thread outspun,

Murmurs that her work is done.

"Make our Union-bond a chain,

Weak as tow in Freedom's strain

Link by link shall snap in twain.

"Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope

Bind the starry cluster up,

Shattered over heaven's blue cope!

"Give us bright though broken rays,

Rather than eternal haze,

Clouding o'er the full-orbed blaze.

"Take your land of sun and bloom;

Only leave to Freedom room

For her plough, and forge, and loom;

"Take your slavery-blackened vales;

Leave us but our own free gales,

Blowing on our thousand sails.

"Boldly, or with treacherous art,

Strike the blood-wrought chain apart;

Break the Union's mighty heart;

"Work the ruin, if ye will;

Pluck upon your heads an ill

Which shall grow and deepen still.

"With your bondman's right arm bare,

With his heart of black despair,

Stand alone, if stand ye dare!

"Onward with your fell design;

Dig the gulf and draw the line

Fire beneath your feet the mine!

"Deeply, when the wide abyss

Yawns between your land and this,

Shall ye feel your helplessness.

"By the hearth, and in the bed,

Shaken by a look or tread,

Ye shall own a guilty dread.

"And the curse of unpaid toil,

Downward through your generous soil

Like a fire shall burn and spoil.

"Our bleak hills shall bud and blow,

Vines our rocks shall overgrow,

Plenty in our valleys flow;—

"And when vengeance clouds your skies,

Hither shall ye turn your eyes,

As the lost on Paradise!

"We but ask our rocky strand,

Freedom's true and brother band,

Freedom's strong and honest hand;

"Valleys by the slave untrod,

And the Pilgrim's mountain sod,

Blessed of our fathers' God!"

1844.

TO FANEUIL HALL.

Written in 1844, on reading a call by "a Massachusetts Freeman" for a meeting in Faneuil Hall of the citizens of Massachusetts, without distinction of party, opposed to the annexation of Texas, and the aggressions of South Carolina, and in favor of decisive action against slavery.

MEN! if manhood still ye claim,

If the Northern pulse can thrill,

Roused by wrong or stung by shame,

Freely, strongly still;

Let the sounds of traffic die

Shut the mill-gate, leave the stall,

Fling the axe and hammer by;

Throng to Faneuil Hall!

Wrongs which freemen never brooked,

Dangers grim and fierce as they,

Which, like couching lions, looked

On your fathers' way;

These your instant zeal demand,

Shaking with their earthquake-call

Every rood of Pilgrim land,

Ho, to Faneuil Hall!

From your capes and sandy bars,

From your mountain-ridges cold,

Through whose pines the westering stars

Stoop their crowns of gold;

Come, and with your footsteps wake

Echoes from that holy wall;

Once again, for Freedom's sake,

Rock your fathers' hall!

Up, and tread beneath your feet

Every cord by party spun:

Let your hearts together beat

As the heart of one.

Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade,

Let them rise or let them fall:

Freedom asks your common aid,—

Up, to Faneuil Hall!

Up, and let each voice that speaks

Ring from thence to Southern plains,

Sharply as the blow which breaks

Prison-bolts and chains!

Speak as well becomes the free

Dreaded more than steel or ball,

Shall your calmest utterance be,

Heard from Faneuil Hall!

Have they wronged us? Let us then

Render back nor threats nor prayers;

Have they chained our free-born men?

Let us unchain theirs!

Up, your banner leads the van,

Blazoned, "Liberty for all!"

Finish what your sires began!

Up, to Faneuil Hall!

TO MASSACHUSETTS.

WHAT though around thee blazes

No fiery rallying sign?

From all thy own high places,

Give heaven the light of thine!

What though unthrilled, unmoving,

The statesman stand apart,

And comes no warm approving

From Mammon's crowded mart?

Still, let the land be shaken

By a summons of thine own!

By all save truth forsaken,

Stand fast with that alone!

Shrink not from strife unequal!

With the best is always hope;

And ever in the sequel

God holds the right side up!

But when, with thine uniting,

Come voices long and loud,

And far-off hills are writing

Thy fire-words on the cloud;

When from Penobscot's fountains

A deep response is heard,

And across the Western mountains

Rolls back thy rallying word;

Shall thy line of battle falter,

With its allies just in view?

Oh, by hearth and holy altar,

My fatherland, be true!

Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom

Speed them onward far and fast

Over hill and valley speed them,

Like the sibyl's on the blast!

Lo! the Empire State is shaking

The shackles from her hand;

With the rugged North is waking

The level sunset land!

On they come, the free battalions

East and West and North they come,

And the heart-beat of the millions

Is the beat of Freedom's drum.

"To the tyrant's plot no favor

No heed to place-fed knaves!

Bar and bolt the door forever

Against the land of slaves!"

Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it,

The heavens above us spread!

The land is roused,—its spirit

Was sleeping, but not dead!

1844.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.

GOD bless New Hampshire! from her granite peaks

Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.

The long-bound vassal of the exulting South

For very shame her self-forged chain has broken;

Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth,

And in the clear tones of her old time spoken!

Oh, all undreamed-of, all unhoped-for changes

The tyrant's ally proves his sternest foe;

To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges,

New Hampshire thunders an indignant No!

Who is it now despairs? Oh, faint of heart,

Look upward to those Northern mountains cold,

Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag unrolled,

And gather strength to bear a manlier part

All is not lost. The angel of God's blessing

Encamps with Freedom on the field of fight;

Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing,

Unlooked-for allies, striking for the right

Courage, then, Northern hearts! Be firm, be true:

What one brave State hath done, can ye not also do?

1845.

THE PINE-TREE.

Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Resolves of Stephen C. Phillips had been rejected by the Whig Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 1846.

LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State's

rusted shield,

Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner's

tattered field.

Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles

round the board,

Answering England's royal missive with a firm,

"Thus saith the Lord!"

Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle

in array!

What the fathers did of old time we their sons

must do to-day.

Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltry pedler cries; Shall the good State sink her honor that your gambling stocks may rise? Would ye barter man for cotton? That your gains may sum up higher, Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our children through the fire? Is the dollar only real? God and truth and right a dream? Weighed against your lying ledgers must our manhood kick the beam?

O my God! for that free spirit, which of old in

Boston town

Smote the Province House with terror, struck the

crest of Andros down!

For another strong-voiced Adams in the city's

streets to cry,

"Up for God and Massachusetts! Set your feet

on Mammon's lie!

Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton's

latest pound,

But in Heaven's name keep your honor, keep the

heart o' the Bay State sound!"

Where's the man for Massachusetts! Where's

the voice to speak her free?

Where's the hand to light up bonfires from her

mountains to the sea?

Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she dumb

in her despair?

Has she none to break the silence? Has she none

to do and dare?

O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her

rusted shield,

And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner's

tattered field

1840.

TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN.

John C. Calhoun, who had strongly urged the extension of slave territory by the annexation of Texas, even if it should involve a war with England, was unwilling to promote the acquisition of Oregon, which would enlarge the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded as an excuse the peril of foreign complications which he had defied when the interests of slavery were involved.

Is this thy voice whose treble notes of fear

Wail in the wind? And dost thou shake to hear,

Actieon-like, the bay of thine own hounds,

Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their bounds?

Sore-baffled statesman! when thy eager hand,

With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack,

To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land,

Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling back,

These dogs of thine might snuff on Slavery's track?

Where's now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue,

Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' the Senate flung,

O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan,

Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man?

How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting,

And pointing to the lurid heaven afar,

Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting,

Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star!

The Fates are just; they give us but our own;

Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.

There is an Eastern story, not unknown,

Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skill

Called demons up his water-jars to fill;

Deftly and silently, they did his will,

But, when the task was done, kept pouring still.

In vain with spell and charm the wizard wrought,

Faster and faster were the buckets brought,

Higher and higher rose the flood around,

Till the fiends clapped their hands above their master drowned

So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee,

For God still overrules man's schemes, and takes

Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes

The wrath of man to praise Him. It may be,

That the roused spirits of Democracy

May leave to freer States the same wide door

Through which thy slave-cursed Texas entered in,

From out the blood and fire, the wrong and sin,

Of the stormed-city and the ghastly plain,

Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain,

The myriad-handed pioneer may pour,

And the wild West with the roused North combine

And heave the engineer of evil with his mine.

1846.

AT WASHINGTON. Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington, in the 12th month of 1845.

WITH a cold and wintry noon-light

On its roofs and steeples shed,

Shadows weaving with the sunlight

From the gray sky overhead,

Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built

town outspread.

Through this broad street, restless ever,

Ebbs and flows a human tide,

Wave on wave a living river;

Wealth and fashion side by side;

Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick

current glide.

Underneath yon dome, whose coping

Springs above them, vast and tall,

Grave men in the dust are groping

For the largess, base and small,

Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs

which from its table fall.

Base of heart! They vilely barter

Honor's wealth for party's place;

Step by step on Freedom's charter

Leaving footprints of disgrace;

For to-day's poor pittance turning from the great

hope of their race.

Yet, where festal lamps are throwing

Glory round the dancer's hair,

Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowing

Backward on the sunset air;

And the low quick pulse of music beats its measure

sweet and rare.

There to-night shall woman's glances,

Star-like, welcome give to them;

Fawning fools with shy advances

Seek to touch their garments' hem,

With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds which

God and Truth condemn.

From this glittering lie my vision

Takes a broader, sadder range,

Full before me have arisen

Other pictures dark and strange;

From the parlor to the prison must the scene and

witness change.

Hark! the heavy gate is swinging

On its hinges, harsh and slow;

One pale prison lamp is flinging

On a fearful group below

Such a light as leaves to terror whatsoe'er it does

not show.

Pitying God! Is that a woman

On whose wrist the shackles clash?

Is that shriek she utters human,

Underneath the stinging lash?

Are they men whose eyes of madness from that sad

procession flash?

Still the dance goes gayly onward

What is it to Wealth and Pride

That without the stars are looking

On a scene which earth should hide?

That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rocking

on Potomac's tide!

Vainly to that mean Ambition

Which, upon a rival's fall,

Winds above its old condition,

With a reptile's slimy crawl,

Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slave

in anguish call.

Vainly to the child of Fashion,

Giving to ideal woe

Graceful luxury of compassion,

Shall the stricken mourner go;

Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful the

hollow show!

Nay, my words are all too sweeping:

In this crowded human mart,

Feeling is not dead, but sleeping;

Man's strong will and woman's heart,

In the coming strife for Freedom, yet shall bear

their generous part.

And from yonder sunny valleys,

Southward in the distance lost,

Freedom yet shall summon allies

Worthier than the North can boast,

With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling at

severer cost.

Now, the soul alone is willing

Faint the heart and weak the knee;

And as yet no lip is thrilling

With the mighty words, "Be Free!"

Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel, but his

advent is to be!

Meanwhile, turning from the revel

To the prison-cell my sight,

For intenser hate of evil,

For a keener sense of right,

Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City of the

Slaves, to-night!

"To thy duty now and ever!

Dream no more of rest or stay

Give to Freedom's great endeavor

All thou art and hast to-day:"

Thus, above the city's murmur, saith a Voice, or

seems to say.

Ye with heart and vision gifted

To discern and love the right,

Whose worn faces have been lifted

To the slowly-growing light,

Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted slowly

back the murk of night

Ye who through long years of trial Still have held your purpose fast, While a lengthening shade the dial from the westering sunshine cast, And of hope each hour's denial seemed an echo of the last!

O my brothers! O my sisters

Would to God that ye were near,

Gazing with me down the vistas

Of a sorrow strange and drear;

Would to God that ye were listeners to the Voice

I seem to hear!

With the storm above us driving,

With the false earth mined below,

Who shall marvel if thus striving

We have counted friend as foe;

Unto one another giving in the darkness blow for

blow.

Well it may be that our natures

Have grown sterner and more hard,

And the freshness of their features

Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred,

And their harmonies of feeling overtasked and

rudely jarred.

Be it so. It should not swerve us

From a purpose true and brave;

Dearer Freedom's rugged service

Than the pastime of the slave;

Better is the storm above it than the quiet of

the grave.

Let us then, uniting, bury

All our idle feuds in dust,

And to future conflicts carry

Mutual faith and common trust;

Always he who most forgiveth in his brother is

most just.

From the eternal shadow rounding

All our sun and starlight here,

Voices of our lost ones sounding

Bid us be of heart and cheer,

Through the silence, down the spaces, falling on

the inward ear.

Know we not our dead are looking

Downward with a sad surprise,

All our strife of words rebuking

With their mild and loving eyes?

Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloud

their blessed skies?

Let us draw their mantles o'er us

Which have fallen in our way;

Let us do the work before us,

Cheerly, bravely, while we may,

Ere the long night-silence cometh, and with us it is

not day!

THE BRANDED HAND.

Captain Jonathan Walker, of Harwich, Mass., was solicited by several fugitive slaves at Pensacola, Florida, to carry them in his vessel to the British West Indies. Although well aware of the great hazard of the enterprise he attempted to comply with the request, but was seized at sea by an American vessel, consigned to the authorities at Key West, and thence sent back to Pensacola, where, after a long and rigorous confinement in prison, he was tried and sentenced to be branded on his right hand with the letters "S.S." (slave-stealer) and amerced in a heavy fine.

WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray, And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day; With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain.

Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal

cravens aim

To make God's truth thy falsehood, His holiest

work thy shame?

When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the

iron was withdrawn,

How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to

scorn!

They change to wrong the duty which God hath

written out

On the great heart of humanity, too legible for

doubt!

They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from

footsole up to crown,

Give to shame what God hath given unto honor

and renown!

Why, that brand is highest honor! than its traces

never yet

Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon

set;

And thy unborn generations, as they tread our

rocky strand,

Shall tell with pride the story of their father's

branded hand!

As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back-

from Syrian wars

The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimitars,

The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's crimson span,

So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of

God and man.

He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave,

Thou for His living presence in the bound and

bleeding slave;

He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,

Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God.

For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip

o'er him swung,

From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of

slavery wrung,

And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-

deserted shrine,

Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured the

bondman's blood for wine;

While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour

knelt,

And spurned, the while, the temple where a present

Saviour dwelt;

Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prison

shadows dim,

And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!

In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and

wave below,

Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling

schoolmen know;

God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angels

only can,

That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of

heaven is Man!

That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law

and creed,

In the depth of God's great goodness may find

mercy in his need;

But woe to him who crushes the soul with chain

and rod,

And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!

Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman

of the wave!

Its branded palm shall prophesy, "Salvation to

the Slave!"

Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso

reads may feel

His heart swell strong within him, his sinews

change to steel.

Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our

Northern air;

Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God,

look there!

Take it henceforth for your standard, like the

Bruce's heart of yore,

In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand

be seen before!

And the masters of the slave-land shall tremble at

that sign,

When it points its finger Southward along the

Puritan line

Can the craft of State avail them? Can a Christless

church withstand,

In the van of Freedom's onset, the coming of that

band?

1846.

THE FREED ISLANDS. Written for the anniversary celebration of the first of August, at Milton, 7846.

A FEW brief years have passed away

Since Britain drove her million slaves

Beneath the tropic's fiery ray

God willed their freedom; and to-day

Life blooms above those island graves!

He spoke! across the Carib Sea,

We heard the clash of breaking chains,

And felt the heart-throb of the free,

The first, strong pulse of liberty

Which thrilled along the bondman's veins.

Though long delayed, and far, and slow,

The Briton's triumph shall be ours

Wears slavery here a prouder brow

Than that which twelve short years ago

Scowled darkly from her island bowers?

Mighty alike for good or ill

With mother-land, we fully share

The Saxon strength, the nerve of steel,

The tireless energy of will,

The power to do, the pride to dare.

What she has done can we not do?

Our hour and men are both at hand;

The blast which Freedom's angel blew

O'er her green islands, echoes through

Each valley of our forest land.

Hear it, old Europe! we have sworn

The death of slavery. When it falls,

Look to your vassals in their turn,

Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worn,

Your prisons and your palace walls!

O kingly mockers! scoffing show

What deeds in Freedom's name we do;

Yet know that every taunt ye throw

Across the waters, goads our slow

Progression towards the right and true.

Not always shall your outraged poor,

Appalled by democratic crime,

Grind as their fathers ground before;

The hour which sees our prison door

Swing wide shall be their triumph time.

On then, my brothers! every blow

Ye deal is felt the wide earth through;

Whatever here uplifts the low

Or humbles Freedom's hateful foe,

Blesses the Old World through the New.

Take heart! The promised hour draws near;

I hear the downward beat of wings,

And Freedom's trumpet sounding clear

"Joy to the people! woe and fear

To new-world tyrants, old-world kings!"

A LETTER.

Supposed to be written by the chairman of the "Central Clique" at Concord, N. H., to the Hon. M. N., Jr., at Washington, giving the result of the election. The following verses were published in the Boston Chronotype in 1846. They refer to the contest in New Hampshire, which resulted in the defeat of the pro-slavery Democracy, and in the election of John P. Hale to the United States Senate. Although their authorship was not acknowledged, it was strongly suspected. They furnish a specimen of the way, on the whole rather good-natured, in which the liberty-lovers of half a century ago answered the social and political outlawry and mob violence to which they were subjected.

'T is over, Moses! All is lost

I hear the bells a-ringing;

Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host

I hear the Free-Wills singing [4]

We're routed, Moses, horse and foot,

If there be truth in figures,

With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit,

And Hale, and all the "niggers."

Alack! alas! this month or more

We've felt a sad foreboding;

Our very dreams the burden bore

Of central cliques exploding;

Before our eyes a furnace shone,

Where heads of dough were roasting,

And one we took to be your own

The traitor Hale was toasting!

Our Belknap brother [5] heard with awe

The Congo minstrels playing;

At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt [6] saw

The ghost of Storrs a-praying;

And Calroll's woods were sad to see,

With black-winged crows a-darting;

And Black Snout looked on Ossipee,

New-glossed with Day and Martin.

We thought the "Old Man of the Notch"

His face seemed changing wholly—

His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed flat;

His misty hair looked woolly;

And Coos teamsters, shrieking, fled

From the metamorphosed figure.

"Look there!" they said, "the Old Stone Head

Himself is turning nigger!"

The schoolhouse, out of Canaan hauled

Seemed turning on its track again,

And like a great swamp-turtle crawled

To Canaan village back again,

Shook off the mud and settled flat

Upon its underpinning;

A nigger on its ridge-pole sat,

From ear to ear a-grinning.

Gray H——d heard o' nights the sound

Of rail-cars onward faring;

Right over Democratic ground

The iron horse came tearing.

A flag waved o'er that spectral train,

As high as Pittsfield steeple;

Its emblem was a broken chain;

Its motto: "To the people!"

I dreamed that Charley took his bed,

With Hale for his physician;

His daily dose an old "unread

And unreferred" petition. [8]

There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat,

As near as near could be, man;

They leeched him with the "Democrat;"

They blistered with the "Freeman."

Ah! grisly portents! What avail

Your terrors of forewarning?

We wake to find the nightmare Hale

Astride our breasts at morning!

From Portsmouth lights to Indian stream

Our foes their throats are trying;

The very factory-spindles seem

To mock us while they're flying.

The hills have bonfires; in our streets

Flags flout us in our faces;

The newsboys, peddling off their sheets,

Are hoarse with our disgraces.

In vain we turn, for gibing wit

And shoutings follow after,

As if old Kearsarge had split

His granite sides with laughter.

What boots it that we pelted out

The anti-slavery women, [9]

And bravely strewed their hall about

With tattered lace and trimming?

Was it for such a sad reverse

Our mobs became peacemakers,

And kept their tar and wooden horse

For Englishmen and Quakers?

For this did shifty Atherton

Make gag rules for the Great House?

Wiped we for this our feet upon

Petitions in our State House?

Plied we for this our axe of doom,

No stubborn traitor sparing,

Who scoffed at our opinion loom,

And took to homespun wearing?

Ah, Moses! hard it is to scan

These crooked providences,

Deducing from the wisest plan

The saddest consequences!

Strange that, in trampling as was meet

The nigger-men's petition,

We sprang a mine beneath our feet

Which opened up perdition.

How goodly, Moses, was the game

In which we've long been actors,

Supplying freedom with the name

And slavery with the practice

Our smooth words fed the people's mouth,

Their ears our party rattle;

We kept them headed to the South,

As drovers do their cattle.

But now our game of politics

The world at large is learning;

And men grown gray in all our tricks

State's evidence are turning.

Votes and preambles subtly spun

They cram with meanings louder,

And load the Democratic gun

With abolition powder.

The ides of June! Woe worth the day

When, turning all things over,

The traitor Hale shall make his hay

From Democratic clover!

Who then shall take him in the law,

Who punish crime so flagrant?

Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall draw,

A writ against that "vagrant"?

Alas! no hope is left us here,

And one can only pine for

The envied place of overseer

Of slaves in Carolina!

Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink,

And see what pay he's giving!

We've practised long enough, we think,

To know the art of driving.

And for the faithful rank and file,

Who know their proper stations,

Perhaps it may be worth their while

To try the rice plantations.

Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,

To see us southward scamper;

The slaves, we know, are "better off

Than laborers in New Hampshire!"

LINES FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND.

A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire,

A faith which doubt can never dim,

A heart of love, a lip of fire,

O Freedom's God! be Thou to him!

Speak through him words of power and fear,

As through Thy prophet bards of old,

And let a scornful people hear

Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled.

For lying lips Thy blessing seek,

And hands of blood are raised to Thee,

And On Thy children, crushed and weak,

The oppressor plants his kneeling knee.

Let then, O God! Thy servant dare

Thy truth in all its power to tell,

Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear

The Bible from the grasp of hell!

From hollow rite and narrow span

Of law and sect by Thee released,

Oh, teach him that the Christian man

Is holier than the Jewish priest.

Chase back the shadows, gray and old,

Of the dead ages, from his way,

And let his hopeful eyes behold

The dawn of Thy millennial day;

That day when fettered limb and mind

Shall know the truth which maketh free,

And he alone who loves his kind

Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee!

DANIEL NEALL. Dr. Neall, a worthy disciple of that venerated philanthropist, Warner Mifflin, whom the Girondist statesman, Jean Pierre Brissot, pronounced "an angel of mercy, the best man he ever knew," was one of the noble band of Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose bravery was equalled only by their gentleness and tenderness. He presided at the great anti-slavery meeting in Pennsylvania Hall, May 17, 1838, when the Hall was surrounded by a furious mob. I was standing near him while the glass of the windows broken by missiles showered over him, and a deputation from the rioters forced its way to the platform, and demanded that the meeting should be closed at once. Dr. Neall drew up his tall form to its utmost height. "I am here," he said, "the president of this meeting, and I will be torn in pieces before I leave my place at your dictation. Go back to those who sent you. I shall do my duty." Some years after, while visiting his relatives in his native State of Delaware, he was dragged from the house of his friends by a mob of slave-holders and brutally maltreated. He bore it like a martyr of the old times; and when released, told his persecutors that he forgave them, for it was not they but Slavery which had done the wrong. If they should ever be in Philadelphia and needed hospitality or aid, let them call on him.

I.

FRIEND of the Slave, and yet the friend of all;

Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when

The need of battling Freedom called for men

To plant the banner on the outer wall;

Gentle and kindly, ever at distress

Melted to more than woman's tenderness,

Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post

Fronting the violence of a maddened host,

Like some gray rock from which the waves are

tossed!

Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not

The faith of one whose walk and word were

right;

Who tranquilly in Life's great task-field wrought,

And, side by side with evil, scarcely caught

A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white

Prompt to redress another's wrong, his own

Leaving to Time and Truth and Penitence alone.

II.

Such was our friend. Formed on the good old plan,

A true and brave and downright honest man

He blew no trumpet in the market-place,

Nor in the church with hypocritic face

Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace;

Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will

What others talked of while their hands were still;

And, while "Lord, Lord!" the pious tyrants cried,

Who, in the poor, their Master crucified,

His daily prayer, far better understood

In acts than words, was simply doing good.

So calm, so constant was his rectitude,

That by his loss alone we know its worth,

And feel how true a man has walked with us on earth.

6th, 6th month, 1846.

SONG OF SLAVES IN THE DESERT.

"Sebah, Oasis of Fezzan, 10th March, 1846.—This evening the female slaves were unusually excited in singing, and I had the curiosity to ask my negro servant, Said, what they were singing about. As many of them were natives of his own country, he had no difficulty in translating the Mandara or Bornou language. I had often asked the Moors to translate their songs for me, but got no satisfactory account from them. Said at first said, 'Oh, they sing of Rubee' (God). 'What do you mean?' I replied, impatiently. 'Oh, don't you know?' he continued, 'they asked God to give them their Atka?' (certificate of freedom). I inquired, 'Is that all?' Said: 'No; they say, "Where are we going? The world is large. O God! Where are we going? O God!"' I inquired, `What else?' Said: `They remember their country, Bornou, and say, "Bornou was a pleasant country, full of all good things; but this is a bad country, and we are miserable!"' `Do they say anything else?' Said: 'No; they repeat these words over and over again, and add, "O God! give us our Atka, and let us return again to our dear home."'

"I am not surprised I got little satisfaction when I asked the Moors about the songs of their slaves. Who will say that the above words are not a very appropriate song? What could have been more congenially adapted to their then woful condition? It is not to be wondered at that these poor bondwomen cheer up their hearts, in their long, lonely, and painful wanderings over the desert, with words and sentiments like these; but I have often observed that their fatigue and sufferings were too great for them to strike up this melancholy dirge, and many days their plaintive strains never broke over the silence of the desert."— Richardson's Journal in Africa.

WHERE are we going? where are we going,

Where are we going, Rubee?

Lord of peoples, lord of lands,

Look across these shining sands,

Through the furnace of the noon,

Through the white light of the moon.

Strong the Ghiblee wind is blowing,

Strange and large the world is growing!

Speak and tell us where we are going,

Where are we going, Rubee?

Bornou land was rich and good,

Wells of water, fields of food,

Dourra fields, and bloom of bean,

And the palm-tree cool and green

Bornou land we see no longer,

Here we thirst and here we hunger,

Here the Moor-man smites in anger

Where are we going, Rubee?

When we went from Bornou land,

We were like the leaves and sand,

We were many, we are few;

Life has one, and death has two

Whitened bones our path are showing,

Thou All-seeing, thou All-knowing

Hear us, tell us, where are we going,

Where are we going, Rubee?

Moons of marches from our eyes

Bornou land behind us lies;

Stranger round us day by day

Bends the desert circle gray;

Wild the waves of sand are flowing,

Hot the winds above them blowing,—

Lord of all things! where are we going?

Where are we going, Rubee?

We are weak, but Thou art strong;

Short our lives, but Thine is long;

We are blind, but Thou hast eyes;

We are fools, but Thou art wise!

Thou, our morrow's pathway knowing

Through the strange world round us growing,

Hear us, tell us where are we going,

Where are we going, Rubee?

1847.

TO DELAWARE.

Written during the discussion in the Legislature of that State, in the winter of 1846-47, of a bill for the abolition of slavery.

THRICE welcome to thy sisters of the East,

To the strong tillers of a rugged home,

With spray-wet locks to Northern winds released,

And hardy feet o'erswept by ocean's foam;

And to the young nymphs of the golden West,

Whose harvest mantles, fringed with prairie bloom,

Trail in the sunset,—O redeemed and blest,

To the warm welcome of thy sisters come!

Broad Pennsylvania, down her sail-white bay

Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from her plains,

And the great lakes, where echo, free alway,

Moaned never shoreward with the clank of chains,

Shall weave new sun-bows in their tossing spray,

And all their waves keep grateful holiday.

And, smiling on thee through her mountain rains,

Vermont shall bless thee; and the granite peaks,

And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, shall wear

Their snow-crowns brighter in the cold, keen air;

And Massachusetts, with her rugged cheeks

O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn to thee,

When, at thy bidding, the electric wire

Shall tremble northward with its words of fire;

Glory and praise to God! another State is free!

1847.

YORKTOWN.

Dr. Thacher, surgeon in Scammel's regiment, in his description of the siege of Yorktown, says: "The labor on the Virginia plantations is performed altogether by a species of the human race cruelly wrested from their native country, and doomed to perpetual bondage, while their masters are manfully contending for freedom and the natural rights of man. Such is the inconsistency of human nature." Eighteen hundred slaves were found at Yorktown, after its surrender, and restored to their masters. Well was it said by Dr. Barnes, in his late work on Slavery: "No slave was any nearer his freedom after the surrender of Yorktown than when Patrick Henry first taught the notes of liberty to echo among the hills and vales of Virginia."

FROM Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still,

Two lines stretch far o'er vale and hill

Who curbs his steed at head of one?

Hark! the low murmur: Washington!

Who bends his keen, approving glance,

Where down the gorgeous line of France

Shine knightly star and plume of snow?

Thou too art victor, Rochambeau!

The earth which bears this calm array

Shook with the war-charge yesterday,

Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel,

Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel;

October's clear and noonday sun

Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun,

And down night's double blackness fell,

Like a dropped star, the blazing shell.

Now all is hushed: the gleaming lines

Stand moveless as the neighboring pines;

While through them, sullen, grim, and slow,

The conquered hosts of England go

O'Hara's brow belies his dress,

Gay Tarleton's troop rides bannerless:

Shout, from thy fired and wasted homes,

Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes!

Nor thou alone; with one glad voice

Let all thy sister States rejoice;

Let Freedom, in whatever clime

She waits with sleepless eye her time,

Shouting from cave and mountain wood

Make glad her desert solitude,

While they who hunt her quail with fear;

The New World's chain lies broken here!

But who are they, who, cowering, wait

Within the shattered fortress gate?

Dark tillers of Virginia's soil,

Classed with the battle's common spoil,

With household stuffs, and fowl, and swine,

With Indian weed and planters' wine,

With stolen beeves, and foraged corn,—

Are they not men, Virginian born?

Oh, veil your faces, young and brave!

Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier grave

Sons of the Northland, ye who set

Stout hearts against the bayonet,

And pressed with steady footfall near

The moated battery's blazing tier,

Turn your scarred faces from the sight,

Let shame do homage to the right!

Lo! fourscore years have passed; and where

The Gallic bugles stirred the air,

And, through breached batteries, side by side,

To victory stormed the hosts allied,

And brave foes grounded, pale with pain,

The arms they might not lift again,

As abject as in that old day

The slave still toils his life away.

Oh, fields still green and fresh in story,

Old days of pride, old names of glory,

Old marvels of the tongue and pen,

Old thoughts which stirred the hearts of men,

Ye spared the wrong; and over all

Behold the avenging shadow fall!

Your world-wide honor stained with shame,—

Your freedom's self a hollow name!

Where's now the flag of that old war?

Where flows its stripe? Where burns its star?

Bear witness, Palo Alto's day,

Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey,

Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak,

Fleshes the Northern eagle's beak;

Symbol of terror and despair,

Of chains and slaves, go seek it there!

Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks

Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva's banks!

Brave sport to see the fledgling born

Of Freedom by its parent torn!

Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell,

Safe drear Siberia's frozen hell

With Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled,

What of the New World fears the Old?

1847.

RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.

O MOTHER EARTH! upon thy lap

Thy weary ones receiving,

And o'er them, silent as a dream,

Thy grassy mantle weaving,

Fold softly in thy long embrace

That heart so worn and broken,

And cool its pulse of fire beneath

Thy shadows old and oaken.

Shut out from him the bitter word

And serpent hiss of scorning;

Nor let the storms of yesterday

Disturb his quiet morning.

Breathe over him forgetfulness

Of all save deeds of kindness,

And, save to smiles of grateful eyes,

Press down his lids in blindness.

There, where with living ear and eye

He heard Potomac's flowing,

And, through his tall ancestral trees,

Saw autumn's sunset glowing,

He sleeps, still looking to the west,

Beneath the dark wood shadow,

As if he still would see the sun

Sink down on wave and meadow.

Bard, Sage, and Tribune! in himself

All moods of mind contrasting,—

The tenderest wail of human woe,

The scorn like lightning blasting;

The pathos which from rival eyes

Unwilling tears could summon,

The stinging taunt, the fiery burst

Of hatred scarcely human!

Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower,

From lips of life-long sadness;

Clear picturings of majestic thought

Upon a ground of madness;

And over all Romance and Song

A classic beauty throwing,

And laurelled Clio at his side

Her storied pages showing.

All parties feared him: each in turn

Beheld its schemes disjointed,

As right or left his fatal glance

And spectral finger pointed.

Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down

With trenchant wit unsparing,

And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand

The robe Pretence was wearing.

Too honest or too proud to feign

A love he never cherished,

Beyond Virginia's border line

His patriotism perished.

While others hailed in distant skies

Our eagle's dusky pinion,

He only saw the mountain bird

Stoop o'er his Old Dominion!

Still through each change of fortune strange,

Racked nerve, and brain all burning,

His loving faith in Mother-land

Knew never shade of turning;

By Britain's lakes, by Neva's tide,

Whatever sky was o'er him,

He heard her rivers' rushing sound,

Her blue peaks rose before him.

He held his slaves, yet made withal

No false and vain pretences,

Nor paid a lying priest to seek

For Scriptural defences.

His harshest words of proud rebuke,

His bitterest taunt and scorning,

Fell fire-like on the Northern brow

That bent to him in fawning.

He held his slaves; yet kept the while

His reverence for the Human;

In the dark vassals of his will

He saw but Man and Woman!

No hunter of God's outraged poor

His Roanoke valley entered;

No trader in the souls of men

Across his threshold ventured.

And when the old and wearied man

Lay down for his last sleeping,

And at his side, a slave no more,

His brother-man stood weeping,

His latest thought, his latest breath,

To Freedom's duty giving,

With failing tengue and trembling hand

The dying blest the living.

Oh, never bore his ancient State

A truer son or braver

None trampling with a calmer scorn

On foreign hate or favor.

He knew her faults, yet never stooped

His proud and manly feeling

To poor excuses of the wrong

Or meanness of concealing.

But none beheld with clearer eye

The plague-spot o'er her spreading,

None heard more sure the steps of Doom

Along her future treading.

For her as for himself he spake,

When, his gaunt frame upbracing,

He traced with dying hand "Remorse!"

And perished in the tracing.

As from the grave where Henry sleeps,

From Vernon's weeping willow,

And from the grassy pall which hides

The Sage of Monticello,

So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone

Of Randolph's lowly dwelling,

Virginia! o'er thy land of slaves

A warning voice is swelling!

And hark! from thy deserted fields

Are sadder warnings spoken,

From quenched hearths, where thy exiled sons

Their household gods have broken.

The curse is on thee,—wolves for men,

And briers for corn-sheaves giving

Oh, more than all thy dead renown

Were now one hero living

1847.

THE LOST STATESMAN.

Written on hearing of the death of Silas Wright of New York.

As they who, tossing midst the storm at night,

While turning shoreward, where a beacon shone,

Meet the walled blackness of the heaven alone,

So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed,

In gloom and tempest, men have seen thy light

Quenched in the darkness. At thy hour of noon,

While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight,

And, day by day, within thy spirit grew

A holier hope than young Ambition knew,

As through thy rural quiet, not in vain,

Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry of pain,

Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon

Portents at which the bravest stand aghast,—

The birth-throes of a Future, strange and vast,

Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise and strong,

Suddenly summoned to the burial bed,

Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long,

Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead.

Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering host?

Who wear the mantle of the leader lost?

Who stay the march of slavery? He whose voice

Hath called thee from thy task-field shall not lack

Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely back

The wrong which, through his poor ones, reaches Him:

Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torchlights trim,

And wave them high across the abysmal black,

Till bound, dumb millions there shall see them and rejoice.

10th mo., 1847.

THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.

Suggested by a daguerreotype taken from a small French engraving of two negro figures, sent to the writer by Oliver Johnson.

BEAMS of noon, like burning lances, through the tree-tops flash and glisten, As she stands before her lover, with raised face to look and listen.

Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the ancient

Jewish song

Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her graceful

beauty wrong.

He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal's

garb and hue,

Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his higher

nature true;

Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a freeman

in his heart,

As the gregree holds his Fetich from the white

man's gaze apart.

Ever foremost of his comrades, when the driver's

morning horn

Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the fields of

cane and corn.

Fall the keen and burning lashes never on his back

or limb;

Scarce with look or word of censure, turns the

driver unto him.

Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his eye is

hard and stern;

Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has never

deigned to learn.

And, at evening, when his comrades dance before their master's door, Folding arms and knitting forehead, stands he silent evermore.

God be praised for every instinct which rebels

against a lot

Where the brute survives the human, and man's

upright form is not!

As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral fold

on fold

Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers in

his hold;

Slow decays the forest monarch, closer girds the

fell embrace,

Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is in

its place;

So a base and bestial nature round the vassal's

manhood twines,

And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba

choked with vines.

God is Love, saith the Evangel; and our world of

woe and sin

Is made light and happy only when a Love is

shining in.

Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, finding, where-

soe'er ye roam,

Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, making all

the world like home;

In the veins of whose affections kindred blood is

but a part.,

Of one kindly current throbbing from the universal

heart;

Can ye know the deeper meaning of a love in Slavery

nursed,

Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in that Soil

accursed?

Love of Home, and Love of Woman!—dear to all,

but doubly dear

To the heart whose pulses elsewhere measure only

hate and fear.

All around the desert circles, underneath a brazen

sky,

Only one green spot remaining where the dew is

never dry!

From the horror of that desert, from its atmosphere

of hell,

Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the diver seeks

his bell.

'T is the fervid tropic noontime; faint and low the

sea-waves beat;

Hazy rise the inland mountains through the glimmer

of the heat,—

Where, through mingled leaves and blossoms, arrowy sunbeams flash and glisten, Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she lifts her head to listen:—

"We shall live as slaves no longer! Freedom's hour is close at hand! Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the boat upon the strand!

"I have seen the Haytien Captain; I have seen

his swarthy crew,

Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and color

true.

"They have sworn to wait our coming till the night has passed its noon, And the gray and darkening waters roll above the sunken moon!"

Oh, the blessed hope of freedom! how with joy

and glad surprise,

For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant

beam her eyes!

But she looks across the valley, where her mother's

hut is seen,

Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and the lemon-

leaves so green.

And she answers, sad and earnest: "It were wrong

for thee to stay;

God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and his

finger points the way.

"Well I know with what endurance, for the sake

of me and mine,

Thou hast borne too long a burden never meant

for souls like thine.

"Go; and at the hour of midnight, when our last

farewell is o'er,

Kneeling on our place of parting, I will bless thee

from the shore.

"But for me, my mother, lying on her sick-bed

all the day,

Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming through

the twilight gray.

"Should I leave her sick and helpless, even freedom,

shared with thee,

Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, and

stripes to me.

"For my heart would die within me, and my brain

would soon be wild;

I should hear my mother calling through the twilight

for her child!"

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines the sun of

morning-time,

Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and green

hedges of the lime.

Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the lover

and the maid;

Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, leaning forward

on his spade?

Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is the Haytien's

sail he sees,

Like a white cloud of the mountains, driven seaward

by the breeze.

But his arm a light hand presses, and he hears a

low voice call

Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightier

than all.

1848.

THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS.

The rights and liberties affirmed by Magna Charta were deemed of such importance, in the thirteenth century, that the Bishops, twice a year, with tapers burning, and in their pontifical robes, pronounced, in the presence of the king and the representatives of the estates of England, the greater excommunication against the infringer of that instrument. The imposing ceremony took place in the great Hall of Westminster. A copy of the curse, as pronounced in 1253, declares that, "by the authority of Almighty God, and the blessed Apostles and Martyrs, and all the saints in heaven, all those who violate the English liberties, and secretly or openly, by deed, word, or counsel, do make statutes, or observe then being made, against said liberties, are accursed and sequestered from the company of heaven and the sacraments of the Holy Church."

William Penn, in his admirable political pamphlet, England's Present Interest Considered, alluding to the curse of the Charter- breakers, says: "I am no Roman Catholic, and little value their other curses; yet I declare I would not for the world incur this curse, as every man deservedly doth, who offers violence to the fundamental freedom thereby repeated and confirmed."

IN Westminster's royal halls,

Robed in their pontificals,

England's ancient prelates stood

For the people's right and good.

Closed around the waiting crowd,

Dark and still, like winter's cloud;

King and council, lord and knight,

Squire and yeoman, stood in sight;

Stood to hear the priest rehearse,

In God's name, the Church's curse,

By the tapers round them lit,

Slowly, sternly uttering it.

"Right of voice in framing laws,

Right of peers to try each cause;

Peasant homestead, mean and small,

Sacred as the monarch's hall,—

"Whoso lays his hand on these,

England's ancient liberties;

Whoso breaks, by word or deed,

England's vow at Runnymede;

"Be he Prince or belted knight,

Whatsoe'er his rank or might,

If the highest, then the worst,

Let him live and die accursed.

"Thou, who to Thy Church hast given

Keys alike, of hell and heaven,

Make our word and witness sure,

Let the curse we speak endure!"

Silent, while that curse was said,

Every bare and listening head

Bowed in reverent awe, and then

All the people said, Amen!

Seven times the bells have tolled,

For the centuries gray and old,

Since that stoled and mitred band

Cursed the tyrants of their land.

Since the priesthood, like a tower,

Stood between the poor and power;

And the wronged and trodden down

Blessed the abbot's shaven crown.

Gone, thank God, their wizard spell,

Lost, their keys of heaven and hell;

Yet I sigh for men as bold

As those bearded priests of old.

Now, too oft the priesthood wait

At the threshold of the state;

Waiting for the beck and nod

Of its power as law and God.

Fraud exults, while solemn words

Sanctify his stolen hoards;

Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips

Bless his manacles and whips.

Not on them the poor rely,

Not to them looks liberty,

Who with fawning falsehood cower

To the wrong, when clothed with power.

Oh, to see them meanly cling,

Round the master, round the king,

Sported with, and sold and bought,—

Pitifuller sight is not!

Tell me not that this must be

God's true priest is always free;

Free, the needed truth to speak,

Right the wronged, and raise the weak.

Not to fawn on wealth and state,

Leaving Lazarus at the gate;

Not to peddle creeds like wares;

Not to mutter hireling prayers;

Nor to paint the new life's bliss

On the sable ground of this;

Golden streets for idle knave,

Sabbath rest for weary slave!

Not for words and works like these,

Priest of God, thy mission is;

But to make earth's desert glad,

In its Eden greenness clad;

And to level manhood bring

Lord and peasant, serf and king;

And the Christ of God to find

In the humblest of thy kind!

Thine to work as well as pray,

Clearing thorny wrongs away;

Plucking up the weeds of sin,

Letting heaven's warm sunshine in;

Watching on the hills of Faith;

Listening what the spirit saith,

Of the dim-seen light afar,

Growing like a nearing star.

God's interpreter art thou,

To the waiting ones below;

'Twixt them and its light midway

Heralding the better day;

Catching gleams of temple spires,

Hearing notes of angel choirs,

Where, as yet unseen of them,

Comes the New Jerusalem!

Like the seer of Patmos gazing,

On the glory downward blazing;

Till upon Earth's grateful sod

Rests the City of our God!

1848.

PAEAN.

This poem indicates the exultation of the anti-slavery party in view of the revolt of the friends of Martin Van Buren in New York, from the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1848.

Now, joy and thanks forevermore!

The dreary night has wellnigh passed,

The slumbers of the North are o'er,

The Giant stands erect at last!

More than we hoped in that dark time

When, faint with watching, few and worn,

We saw no welcome day-star climb

The cold gray pathway of the morn!

O weary hours! O night of years!

What storms our darkling pathway swept,

Where, beating back our thronging fears,

By Faith alone our march we kept.

How jeered the scoffing crowd behind,

How mocked before the tyrant train,

As, one by one, the true and kind

Fell fainting in our path of pain!

They died, their brave hearts breaking slow,

But, self-forgetful to the last,

In words of cheer and bugle blow

Their breath upon the darkness passed.

A mighty host, on either hand,

Stood waiting for the dawn of day

To crush like reeds our feeble band;

The morn has come, and where are they?

Troop after troop their line forsakes;

With peace-white banners waving free,

And from our own the glad shout breaks,

Of Freedom and Fraternity!

Like mist before the growing light,

The hostile cohorts melt away;

Our frowning foemen of the night

Are brothers at the dawn of day.

As unto these repentant ones

We open wide our toil-worn ranks,

Along our line a murmur runs

Of song, and praise, and grateful thanks.

Sound for the onset! Blast on blast!

Till Slavery's minions cower and quail;

One charge of fire shall drive them fast

Like chaff before our Northern gale!

O prisoners in your house of pain,

Dumb, toiling millions, bound and sold,

Look! stretched o'er Southern vale and plain,

The Lord's delivering hand behold!

Above the tyrant's pride of power,

His iron gates and guarded wall,

The bolts which shattered Shinar's tower

Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall.

Awake! awake! my Fatherland!

It is thy Northern light that shines;

This stirring march of Freedom's band

The storm-song of thy mountain pines.

Wake, dwellers where the day expires!

And hear, in winds that sweep your lakes

And fan your prairies' roaring fires,

The signal-call that Freedom makes!

1848.

THE CRISIS.

Written on learning the terms of the treaty with Mexico.

ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's

drouth and sand,

The circles of our empire touch the western ocean's

strand;

From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and

free,

Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to California's sea;

And from the mountains of the east, to Santa

Rosa's shore,

The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air no more.

O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple children

weep;

Close watch about their holy fire let maids of

Pecos keep;

Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines,

And Santa Barbara toll her bells amidst her corn

and vines;

For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with eager eyes

of gain,

Wide scattering, like the bison herds on broad

Salada's plain.

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what sound the

winds bring down

Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold

Nevada's crown!

Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with rein of

travel slack,

And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the sunrise at

his back;

By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and

pine,

On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires

shine.

O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and

plain,

Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with

grain;

Of mountains white with winter, looking downward,

cold, serene,

On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped

in softest green;

Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er

many a sunny vale,

Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's dusty

trail!

Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes whose

mystic shores

The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Saxon oars;

Great herds that wander all unwatched, wild steeds

that none have tamed,

Strange fish in unknown streams, and birds the

Saxon never named;

Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, where Nature's

chemic powers

Work out the Great Designer's will; all these ye

say are ours!

Forever ours! for good or ill, on us the burden

lies;

God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across

the skies.

Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn the poised

and trembling scale?

Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber Wrong prevail?

Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry

splendor waves,

Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread

of slaves?

The day is breaking in the East of which the

prophets told,

And brightens up the sky of Time the Christian

Age of Gold;

Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to

clerkly pen,

Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her serfs

stand up as men;

The isles rejoice together, in a day are nations

born,

And the slave walks free in Tunis, and by Stamboul's

Golden Horn!

Is this, O countrymen of mine! a day for us to sow

The soil of new-gained empire with slavery's seeds

of woe?

To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old World's

cast-off crime,

Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, from

the tired lap of Time?

To run anew the evil race the old lost nations ran,

And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong

of man?

Great Heaven! Is this our mission? End in this

the prayers and tears,

The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger,

better years?

Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall ours in

shadow turn,

A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through outer

darkness borne?

Where the far nations looked for light, a black-

ness in the air?

Where for words of hope they listened, the long

wail of despair?

The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it

stands,

With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in

Egypt's sands!

This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we

spin;

This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or

sin;

Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy

crown,

We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing

down!

By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and

shame;

By all the warning words of truth with which the

prophets came;

By the Future which awaits us; by all the hopes

which cast

Their faint and trembling beams across the black-

ness of the Past;

And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's

freedom died,

O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the

righteous side.

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his

way;

To wed Penobseot's waters to San Francisco's bay;

To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the

vales with grain;

And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his

train

The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall

answer sea,

And mountain unto mountain call, Praise God, for

we are free

1845.

LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER.

A pleasant print to peddle out

In lands of rice and cotton;

The model of that face in dough

Would make the artist's fortune.

For Fame to thee has come unsought,

While others vainly woo her,

In proof how mean a thing can make

A great man of its doer.

To whom shall men thyself compare,

Since common models fail 'em,

Save classic goose of ancient Rome,

Or sacred ass of Balaam?

The gabble of that wakeful goose

Saved Rome from sack of Brennus;

The braying of the prophet's ass

Betrayed the angel's menace!

So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats,

And azure-tinted hose oil,

Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets

The slow-match of explosion—

An earthquake blast that would have tossed

The Union as a feather,

Thy instinct saved a perilled land

And perilled purse together.

Just think of Carolina's sage

Sent whirling like a Dervis,

Of Quattlebum in middle air

Performing strange drill-service!

Doomed like Assyria's lord of old,

Who fell before the Jewess,

Or sad Abimelech, to sigh,

"Alas! a woman slew us!"

Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise

The danger darkly lurking,

And maiden bodice dreaded more

Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkin.

How keen to scent the hidden plot!

How prompt wert thou to balk it,

With patriot zeal and pedler thrift,

For country and for pocket!

Thy likeness here is doubtless well,

But higher honor's due it;

On auction-block and negro-jail

Admiring eyes should view it.

Or, hung aloft, it well might grace

The nation's senate-chamber—

A greedy Northern bottle-fly

Preserved in Slavery's amber!

1850.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 2. ***

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Table of Contents

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

CONTENTS:

TEXAS

TO FANEUIL HALL.

TO MASSACHUSETTS.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.

THE PINE-TREE.

TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN.

THE BRANDED HAND.

A LETTER.

LINES FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND.

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.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE