The Project Gutenberg eBook of Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete

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Title: Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete

Author: John Greenleaf Whittier

Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9580]

Most recently updated: September 26, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS AND SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM, COMPLETE ***

THE WORKS OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, Volume III. (of VII)

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS and 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.

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

HYMN

THE FAREWELL OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD

PENNSYLVANIA HALL.

THE NEW YEAR.

THE RELIC.

THE WORLD'S CONVENTION OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION,

MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN.

TEXAS

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 DAYS.

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,

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.

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.

SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN.

ASTRAEA AT THE CAPITOL.

THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.

HYMN,

THE PROCLAMATION.

ANNIVERSARY POEM.

BARBARA FRIETCHIE.

WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.

THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATHA.

LAUS 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 CORN-SONG.

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.

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.

DERNE.

The storming of the city of Derne, in 1805, by General Eaton, at the head of nine Americans, forty Greeks, and a motley array of Turks and Arabs, was one of those feats of hardihood and daring which have in all ages attracted the admiration of the multitude. The higher and holier heroism of Christian self-denial and sacrifice, in the humble walks of private duty, is seldom so well appreciated.

NIGHT on the city of the Moor!

On mosque and tomb, and white-walled shore,

On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock

The narrow harbor-gates unlock,

On corsair's galley, carack tall,

And plundered Christian caraval!

The sounds of Moslem life are still;

No mule-bell tinkles down the hill;

Stretched in the broad court of the khan,

The dusty Bornou caravan

Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man;

The Sheik is dreaming in his tent,

His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent;

The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone,

The merchant with his wares withdrawn;

Rough pillowed on some pirate breast,

The dancing-girl has sunk to rest;

And, save where measured footsteps fall

Along the Bashaw's guarded wall,

Or where, like some bad dream, the Jew

Creeps stealthily his quarter through,

Or counts with fear his golden heaps,

The City of the Corsair sleeps.

But where yon prison long and low

Stands black against the pale star-glow,

Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves,

There watch and pine the Christian slaves;

Rough-bearded men, whose far-off wives

Wear out with grief their lonely lives;

And youth, still flashing from his eyes

The clear blue of New England skies,

A treasured lock of whose soft hair

Now wakes some sorrowing mother's prayer;

Or, worn upon some maiden breast,

Stirs with the loving heart's unrest.

A bitter cup each life must drain,

The groaning earth is cursed with pain,

And, like the scroll the angel bore

The shuddering Hebrew seer before,

O'erwrit alike, without, within,

With all the woes which follow sin;

But, bitterest of the ills beneath

Whose load man totters down to death,

Is that which plucks the regal crown

Of Freedom from his forehead down,

And snatches from his powerless hand

The sceptred sign of self-command,

Effacing with the chain and rod

The image and the seal of God;

Till from his nature, day by day,

The manly virtues fall away,

And leave him naked, blind and mute,

The godlike merging in the brute!

Why mourn the quiet ones who die

Beneath affection's tender eye,

Unto their household and their kin

Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered in?

O weeper, from that tranquil sod,

That holy harvest-home of God,

Turn to the quick and suffering, shed

Thy tears upon the living dead

Thank God above thy dear ones' graves,

They sleep with Him, they are not slaves.

What dark mass, down the mountain-sides

Swift-pouring, like a stream divides?

A long, loose, straggling caravan,

Camel and horse and armed man.

The moon's low crescent, glimmering o'er

Its grave of waters to the shore,

Lights tip that mountain cavalcade,

And gleams from gun and spear and blade

Near and more near! now o'er them falls

The shadow of the city walls.

Hark to the sentry's challenge, drowned

In the fierce trumpet's charging sound!

The rush of men, the musket's peal,

The short, sharp clang of meeting steel!

Vain, Moslem, vain thy lifeblood poured

So freely on thy foeman's sword!

Not to the swift nor to the strong

The battles of the right belong;

For he who strikes for Freedom wears

The armor of the captive's prayers,

And Nature proffers to his cause

The strength of her eternal laws;

While he whose arm essays to bind

And herd with common brutes his kind

Strives evermore at fearful odds

With Nature and the jealous gods,

And dares the dread recoil which late

Or soon their right shall vindicate.

'T is done, the horned crescent falls

The star-flag flouts the broken walls

Joy to the captive husband! joy

To thy sick heart, O brown-locked boy!

In sullen wrath the conquered Moor

Wide open flings your dungeon-door,

And leaves ye free from cell and chain,

The owners of yourselves again.

Dark as his allies desert-born,

Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn

With the long marches of his band

Through hottest wastes of rock and sand,

Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath

Of the red desert's wind of death,

With welcome words and grasping hands,

The victor and deliverer stands!

The tale is one of distant skies;

The dust of half a century lies

Upon it; yet its hero's name

Still lingers on the lips of Fame.

Men speak the praise of him who gave

Deliverance to the Moorman's slave,

Yet dare to brand with shame and crime

The heroes of our land and time,—

The self-forgetful ones, who stake

Home, name, and life for Freedom's sake.

God mend his heart who cannot feel

The impulse of a holy zeal,

And sees not, with his sordid eyes,

The beauty of self-sacrifice

Though in the sacred place he stands,

Uplifting consecrated hands,

Unworthy are his lips to tell

Of Jesus' martyr-miracle,

Or name aright that dread embrace

Of suffering for a fallen race!

1850.

A SABBATH SCENE.

This poem finds its justification in the readiness with which, even in the North, clergymen urged the prompt execution of the Fugitive Slave Law as a Christian duty, and defended the system of slavery as a Bible institution.

SCARCE had the solemn Sabbath-bell

Ceased quivering in the steeple,

Scarce had the parson to his desk

Walked stately through his people,

When down the summer-shaded street

A wasted female figure,

With dusky brow and naked feet,

Came rushing wild and eager.

She saw the white spire through the trees,

She heard the sweet hymn swelling

O pitying Christ! a refuge give

That poor one in Thy dwelling!

Like a scared fawn before the hounds,

Right up the aisle she glided,

While close behind her, whip in hand,

A lank-haired hunter strided.

She raised a keen and bitter cry,

To Heaven and Earth appealing;

Were manhood's generous pulses dead?

Had woman's heart no feeling?

A score of stout hands rose between

The hunter and the flying:

Age clenched his staff, and maiden eyes

Flashed tearful, yet defying.

"Who dares profane this house and day?"

Cried out the angry pastor.

"Why, bless your soul, the wench's a slave,

And I'm her lord and master!

"I've law and gospel on my side,

And who shall dare refuse me?"

Down came the parson, bowing low,

"My good sir, pray excuse me!

"Of course I know your right divine

To own and work and whip her;

Quick, deacon, throw that Polyglott

Before the wench, and trip her!"

Plump dropped the holy tome, and o'er

Its sacred pages stumbling,

Bound hand and foot, a slave once more,

The hapless wretch lay trembling.

I saw the parson tie the knots,

The while his flock addressing,

The Scriptural claims of slavery

With text on text impressing.

"Although," said he, "on Sabbath day

All secular occupations

Are deadly sins, we must fulfil

Our moral obligations:

"And this commends itself as one

To every conscience tender;

As Paul sent back Onesimus,

My Christian friends, we send her!"

Shriek rose on shriek,—the Sabbath air

Her wild cries tore asunder;

I listened, with hushed breath, to hear

God answering with his thunder!

All still! the very altar's cloth

Had smothered down her shrieking,

And, dumb, she turned from face to face,

For human pity seeking!

I saw her dragged along the aisle,

Her shackles harshly clanking;

I heard the parson, over all,

The Lord devoutly thanking!

My brain took fire: "Is this," I cried,

"The end of prayer and preaching?

Then down with pulpit, down with priest,

And give us Nature's teaching!

"Foul shame and scorn be on ye all

Who turn the good to evil,

And steal the Bible, from the Lord,

To give it to the Devil!

"Than garbled text or parchment law

I own a statute higher;

And God is true, though every book

And every man's a liar!"

Just then I felt the deacon's hand

In wrath my coattail seize on;

I heard the priest cry, "Infidel!"

The lawyer mutter, "Treason!"

I started up,—where now were church,

Slave, master, priest, and people?

I only heard the supper-bell,

Instead of clanging steeple.

But, on the open window's sill,

O'er which the white blooms drifted,

The pages of a good old Book

The wind of summer lifted,

And flower and vine, like angel wings

Around the Holy Mother,

Waved softly there, as if God's truth

And Mercy kissed each other.

And freely from the cherry-bough

Above the casement swinging,

With golden bosom to the sun,

The oriole was singing.

As bird and flower made plain of old

The lesson of the Teacher,

So now I heard the written Word

Interpreted by Nature.

For to my ear methought the breeze

Bore Freedom's blessed word on;

Thus saith the Lord: Break every yoke,

Undo the heavy burden

1850.

IN THE EVIL DAYS.

This and the four following poems have special reference to that darkest hour in the aggression of slavery which preceded the dawn of a better day, when the conscience of the people was roused to action.

THE evil days have come, the poor

Are made a prey;

Bar up the hospitable door,

Put out the fire-lights, point no more

The wanderer's way.

For Pity now is crime; the chain

Which binds our States

Is melted at her hearth in twain,

Is rusted by her tears' soft rain

Close up her gates.

Our Union, like a glacier stirred

By voice below,

Or bell of kine, or wing of bird,

A beggar's crust, a kindly word

May overthrow!

Poor, whispering tremblers! yet we boast

Our blood and name;

Bursting its century-bolted frost,

Each gray cairn on the Northman's coast

Cries out for shame!

Oh for the open firmament,

The prairie free,

The desert hillside, cavern-rent,

The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent,

The Bushman's tree!

Than web of Persian loom most rare,

Or soft divan,

Better the rough rock, bleak and bare,

Or hollow tree, which man may share

With suffering man.

I hear a voice: "Thus saith the Law,

Let Love be dumb;

Clasping her liberal hands in awe,

Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw

From hearth and home."

I hear another voice: "The poor

Are thine to feed;

Turn not the outcast from thy door,

Nor give to bonds and wrong once more

Whom God hath freed."

Dear Lord! between that law and Thee

No choice remains;

Yet not untrue to man's decree,

Though spurning its rewards, is he

Who bears its pains.

Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast

And threatening word;

I read the lesson of the Past,

That firm endurance wins at last

More than the sword.

O clear-eyed Faith, and Patience thou

So calm and strong!

Lend strength to weakness, teach us how

The sleepless eyes of God look through

This night of wrong.

1850.

MOLOCH IN STATE STREET.

In a foot-note of the Report of the Senate of Massachusetts on the case of the arrest and return to bondage of the fugitive slave Thomas Sims it is stated that—"It would have been impossible for the U. S. marshal thus successfully to have resisted the law of the State, without the assistance of the municipal authorities of Boston, and the countenance and support of a numerous, wealthy, and powerful body of citizens. It was in evidence that 1500 of the most wealthy and respectable citizens-merchants, bankers, and others—volunteered their services to aid the marshal on this occasion. . . . No watch was kept upon the doings of the marshal, and while the State officers slept, after the moon had gone down, in the darkest hour before daybreak, the accused was taken out of our jurisdiction by the armed police of the city of Boston."

THE moon has set: while yet the dawn

Breaks cold and gray,

Between the midnight and the morn

Bear off your prey!

On, swift and still! the conscious street

Is panged and stirred;

Tread light! that fall of serried feet

The dead have heard!

The first drawn blood of Freedom's veins

Gushed where ye tread;

Lo! through the dusk the martyr-stains

Blush darkly red!

Beneath the slowly waning stars

And whitening day,

What stern and awful presence bars

That sacred way?

What faces frown upon ye, dark

With shame and pain?

Come these from Plymouth's Pilgrim bark?

Is that young Vane?

Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on

With mocking cheer?

Lo! spectral Andros, Hutchinson,

And Gage are here!

For ready mart or favoring blast

Through Moloch's fire,

Flesh of his flesh, unsparing, passed

The Tyrian sire.

Ye make that ancient sacrifice

Of Mail to Gain,

Your traffic thrives, where Freedom dies,

Beneath the chain.

Ye sow to-day; your harvest, scorn

And hate, is near;

How think ye freemen, mountain-born,

The tale will hear?

Thank God! our mother State can yet

Her fame retrieve;

To you and to your children let

The scandal cleave.

Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press,

Make gods of gold;

Let honor, truth, and manliness

Like wares be sold.

Your hoards are great, your walls are strong,

But God is just;

The gilded chambers built by wrong

Invite the rust.

What! know ye not the gains of Crime

Are dust and dross;

Its ventures on the waves of time

Foredoomed to loss!

And still the Pilgrim State remains

What she hath been;

Her inland hills, her seaward plains,

Still nurture men!

Nor wholly lost the fallen mart;

Her olden blood

Through many a free and generous heart

Still pours its flood.

That brave old blood, quick-flowing yet,

Shall know no check,

Till a free people's foot is set

On Slavery's neck.

Even now, the peal of bell and gun,

And hills aflame,

Tell of the first great triumph won

In Freedom's name. (10)

The long night dies: the welcome gray

Of dawn we see;

Speed up the heavens thy perfect day,

God of the free!

1851.

OFFICIAL PIETY.

Suggested by reading a state paper, wherein the higher law is invoked to sustain the lower one.

A Pious magistrate! sound his praise throughout

The wondering churches. Who shall henceforth doubt

That the long-wished millennium draweth nigh?

Sin in high places has become devout,

Tithes mint, goes painful-faced, and prays its lie

Straight up to Heaven, and calls it piety!

The pirate, watching from his bloody deck

The weltering galleon, heavy with the gold

Of Acapulco, holding death in check

While prayers are said, brows crossed, and beads are told;

The robber, kneeling where the wayside cross

On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss

From his own carbine, glancing still abroad

For some new victim, offering thanks to God!

Rome, listening at her altars to the cry

Of midnight Murder, while her hounds of hell

Scour France, from baptized cannon and holy bell

And thousand-throated priesthood, loud and high,

Pealing Te Deums to the shuddering sky,

"Thanks to the Lord, who giveth victory!"

What prove these, but that crime was ne'er so black

As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to lack?

Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he lays

His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural phrase

And saintly posture, gives to God the praise

And honor of the monstrous progeny.

What marvel, then, in our own time to see

His old devices, smoothly acted o'er,—

Official piety, locking fast the door

Of Hope against three million soups of men,—

Brothers, God's children, Christ's redeemed,—and then,

With uprolled eyeballs and on bended knee,

Whining a prayer for help to hide the key!

1853.

THE RENDITION.

On the 2d of June, 1854, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia, after being under arrest for ten days in the Boston Court House, was remanded to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act, and taken down State Street to a steamer chartered by the United States Government, under guard of United States troops and artillery, Massachusetts militia and Boston police. Public excitement ran high, a futile attempt to rescue Burns having been made during his confinement, and the streets were crowded with tens of thousands of people, of whom many came from other towns and cities of the State to witness the humiliating spectacle.

I HEARD the train's shrill whistle call,

I saw an earnest look beseech,

And rather by that look than speech

My neighbor told me all.

And, as I thought of Liberty

Marched handcuffed down that sworded street,

The solid earth beneath my feet

Reeled fluid as the sea.

I felt a sense of bitter loss,—

Shame, tearless grief, and stifling wrath,

And loathing fear, as if my path

A serpent stretched across.

All love of home, all pride of place,

All generous confidence and trust,

Sank smothering in that deep disgust

And anguish of disgrace.

Down on my native hills of June,

And home's green quiet, hiding all,

Fell sudden darkness like the fall

Of midnight upon noon.

And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong,

Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod,

Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God

The blasphemy of wrong.

"O Mother, from thy memories proud,

Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth,

Lend this dead air a breeze of health,

And smite with stars this cloud.

"Mother of Freedom, wise and brave,

Rise awful in thy strength," I said;

Ah me! I spake but to the dead;

I stood upon her grave!

6th mo., 1854.

ARISEN AT LAST.

On the passage of the bill to protect the rights and liberties of the people of the State against the Fugitive Slave Act.

I SAID I stood upon thy grave,

My Mother State, when last the moon

Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.

And, scattering ashes on my head,

I wore, undreaming of relief,

The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.

Again that moon of blossoms shines

On leaf and flower and folded wing,

And thou hast risen with the spring!

Once more thy strong maternal arms

Are round about thy children flung,—

A lioness that guards her young!

No threat is on thy closed lips,

But in thine eye a power to smite

The mad wolf backward from its light.

Southward the baffled robber's track

Henceforth runs only; hereaway,

The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.

Henceforth, within thy sacred gates,

His first low howl shall downward draw

The thunder of thy righteous law.

Not mindless of thy trade and gain,

But, acting on the wiser plan,

Thou'rt grown conservative of man.

So shalt thou clothe with life the hope,

Dream-painted on the sightless eyes

Of him who sang of Paradise,—

The vision of a Christian man,

In virtue, as in stature great

Embodied in a Christian State.

And thou, amidst thy sisterhood

Forbearing long, yet standing fast,

Shalt win their grateful thanks at last;

When North and South shall strive no more,

And all their feuds and fears be lost

In Freedom's holy Pentecost.

6th mo., 1855.

THE HASCHISH.

OF all that Orient lands can vaunt

Of marvels with our own competing,

The strangest is the Haschish plant,

And what will follow on its eating.

What pictures to the taster rise,

Of Dervish or of Almeh dances!

Of Eblis, or of Paradise,

Set all aglow with Houri glances!

The poppy visions of Cathay,

The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian;

The wizard lights and demon play

Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!

The Mollah and the Christian dog

Change place in mad metempsychosis;

The Muezzin climbs the synagogue,

The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses!

The Arab by his desert well

Sits choosing from some Caliph's daughters,

And hears his single camel's bell

Sound welcome to his regal quarters.

The Koran's reader makes complaint

Of Shitan dancing on and off it;

The robber offers alms, the saint

Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet.

Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes;

But we have one ordained to beat it,

The Haschish of the West, which makes

Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.

The preacher eats, and straight appears

His Bible in a new translation;

Its angels negro overseers,

And Heaven itself a snug plantation!

The man of peace, about whose dreams

The sweet millennial angels cluster,

Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes,

A raving Cuban filibuster!

The noisiest Democrat, with ease,

It turns to Slavery's parish beadle;

The shrewdest statesman eats and sees

Due southward point the polar needle.

The Judge partakes, and sits erelong

Upon his bench a railing blackguard;

Decides off-hand that right is wrong,

And reads the ten commandments backward.

O potent plant! so rare a taste

Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten;

The hempen Haschish of the East

Is powerless to our Western Cotton!

1854.

FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE.

Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason against the slave power.

THE age is dull and mean. Men creep,

Not walk; with blood too pale and tame

To pay the debt they owe to shame;

Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep

Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want;

Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep

Six days to Mammon, one to Cant.

In such a time, give thanks to God,

That somewhat of the holy rage

With which the prophets in their age

On all its decent seemings trod,

Has set your feet upon the lie,

That man and ox and soul and clod

Are market stock to sell and buy!

The hot words from your lips, my own,

To caution trained, might not repeat;

But if some tares among the wheat

Of generous thought and deed were sown,

No common wrong provoked your zeal;

The silken gauntlet that is thrown

In such a quarrel rings like steel.

The brave old strife the fathers saw

For Freedom calls for men again

Like those who battled not in vain

For England's Charter, Alfred's law;

And right of speech and trial just

Wage in your name their ancient war

With venal courts and perjured trust.

God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,

They touch the shining hills of day;

The evil cannot brook delay,

The good can well afford to wait.

Give ermined knaves their hour of crime;

Ye have the future grand and great,

The safe appeal of Truth to Time!

1855.

THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS.

This poem and the three following were called out by the popular movement of Free State men to occupy the territory of Kansas, and by the use of the great democratic weapon—an over-powering majority—to settle the conflict on that ground between Freedom and Slavery. The opponents of the movement used another kind of weapon.

WE cross the prairie as of old

The pilgrims crossed the sea,

To make the West, as they the East,

The homestead of the free!

We go to rear a wall of men

On Freedom's southern line,

And plant beside the cotton-tree

The rugged Northern pine!

We're flowing from our native hills

As our free rivers flow;

The blessing of our Mother-land

Is on us as we go.

We go to plant her common schools,

On distant prairie swells,

And give the Sabbaths of the wild

The music of her bells.

Upbearing, like the Ark of old,

The Bible in our van,

We go to test the truth of God

Against the fraud of man.

No pause, nor rest, save where the streams

That feed the Kansas run,

Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon

Shall flout the setting sun.

We'll tread the prairie as of old

Our fathers sailed the sea,

And make the West, as they the East,

The homestead of the free!

1854.

LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH,

IN KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN.

DOUGLAS MISSION, August, 1854,

LAST week—the Lord be praised for all His mercies

To His unworthy servant!—I arrived

Safe at the Mission, via Westport; where

I tarried over night, to aid in forming

A Vigilance Committee, to send back,

In shirts of tar, and feather-doublets quilted

With forty stripes save one, all Yankee comers,

Uncircumcised and Gentile, aliens from

The Commonwealth of Israel, who despise

The prize of the high calling of the saints,

Who plant amidst this heathen wilderness

Pure gospel institutions, sanctified

By patriarchal use. The meeting opened

With prayer, as was most fitting. Half an hour,

Or thereaway, I groaned, and strove, and wrestled,

As Jacob did at Penuel, till the power

Fell on the people, and they cried 'Amen!'

"Glory to God!" and stamped and clapped their hands;

And the rough river boatmen wiped their eyes;

"Go it, old hoss!" they cried, and cursed the niggers—

Fulfilling thus the word of prophecy,

"Cursed be Cannan." After prayer, the meeting

Chose a committee—good and pious men—

A Presbyterian Elder, Baptist deacon,

A local preacher, three or four class-leaders,

Anxious inquirers, and renewed backsliders,

A score in all—to watch the river ferry,

(As they of old did watch the fords of Jordan,)

And cut off all whose Yankee tongues refuse

The Shibboleth of the Nebraska bill.

And then, in answer to repeated calls,

I gave a brief account of what I saw

In Washington; and truly many hearts

Rejoiced to know the President, and you

And all the Cabinet regularly hear

The gospel message of a Sunday morning,

Drinking with thirsty souls of the sincere

Milk of the Word. Glory! Amen, and Selah!

Here, at the Mission, all things have gone well

The brother who, throughout my absence, acted

As overseer, assures me that the crops

Never were better. I have lost one negro,

A first-rate hand, but obstinate and sullen.

He ran away some time last spring, and hid

In the river timber. There my Indian converts

Found him, and treed and shot him. For the rest,

The heathens round about begin to feel

The influence of our pious ministrations

And works of love; and some of them already

Have purchased negroes, and are settling down

As sober Christians! Bless the Lord for this!

I know it will rejoice you. You, I hear,

Are on the eve of visiting Chicago,

To fight with the wild beasts of Ephesus,

Long John, and Dutch Free-Soilers. May your arm

Be clothed with strength, and on your tongue be found

The sweet oil of persuasion. So desires

Your brother and co-laborer. Amen!

P.S. All's lost. Even while I write these lines,

The Yankee abolitionists are coming

Upon us like a flood—grim, stalwart men,

Each face set like a flint of Plymouth Rock

Against our institutions—staking out

Their farm lots on the wooded Wakarusa,

Or squatting by the mellow-bottomed Kansas;

The pioneers of mightier multitudes,

The small rain-patter, ere the thunder shower

Drowns the dry prairies. Hope from man is not.

Oh, for a quiet berth at Washington,

Snug naval chaplaincy, or clerkship, where

These rumors of free labor and free soil

Might never meet me more. Better to be

Door-keeper in the White House, than to dwell

Amidst these Yankee tents, that, whitening, show

On the green prairie like a fleet becalmed.

Methinks I hear a voice come up the river

From those far bayous, where the alligators

Mount guard around the camping filibusters

"Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn to Cuba—

(That golden orange just about to fall,

O'er-ripe, into the Democratic lap;)

Keep pace with Providence, or, as we say,

Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow

The message of our gospel, thither borne

Upon the point of Quitman's bowie-knife,

And the persuasive lips of Colt's revolvers.

There may'st thou, underneath thy vine and figtree,

Watch thy increase of sugar cane and negroes,

Calm as a patriarch in his eastern tent!"

Amen: So mote it be. So prays your friend.

BURIAL OF BARBER.

Thomas Barber was shot December 6, 1855, near Lawrence, Kansas.

BEAR him, comrades, to his grave;

Never over one more brave

Shall the prairie grasses weep,

In the ages yet to come,

When the millions in our room,

What we sow in tears, shall reap.

Bear him up the icy hill,

With the Kansas, frozen still

As his noble heart, below,

And the land he came to till

With a freeman's thews and will,

And his poor hut roofed with snow.

One more look of that dead face,

Of his murder's ghastly trace!

One more kiss, O widowed one

Lay your left hands on his brow,

Lift your right hands up, and vow

That his work shall yet be done.

Patience, friends! The eye of God

Every path by Murder trod

Watches, lidless, day and night;

And the dead man in his shroud,

And his widow weeping loud,

And our hearts, are in His sight.

Every deadly threat that swells

With the roar of gambling hells,

Every brutal jest and jeer,

Every wicked thought and plan

Of the cruel heart of man,

Though but whispered, He can hear!

We in suffering, they in crime,

Wait the just award of time,

Wait the vengeance that is due;

Not in vain a heart shall break,

Not a tear for Freedom's sake

Fall unheeded: God is true.

While the flag with stars bedecked

Threatens where it should protect,

And the Law shakes Hands with Crime,

What is left us but to wait,

Match our patience to our fate,

And abide the better time?

Patience, friends! The human heart

Everywhere shall take our part,

Everywhere for us shall pray;

On our side are nature's laws,

And God's life is in the cause

That we suffer for to-day.

Well to suffer is divine;

Pass the watchword down the line,

Pass the countersign: "Endure."

Not to him who rashly dares,

But to him who nobly bears,

Is the victor's garland sure.

Frozen earth to frozen breast,

Lay our slain one down to rest;

Lay him down in hope and faith,

And above the broken sod,

Once again, to Freedom's God,

Pledge ourselves for life or death,

That the State whose walls we lay,

In our blood and tears, to-day,

Shall be free from bonds of shame,

And our goodly land untrod

By the feet of Slavery, shod

With cursing as with flame!

Plant the Buckeye on his grave,

For the hunter of the slave

In its shadow cannot rest; I

And let martyr mound and tree

Be our pledge and guaranty

Of the freedom of the West!

1856.

TO PENNSYLVANIA.

O STATE prayer-founded! never hung

Such choice upon a people's tongue,

Such power to bless or ban,

As that which makes thy whisper Fate,

For which on thee the centuries wait,

And destinies of man!

Across thy Alleghanian chain,

With groanings from a land in pain,

The west-wind finds its way:

Wild-wailing from Missouri's flood

The crying of thy children's blood

Is in thy ears to-day!

And unto thee in Freedom's hour

Of sorest need God gives the power

To ruin or to save;

To wound or heal, to blight or bless

With fertile field or wilderness,

A free home or a grave!

Then let thy virtue match the crime,

Rise to a level with the time;

And, if a son of thine

Betray or tempt thee, Brutus-like

For Fatherland and Freedom strike

As Justice gives the sign.

Wake, sleeper, from thy dream of ease,

The great occasion's forelock seize;

And let the north-wind strong,

And golden leaves of autumn, be

Thy coronal of Victory

And thy triumphal song.

10th me., 1856.

LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.

The massacre of unarmed and unoffending men, in Southern Kansas, in May, 1858, took place near the Marais du Cygne of the French voyageurs.

A BLUSH as of roses

Where rose never grew!

Great drops on the bunch-grass,

But not of the dew!

A taint in the sweet air

For wild bees to shun!

A stain that shall never

Bleach out in the sun.

Back, steed of the prairies

Sweet song-bird, fly back!

Wheel hither, bald vulture!

Gray wolf, call thy pack!

The foul human vultures

Have feasted and fled;

The wolves of the Border

Have crept from the dead.

From the hearths of their cabins,

The fields of their corn,

Unwarned and unweaponed,

The victims were torn,—

By the whirlwind of murder

Swooped up and swept on

To the low, reedy fen-lands,

The Marsh of the Swan.

With a vain plea for mercy

No stout knee was crooked;

In the mouths of the rifles

Right manly they looked.

How paled the May sunshine,

O Marais du Cygne!

On death for the strong life,

On red grass for green!

In the homes of their rearing,

Yet warm with their lives,

Ye wait the dead only,

Poor children and wives!

Put out the red forge-fire,

The smith shall not come;

Unyoke the brown oxen,

The ploughman lies dumb.

Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh,

O dreary death-train,

With pressed lips as bloodless

As lips of the slain!

Kiss down the young eyelids,

Smooth down the gray hairs;

Let tears quench the curses

That burn through your prayers.

Strong man of the prairies,

Mourn bitter and wild!

Wail, desolate woman!

Weep, fatherless child!

But the grain of God springs up

From ashes beneath,

And the crown of his harvest

Is life out of death.

Not in vain on the dial

The shade moves along,

To point the great contrasts

Of right and of wrong:

Free homes and free altars,

Free prairie and flood,—

The reeds of the Swan's Marsh,

Whose bloom is of blood!

On the lintels of Kansas

That blood shall not dry;

Henceforth the Bad Angel

Shall harmless go by;

Henceforth to the sunset,

Unchecked on her way,

Shall Liberty follow

The march of the day.

THE PASS OF THE SIERRA.

ALL night above their rocky bed

They saw the stars march slow;

The wild Sierra overhead,

The desert's death below.

The Indian from his lodge of bark,

The gray bear from his den,

Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark,

Glared on the mountain men.

Still upward turned, with anxious strain,

Their leader's sleepless eye,

Where splinters of the mountain chain

Stood black against the sky.

The night waned slow: at last, a glow,

A gleam of sudden fire,

Shot up behind the walls of snow,

And tipped each icy spire.

"Up, men!" he cried, "yon rocky cone,

To-day, please God, we'll pass,

And look from Winter's frozen throne

On Summer's flowers and grass!"

They set their faces to the blast,

They trod the eternal snow,

And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last

The promised land below.

Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed

By many an icy horn;

Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed,

And green with vines and corn.

They left the Winter at their backs

To flap his baffled wing,

And downward, with the cataracts,

Leaped to the lap of Spring.

Strong leader of that mountain band,

Another task remains,

To break from Slavery's desert land

A path to Freedom's plains.

The winds are wild, the way is drear,

Yet, flashing through the night,

Lo! icy ridge and rocky spear

Blaze out in morning light!

Rise up, Fremont! and go before;

The hour must have its Man;

Put on the hunting-shirt once more,

And lead in Freedom's van!

8th mo., 1856.

A SONG FOR THE TIME.

Written in the summer of 1856, during the political campaign of the Free Soil party under the candidacy of John C. Fremont.

Up, laggards of Freedom!—our free flag is cast

To the blaze of the sun and the wings of the blast;

Will ye turn from a struggle so bravely begun,

From a foe that is breaking, a field that's half won?

Whoso loves not his kind, and who fears not the Lord,

Let him join that foe's service, accursed and abhorred

Let him do his base will, as the slave only can,—

Let him put on the bloodhound, and put off the Man!

Let him go where the cold blood that creeps in his veins

Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on his chains;

Where the black slave shall laugh in his bonds, to behold

The White Slave beside him, self-fettered and sold!

But ye, who still boast of hearts beating and warm,

Rise, from lake shore and ocean's, like waves in a storm,

Come, throng round our banner in Liberty's name,

Like winds from your mountains, like prairies aflame!

Our foe, hidden long in his ambush of night,

Now, forced from his covert, stands black in the light.

Oh, the cruel to Man, and the hateful to God,

Smite him down to the earth, that is cursed where he trod!

For deeper than thunder of summer's loud shower,

On the dome of the sky God is striking the hour!

Shall we falter before what we've prayed for so long,

When the Wrong is so weak, and the Right is so strong?

Come forth all together! come old and come young,

Freedom's vote in each hand, and her song on each tongue;

Truth naked is stronger than Falsehood in mail;

The Wrong cannot prosper, the Right cannot fail.

Like leaves of the summer once numbered the foe,

But the hoar-frost is falling, the northern winds blow;

Like leaves of November erelong shall they fall,

For earth wearies of them, and God's over all!

WHAT OF THE DAY?

Written during the stirring weeks when the great political battle for Freedom under Fremont's leadership was permitting strong hope of success,—a hope overshadowed and solemnized by a sense of the magnitude of the barbaric evil, and a forecast of the unscrupulous and desperate use of all its powers in the last and decisive struggle.

A SOUND of tumult troubles all the air,

Like the low thunders of a sultry sky

Far-rolling ere the downright lightnings glare;

The hills blaze red with warnings; foes draw nigh,

Treading the dark with challenge and reply.

Behold the burden of the prophet's vision;

The gathering hosts,—the Valley of Decision,

Dusk with the wings of eagles wheeling o'er.

Day of the Lord, of darkness and not light!

It breaks in thunder and the whirlwind's roar

Even so, Father! Let Thy will be done;

Turn and o'erturn, end what Thou bast begun

In judgment or in mercy: as for me,

If but the least and frailest, let me be

Evermore numbered with the truly free

Who find Thy service perfect liberty!

I fain would thank Thee that my mortal life

Has reached the hour (albeit through care and pain)

When Good and Evil, as for final strife,

Close dim and vast on Armageddon's plain;

And Michael and his angels once again

Drive howling back the Spirits of the Night.

Oh for the faith to read the signs aright

And, from the angle of Thy perfect sight,

See Truth's white banner floating on before;

And the Good Cause, despite of venal friends,

And base expedients, move to noble ends;

See Peace with Freedom make to Time amends,

And, through its cloud of dust, the threshing-floor,

Flailed by the thunder, heaped with chaffless grain.

1856.

A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS.

Written after the election in 1586, which showed the immense gains of the Free Soil party, and insured its success in 1860.

BENEATH thy skies, November!

Thy skies of cloud and rain,

Around our blazing camp-fires

We close our ranks again.

Then sound again the bugles,

Call the muster-roll anew;

If months have well-nigh won the field,

What may not four years do?

For God be praised! New England

Takes once more her ancient place;

Again the Pilgrim's banner

Leads the vanguard of the race.

Then sound again the bugles, etc.

Along the lordly Hudson,

A shout of triumph breaks;

The Empire State is speaking,

From the ocean to the lakes.

Then sound again the bugles, etc.

The Northern hills are blazing,

The Northern skies are bright;

And the fair young West is turning

Her forehead to the light!

Then sound again the bugles, etc.

Push every outpost nearer,

Press hard the hostile towers!

Another Balaklava,

And the Malakoff is ours!

Then sound again the bugles,

Call the muster-roll anew;

If months have well-nigh won the field,

What may not four years do?

THE PANORAMA.

"A! fredome is a nobill thing!

Fredome mayse man to haif liking.

Fredome all solace to man giffis;

He levys at ese that frely levys

A nobil hart may haif nane ese

Na ellvs nocht that may him plese

Gyff Fredome failythe."

ARCHDEACON BARBOUR.

THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed

A dubious light on every upturned head;

On locks like those of Absalom the fair,

On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair,

On blank indifference and on curious stare;

On the pale Showman reading from his stage

The hieroglyphics of that facial page;

Half sad, half scornful, listening to the bruit

Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot,

And the shrill call, across the general din,

"Roll up your curtain! Let the show begin!"

At length a murmur like the winds that break

Into green waves the prairie's grassy lake,

Deepened and swelled to music clear and loud,

And, as the west-wind lifts a summer cloud,

The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far

A green land stretching to the evening star,

Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees

And flowers hummed over by the desert bees,

Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of greenness show

Fantastic outcrops of the rock below;

The slow result of patient Nature's pains,

And plastic fingering of her sun and rains;

Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely windowed hall,

And long escarpment of half-crumbled wall,

Huger than those which, from steep hills of vine,

Stare through their loopholes on the travelled Rhine;

Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind

A fancy, idle as the prairie wind,

Of the land's dwellers in an age unguessed;

The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West.

Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells surpass

The Tartar's marvels of his Land of Grass,

Vast as the sky against whose sunset shores

Wave after wave the billowy greenness pours;

And, onward still, like islands in that main

Loom the rough peaks of many a mountain chain,

Whence east and west a thousand waters run

From winter lingering under summer's sun.

And, still beyond, long lines of foam and sand

Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a-land,

From many a wide-lapped port and land-locked bay,

Opening with thunderous pomp the world's highway

To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far Cathay.

"Such," said the Showman, as the curtain fell,

"Is the new Canaan of our Israel;

The land of promise to the swarming North,

Which, hive-like, sends its annual surplus forth,

To the poor Southron on his worn-out soil,

Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil;

To Europe's exiles seeking home and rest,

And the lank nomads of the wandering West,

Who, asking neither, in their love of change

And the free bison's amplitude of range,

Rear the log-hut, for present shelter meant,

Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent."

Then spake a shrewd on-looker, "Sir," said he,

"I like your picture, but I fain would see

A sketch of what your promised land will be

When, with electric nerve, and fiery-brained,

With Nature's forces to its chariot chained,

The future grasping, by the past obeyed,

The twentieth century rounds a new decade."

Then said the Showman, sadly: "He who grieves

Over the scattering of the sibyl's leaves

Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we know

What needs must ripen from the seed we sow;

That present time is but the mould wherein

We cast the shapes of holiness and sin.

A painful watcher of the passing hour,

Its lust of gold, its strife for place and power;

Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, truth,

Wise-thoughted age, and generous-hearted youth;

Nor yet unmindful of each better sign,

The low, far lights, which on th' horizon shine,

Like those which sometimes tremble on the rim

Of clouded skies when day is closing dim,

Flashing athwart the purple spears of rain

The hope of sunshine on the hills again

I need no prophet's word, nor shapes that pass

Like clouding shadows o'er a magic glass;

For now, as ever, passionless and cold,

Doth the dread angel of the future hold

Evil and good before us, with no voice

Or warning look to guide us in our choice;

With spectral hands outreaching through the gloom

The shadowy contrasts of the coming doom.

Transferred from these, it now remains to give

The sun and shade of Fate's alternative."

Then, with a burst of music, touching all

The keys of thrifty life,—the mill-stream's fall,

The engine's pant along its quivering rails,

The anvil's ring, the measured beat of flails,

The sweep of scythes, the reaper's whistled tune,

Answering the summons of the bells of noon,

The woodman's hail along the river shores,

The steamboat's signal, and the dip of oars

Slowly the curtain rose from off a land

Fair as God's garden. Broad on either hand

The golden wheat-fields glimmered in the sun,

And the tall maize its yellow tassels spun.

Smooth highways set with hedge-rows living green,

With steepled towns through shaded vistas seen,

The school-house murmuring with its hive-like swarm,

The brook-bank whitening in the grist-mill's storm,

The painted farm-house shining through the leaves

Of fruited orchards bending at its eaves,

Where live again, around the Western hearth,

The homely old-time virtues of the North;

Where the blithe housewife rises with the day,

And well-paid labor counts his task a play.

And, grateful tokens of a Bible free,

And the free Gospel of Humanity,

Of diverse-sects and differing names the shrines,

One in their faith, whate'er their outward signs,

Like varying strophes of the same sweet hymn

From many a prairie's swell and river's brim,

A thousand church-spires sanctify the air

Of the calm Sabbath, with their sign of prayer.

Like sudden nightfall over bloom and green

The curtain dropped: and, momently, between

The clank of fetter and the crack of thong,

Half sob, half laughter, music swept along;

A strange refrain, whose idle words and low,

Like drunken mourners, kept the time of woe;

As if the revellers at a masquerade

Heard in the distance funeral marches played.

Such music, dashing all his smiles with tears,

The thoughtful voyager on Ponchartrain hears,

Where, through the noonday dusk of wooded shores

The negro boatman, singing to his oars,

With a wild pathos borrowed of his wrong

Redeems the jargon of his senseless song.

"Look," said the Showman, sternly, as he rolled

His curtain upward. "Fate's reverse behold!"

A village straggling in loose disarray

Of vulgar newness, premature decay;

A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls,

With "Slaves at Auction!" garnishing its walls;

Without, surrounded by a motley crowd,

The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous and loud,

A squire or colonel in his pride of place,

Known at free fights, the caucus, and the race,

Prompt to proclaim his honor without blot,

And silence doubters with a ten-pace shot,

Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant

With pious phrase and democratic cant,

Yet never scrupling, with a filthy jest,

To sell the infant from its mother's breast,

Break through all ties of wedlock, home, and kin,

Yield shrinking girlhood up to graybeard sin;

Sell all the virtues with his human stock,

The Christian graces on his auction-block,

And coolly count on shrewdest bargains driven

In hearts regenerate, and in souls forgiven!

Look once again! The moving canvas shows

A slave plantation's slovenly repose,

Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds,

The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds;

And, held a brute, in practice, as in law,

Becomes in fact the thing he's taken for.

There, early summoned to the hemp and corn,

The nursing mother leaves her child new-born;

There haggard sickness, weak and deathly faint,

Crawls to his task, and fears to make complaint;

And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in decay,

Weep for their lost ones sold and torn away!

Of ampler size the master's dwelling stands,

In shabby keeping with his half-tilled lands;

The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds unclean,

The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean.

Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift,

Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift;

Within, profusion to discomfort joined,

The listless body and the vacant mind;

The fear, the hate, the theft and falsehood, born

In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and scorn

There, all the vices, which, like birds obscene,

Batten on slavery loathsome and unclean,

From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise,

Pollute the nursery where the child-heir lies,

Taint infant lips beyond all after cure,

With the fell poison of a breast impure;

Touch boyhood's passions with the breath of flame,

From girlhood's instincts steal the blush of shame.

So swells, from low to high, from weak to strong,

The tragic chorus of the baleful wrong;

Guilty or guiltless, all within its range

Feel the blind justice of its sure revenge.

Still scenes like these the moving chart reveals.

Up the long western steppes the blighting steals;

Down the Pacific slope the evil Fate

Glides like a shadow to the Golden Gate

From sea to sea the drear eclipse is thrown,

From sea to sea the Mauvaises Terres have grown,

A belt of curses on the New World's zone!

The curtain fell. All drew a freer breath,

As men are wont to do when mournful death

Is covered from their sight. The Showman stood

With drooping brow in sorrow's attitude

One moment, then with sudden gesture shook

His loose hair back, and with the air and look

Of one who felt, beyond the narrow stage

And listening group, the presence of the age,

And heard the footsteps of the things to be,

Poured out his soul in earnest words and free.

"O friends!" he said, "in this poor trick of paint

You see the semblance, incomplete and faint,

Of the two-fronted Future, which, to-day,

Stands dim and silent, waiting in your way.

To-day, your servant, subject to your will;

To-morrow, master, or for good or ill.

If the dark face of Slavery on you turns,

If the mad curse its paper barrier spurns,

If the world granary of the West is made

The last foul market of the slaver's trade,

Why rail at fate? The mischief is your own.

Why hate your neighbor? Blame yourselves

alone!

"Men of the North! The South you charge with wrong

Is weak and poor, while you are rich and strong.

If questions,—idle and absurd as those

The old-time monks and Paduan doctors chose,—

Mere ghosts of questions, tariffs, and dead banks,

And scarecrow pontiffs, never broke your ranks,

Your thews united could, at once, roll back

The jostled nation to its primal track.

Nay, were you simply steadfast, manly, just,

True to the faith your fathers left in trust,

If stainless honor outweighed in your scale

A codfish quintal or a factory bale,

Full many a noble heart, (and such remain

In all the South, like Lot in Siddim's plain,

Who watch and wait, and from the wrong's control

Keep white and pure their chastity of soul,)

Now sick to loathing of your weak complaints,

Your tricks as sinners, and your prayers as saints,

Would half-way meet the frankness of your tone,

And feel their pulses beating with your own.

"The North! the South! no geographic line

Can fix the boundary or the point define,

Since each with each so closely interblends,

Where Slavery rises, and where Freedom ends.

Beneath your rocks the roots, far-reaching, hide

Of the fell Upas on the Southern side;

The tree whose branches in your northwinds wave

Dropped its young blossoms on Mount Vernon's grave;

The nursling growth of Monticello's crest

Is now the glory of the free Northwest;

To the wise maxims of her olden school

Virginia listened from thy lips, Rantoul;

Seward's words of power, and Sumner's fresh renown,

Flow from the pen that Jefferson laid down!

And when, at length, her years of madness o'er,

Like the crowned grazer on Euphrates' shore,

From her long lapse to savagery, her mouth

Bitter with baneful herbage, turns the South,

Resumes her old attire, and seeks to smooth

Her unkempt tresses at the glass of truth,

Her early faith shall find a tongue again,

New Wythes and Pinckneys swell that old refrain,

Her sons with yours renew the ancient pact,

The myth of Union prove at last a fact!

Then, if one murmur mars the wide content,

Some Northern lip will drawl the last dissent,

Some Union-saving patriot of your own

Lament to find his occupation gone.

"Grant that the North 's insulted, scorned, betrayed,

O'erreached in bargains with her neighbor made,

When selfish thrift and party held the scales

For peddling dicker, not for honest sales,—

Whom shall we strike? Who most deserves our blame?

The braggart Southron, open in his aim,

And bold as wicked, crashing straight through all

That bars his purpose, like a cannon-ball?

Or the mean traitor, breathing northern air,

With nasal speech and puritanic hair,

Whose cant the loss of principle survives,

As the mud-turtle e'en its head outlives;

Who, caught, chin-buried in some foul offence,

Puts on a look of injured innocence,

And consecrates his baseness to the cause

Of constitution, union, and the laws?

"Praise to the place-man who can hold aloof

His still unpurchased manhood, office-proof;

Who on his round of duty walks erect,

And leaves it only rich in self-respect;

As More maintained his virtue's lofty port

In the Eighth Henry's base and bloody court.

But, if exceptions here and there are found,

Who tread thus safely on enchanted ground,

The normal type, the fitting symbol still

Of those who fatten at the public mill,

Is the chained dog beside his master's door,

Or Circe's victim, feeding on all four!

"Give me the heroes who, at tuck of drum,

Salute thy staff, immortal Quattlebum!

Or they who, doubly armed with vote and gun,

Following thy lead, illustrious Atchison,

Their drunken franchise shift from scene to scene,

As tile-beard Jourdan did his guillotine!

Rather than him who, born beneath our skies,

To Slavery's hand its supplest tool supplies;

The party felon whose unblushing face

Looks from the pillory of his bribe of place,

And coolly makes a merit of disgrace,

Points to the footmarks of indignant scorn,

Shows the deep scars of satire's tossing horn;

And passes to his credit side the sum

Of all that makes a scoundrel's martyrdom!

"Bane of the North, its canker and its moth!

These modern Esaus, bartering rights for broth!

Taxing our justice, with their double claim,

As fools for pity, and as knaves for blame;

Who, urged by party, sect, or trade, within

The fell embrace of Slavery's sphere of sin,

Part at the outset with their moral sense,

The watchful angel set for Truth's defence;

Confound all contrasts, good and ill; reverse

The poles of life, its blessing and its curse;

And lose thenceforth from their perverted sight

The eternal difference 'twixt the wrong and right;

To them the Law is but the iron span

That girds the ankles of imbruted man;

To them the Gospel has no higher aim

Than simple sanction of the master's claim,

Dragged in the slime of Slavery's loathsome trail,

Like Chalier's Bible at his ass's tail!

"Such are the men who, with instinctive dread,

Whenever Freedom lifts her drooping head,

Make prophet-tripods of their office-stools,

And scare the nurseries and the village schools

With dire presage of ruin grim and great,

A broken Union and a foundered State!

Such are the patriots, self-bound to the stake

Of office, martyrs for their country's sake

Who fill themselves the hungry jaws of Fate;

And by their loss of manhood save the State.

In the wide gulf themselves like Cortius throw,

And test the virtues of cohesive dough;

As tropic monkeys, linking heads and tails,

Bridge o'er some torrent of Ecuador's vales!

"Such are the men who in your churches rave

To swearing-point, at mention of the slave!

When some poor parson, haply unawares,

Stammers of freedom in his timid prayers;

Who, if some foot-sore negro through the town

Steals northward, volunteer to hunt him down.

Or, if some neighbor, flying from disease,

Courts the mild balsam of the Southern breeze,

With hue and cry pursue him on his track,

And write Free-soiler on the poor man's back.

Such are the men who leave the pedler's cart,

While faring South, to learn the driver's art,

Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with pious aim

The graceful sorrows of some languid dame,

Who, from the wreck of her bereavement, saves

The double charm of widowhood and slaves

Pliant and apt, they lose no chance to show

To what base depths apostasy can go;

Outdo the natives in their readiness

To roast a negro, or to mob a press;

Poise a tarred schoolmate on the lyncher's rail,

Or make a bonfire of their birthplace mail!

"So some poor wretch, whose lips no longer bear

The sacred burden of his mother's prayer,

By fear impelled, or lust of gold enticed,

Turns to the Crescent from the Cross of Christ,

And, over-acting in superfluous zeal,

Crawls prostrate where the faithful only kneel,

Out-howls the Dervish, hugs his rags to court

The squalid Santon's sanctity of dirt;

And, when beneath the city gateway's span

Files slow and long the Meccan caravan,

And through its midst, pursued by Islam's prayers,

The prophet's Word some favored camel bears,

The marked apostate has his place assigned

The Koran-bearer's sacred rump behind,

With brush and pitcher following, grave and mute,

In meek attendance on the holy brute!

"Men of the North! beneath your very eyes,

By hearth and home, your real danger lies.

Still day by day some hold of freedom falls

Through home-bred traitors fed within its walls.

Men whom yourselves with vote and purse sustain,

At posts of honor, influence, and gain;

The right of Slavery to your sons to teach,

And 'South-side' Gospels in your pulpits preach,

Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear

On the sharp point of her subverted spear,

And imitate upon her cushion plump

The mad Missourian lynching from his stump;

Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor

Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and more;

And, ere your dull eyes open to the cheat,

Sell your old homestead underneath your feet

While such as these your loftiest outlooks hold,

While truth and conscience with your wares are sold,

While grave-browed merchants band themselves to aid

An annual man-hunt for their Southern trade,

What moral power within your grasp remains

To stay the mischief on Nebraska's plains?

High as the tides of generous impulse flow,

As far rolls back the selfish undertow;

And all your brave resolves, though aimed as true

As the horse-pistol Balmawhapple drew,

To Slavery's bastions lend as slight a shock

As the poor trooper's shot to Stirling rock!

"Yet, while the need of Freedom's cause demands

The earnest efforts of your hearts and hands,

Urged by all motives that can prompt the heart

To prayer and toil and manhood's manliest part;

Though to the soul's deep tocsin Nature joins

The warning whisper of her Orphic pines,

The north-wind's anger, and the south-wind's sigh,

The midnight sword-dance of the northern sky,

And, to the ear that bends above the sod

Of the green grave-mounds in the Fields of God,

In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or cheer,

The land's dead fathers speak their hope or fear,

Yet let not Passion wrest from Reason's hand

The guiding rein and symbol of command.

Blame not the caution proffering to your zeal

A well-meant drag upon its hurrying wheel;

Nor chide the man whose honest doubt extends

To the means only, not the righteous ends;

Nor fail to weigh the scruples and the fears

Of milder natures and serener years.

In the long strife with evil which began

With the first lapse of new-created man,

Wisely and well has Providence assigned

To each his part,—some forward, some behind;

And they, too, serve who temper and restrain

The o'erwarm heart that sets on fire the brain.

True to yourselves, feed Freedom's altar-flame

With what you have; let others do the same.

"Spare timid doubters; set like flint your face

Against the self-sold knaves of gain and place

Pity the weak; but with unsparing hand

Cast out the traitors who infest the land;

From bar, press, pulpit, cast them everywhere,

By dint of fasting, if you fail by prayer.

And in their place bring men of antique mould,

Like the grave fathers of your Age of Gold;

Statesmen like those who sought the primal fount

Of righteous law, the Sermon on the Mount;

Lawyers who prize, like Quincy, (to our day

Still spared, Heaven bless him!) honor more than pay,

And Christian jurists, starry-pure, like Jay;

Preachers like Woolman, or like them who bore

The faith of Wesley to our Western shore,

And held no convert genuine till he broke

Alike his servants' and the Devil's yoke;

And priests like him who Newport's market trod,

And o'er its slave-ships shook the bolts of God!

So shall your power, with a wise prudence used,

Strong but forbearing, firm but not abused,

In kindly keeping with the good of all,

The nobler maxims of the past recall,

Her natural home-born right to Freedom give,

And leave her foe his robber-right,—to live.

Live, as the snake does in his noisome fen!

Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn den!

Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of flame,

The focal point of million-fingered shame!

Live, till the Southron, who, with all his faults,

Has manly instincts, in his pride revolts,

Dashes from off him, midst the glad world's cheers,

The hideous nightmare of his dream of years,

And lifts, self-prompted, with his own right hand,

The vile encumbrance from his glorious land!

"So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends forth

Its widening circles to the South or North,

Where'er our banner flaunts beneath the stars

Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike bars,

There shall Free Labor's hardy children stand

The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land.

And when at last the hunted bison tires,

And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's fires;

And westward, wave on wave, the living flood

Breaks on the snow-line of majestic Hood;

And lonely Shasta listening hears the tread

Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hesper-led;

And, gazing downward through his boar-locks, sees

The tawny Asian climb his giant knees,

The Eastern sea shall hush his waves to hear

Pacific's surf-beat answer Freedom's cheer,

And one long rolling fire of triumph run

Between the sunrise and the sunset gun!"

. . . . . . . . . .

My task is done. The Showman and his show,

Themselves but shadows, into shadows go;

And, if no song of idlesse I have sung.

Nor tints of beauty on the canvas flung;

If the harsh numbers grate on tender ears,

And the rough picture overwrought appears,

With deeper coloring, with a sterner blast,

Before my soul a voice and vision passed,

Such as might Milton's jarring trump require,

Or glooms of Dante fringed with lurid fire.

Oh, not of choice, for themes of public wrong

I leave the green and pleasant paths of song,

The mild, sweet words which soften and adorn,

For sharp rebuke and bitter laugh of scorn.

More dear to me some song of private worth,

Some homely idyl of my native North,

Some summer pastoral of her inland vales,

Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales

Haunted by ghosts of unreturning sails,

Lost barks at parting hung from stem to helm

With prayers of love like dreams on Virgil's elm.

Nor private grief nor malice holds my pen;

I owe but kindness to my fellow-men;

And, South or North, wherever hearts of prayer

Their woes and weakness to our Father bear,

Wherever fruits of Christian love are found

In holy lives, to me is holy ground.

But the time passes. It were vain to crave

A late indulgence. What I had I gave.

Forget the poet, but his warning heed,

And shame his poor word with your nobler deed.

1856.

ON A PRAYER-BOOK,

WITH ITS FRONTISPIECE, ARY SCHEFFER'S "CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR," AMERICANIZED BY THE OMISSION OF THE BLACK MAN.

It is hardly to be credited, yet is true, that in the anxiety of the Northern merchant to conciliate his Southern customer, a publisher was found ready thus to mutilate Scheffer's picture. He intended his edition for use in the Southern States undoubtedly, but copies fell into the hands of those who believed literally in a gospel which was to preach liberty to the captive.

O ARY SCHEFFER! when beneath thine eye,

Touched with the light that cometh from above,

Grew the sweet picture of the dear Lord's love,

No dream hadst thou that Christian hands would tear

Therefrom the token of His equal care,

And make thy symbol of His truth a lie

The poor, dumb slave whose shackles fall away

In His compassionate gaze, grubbed smoothly out,

To mar no more the exercise devout

Of sleek oppression kneeling down to pray

Where the great oriel stains the Sabbath day!

Let whoso can before such praying-books

Kneel on his velvet cushion; I, for one,

Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the sun,

Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar brooks,

Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple-floor.

No falser idol man has bowed before,

In Indian groves or islands of the sea,

Than that which through the quaint-carved Gothic door

Looks forth,—a Church without humanity!

Patron of pride, and prejudice, and wrong,—

The rich man's charm and fetich of the strong,

The Eternal Fulness meted, clipped, and shorn,

The seamless robe of equal mercy torn,

The dear Christ hidden from His kindred flesh,

And, in His poor ones, crucified afresh!

Better the simple Lama scattering wide,

Where sweeps the storm Alechan's steppes along,

His paper horses for the lost to ride,

And wearying Buddha with his prayers to make

The figures living for the traveller's sake,

Than he who hopes with cheap praise to beguile

The ear of God, dishonoring man the while;

Who dreams the pearl gate's hinges, rusty grown,

Are moved by flattery's oil of tongue alone;

That in the scale Eternal Justice bears

The generous deed weighs less than selfish prayers,

And words intoned with graceful unction move

The Eternal Goodness more than lives of truth and love.

Alas, the Church! The reverend head of Jay,

Enhaloed with its saintly silvered hair,

Adorns no more the places of her prayer;

And brave young Tyng, too early called away,

Troubles the Haman of her courts no more

Like the just Hebrew at the Assyrian's door;

And her sweet ritual, beautiful but dead

As the dry husk from which the grain is shed,

And holy hymns from which the life devout

Of saints and martyrs has wellnigh gone out,

Like candles dying in exhausted air,

For Sabbath use in measured grists are ground;

And, ever while the spiritual mill goes round,

Between the upper and the nether stones,

Unseen, unheard, the wretched bondman groans,

And urges his vain plea, prayer-smothered, anthem-drowned!

O heart of mine, keep patience! Looking forth,

As from the Mount of Vision, I behold,

Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ on earth;

The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold!

And found, at last, the mystic Graal I see,

Brimmed with His blessing, pass from lip to lip

In sacred pledge of human fellowship;

And over all the songs of angels hear;

Songs of the love that casteth out all fear;

Songs of the Gospel of Humanity!

Lo! in the midst, with the same look He wore,

Healing and blessing on Genesaret's shore,

Folding together, with the all-tender might

Of His great love, the dark bands and the white,

Stands the Consoler, soothing every pain,

Making all burdens light, and breaking every chain.

1859.

THE SUMMONS.

MY ear is full of summer sounds,

Of summer sights my languid eye;

Beyond the dusty village bounds

I loiter in my daily rounds,

And in the noon-time shadows lie.

I hear the wild bee wind his horn,

The bird swings on the ripened wheat,

The long green lances of the corn

Are tilting in the winds of morn,

The locust shrills his song of heat.

Another sound my spirit hears,

A deeper sound that drowns them all;

A voice of pleading choked with tears,

The call of human hopes and fears,

The Macedonian cry to Paul!

The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows;

I know the word and countersign;

Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes,

Where stand or fall her friends or foes,

I know the place that should be mine.

Shamed be the hands that idly fold,

And lips that woo the reed's accord,

When laggard Time the hour has tolled

For true with false and new with old

To fight the battles of the Lord!

O brothers! blest by partial Fate

With power to match the will and deed,

To him your summons comes too late

Who sinks beneath his armor's weight,

And has no answer but God-speed!

1860.

TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

On the 12th of January, 1861, Mr. Seward delivered in the Senate chamber a speech on The State of the Union, in which he urged the paramount duty of preserving the Union, and went as far as it was possible to go, without surrender of principles, in concessions to the Southern party, concluding his argument with these words: "Having submitted my own opinions on this great crisis, it remains only to say, that I shall cheerfully lend to the government my best support in whatever prudent yet energetic efforts it shall make to preserve the public peace, and to maintain and preserve the Union; advising, only, that it practise, as far as possible, the utmost moderation, forbearance, and conciliation.

"This Union has not yet accomplished what good for mankind was manifestly designed by Him who appoints the seasons and prescribes the duties of states and empires. No; if it were cast down by faction to-day, it would rise again and re-appear in all its majestic proportions to-morrow. It is the only government that can stand here. Woe! woe! to the man that madly lifts his hand against it. It shall continue and endure; and men, in after times, shall declare that this generation, which saved the Union from such sudden and unlooked-for dangers, surpassed in magnanimity even that one which laid its foundations in the eternal principles of liberty, justice, and humanity."

STATESMAN, I thank thee! and, if yet dissent

Mingles, reluctant, with my large content,

I cannot censure what was nobly meant.

But, while constrained to hold even Union less

Than Liberty and Truth and Righteousness,

I thank thee in the sweet and holy name

Of peace, for wise calm words that put to shame

Passion and party. Courage may be shown

Not in defiance of the wrong alone;

He may be bravest who, unweaponed, bears

The olive branch, and, strong in justice, spares

The rash wrong-doer, giving widest scope,

To Christian charity and generous hope.

If, without damage to the sacred cause

Of Freedom and the safeguard of its laws—

If, without yielding that for which alone

We prize the Union, thou canst save it now

From a baptism of blood, upon thy brow

A wreath whose flowers no earthly soil have known;

Woven of the beatitudes, shall rest,

And the peacemaker be forever blest!

1861.

IN WAR TIME.

TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND HARRIET W. SEWAll, OF MELROSE.

These lines to my old friends stood as dedication in the volume which contained a collection of pieces under the general title of In War Time. The group belonging distinctly under that title I have retained here; the other pieces in the volume are distributed among the appropriate divisions.

OLOR ISCANUS queries: "Why should we

Vex at the land's ridiculous miserie?"

So on his Usk banks, in the blood-red dawn

Of England's civil strife, did careless Vaughan

Bemock his times. O friends of many years!

Though faith and trust are stronger than our fears,

And the signs promise peace with liberty,

Not thus we trifle with our country's tears

And sweat of agony. The future's gain

Is certain as God's truth; but, meanwhile, pain

Is bitter and tears are salt: our voices take

A sober tone; our very household songs

Are heavy with a nation's griefs and wrongs;

And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake

Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall beat,

The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning

feet!

1863

THY WILL BE DONE.

WE see not, know not; all our way

Is night,—with Thee alone is day

From out the torrent's troubled drift,

Above the storm our prayers we lift,

Thy will be done!

The flesh may fail, the heart may faint,

But who are we to make complaint,

Or dare to plead, in times like these,

The weakness of our love of ease?

Thy will be done!

We take with solemn thankfulness

Our burden up, nor ask it less,

And count it joy that even we

May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee,

Whose will be done!

Though dim as yet in tint and line,

We trace Thy picture's wise design,

And thank Thee that our age supplies

Its dark relief of sacrifice.

Thy will be done!

And if, in our unworthiness,

Thy sacrificial wine we press;

If from Thy ordeal's heated bars

Our feet are seamed with crimson scars,

Thy will be done!

If, for the age to come, this hour

Of trial hath vicarious power,

And, blest by Thee, our present pain,

Be Liberty's eternal gain,

Thy will be done!

Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys,

The anthem of the destinies!

The minor of Thy loftier strain,

Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain,

Thy will be done!

1861.

A WORD FOR THE HOUR.

THE firmament breaks up. In black eclipse

Light after light goes out. One evil star,

Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,

As in the dream of the Apocalypse,

Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep

Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep

Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap

On one hand into fratricidal fight,

Or, on the other, yield eternal right,

Frame lies of law, and good and ill confound?

What fear we? Safe on freedom's vantage-ground

Our feet are planted: let us there remain

In unrevengeful calm, no means untried

Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied,

The sad spectators of a suicide!

They break the links of Union: shall we light

The fires of hell to weld anew the chain

On that red anvil where each blow is pain?

Draw we not even now a freer breath,

As from our shoulders falls a load of death

Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim bore

When keen with life to a dead horror bound?

Why take we up the accursed thing again?

Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more

Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag

With its vile reptile-blazon. Let us press

The golden cluster on our brave old flag

In closer union, and, if numbering less,

Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain.

16th First mo., 1861.

"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT."

LUTHER'S HYMN.

WE wait beneath the furnace-blast

The pangs of transformation;

Not painlessly doth God recast

And mould anew the nation.

Hot burns the fire

Where wrongs expire;

Nor spares the hand

That from the land

Uproots the ancient evil.

The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared

Its bloody rain is dropping;

The poison plant the fathers spared

All else is overtopping.

East, West, South, North,

It curses the earth;

All justice dies,

And fraud and lies

Live only in its shadow.

What gives the wheat-field blades of steel?

What points the rebel cannon?

What sets the roaring rabble's heel

On the old star-spangled pennon?

What breaks the oath

Of the men o' the South?

What whets the knife

For the Union's life?—

Hark to the answer: Slavery!

Then waste no blows on lesser foes

In strife unworthy freemen.

God lifts to-day the veil, and shows

The features of the demon

O North and South,

Its victims both,

Can ye not cry,

"Let slavery die!"

And union find in freedom?

What though the cast-out spirit tear

The nation in his going?

We who have shared the guilt must share

The pang of his o'erthrowing!

Whate'er the loss,

Whate'er the cross,

Shall they complain

Of present pain

Who trust in God's hereafter?

For who that leans on His right arm

Was ever yet forsaken?

What righteous cause can suffer harm

If He its part has taken?

Though wild and loud,

And dark the cloud,

Behind its folds

His hand upholds

The calm sky of to-morrow!

Above the maddening cry for blood,

Above the wild war-drumming,

Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good

The evil overcoming.

Give prayer and purse

To stay the Curse

Whose wrong we share,

Whose shame we bear,

Whose end shall gladden Heaven!

In vain the bells of war shall ring

Of triumphs and revenges,

While still is spared the evil thing

That severs and estranges.

But blest the ear

That yet shall hear

The jubilant bell

That rings the knell

Of Slavery forever!

Then let the selfish lip be dumb,

And hushed the breath of sighing;

Before the joy of peace must come

The pains of purifying.

God give us grace

Each in his place

To bear his lot,

And, murmuring not,

Endure and wait and labor!

1861.

TO JOHN C. FREMONT.

On the 31st of August, 1861, General Fremont, then in charge of the Western Department, issued a proclamation which contained a clause, famous as the first announcement of emancipation: "The property," it declared, "real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri, who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." Mr. Lincoln regarded the proclamation as premature and countermanded it, after vainly endeavoring to persuade Fremont of his own motion to revoke it.

THY error, Fremont, simply was to act

A brave man's part, without the statesman's tact,

And, taking counsel but of common sense,

To strike at cause as well as consequence.

Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn

At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown

Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own,

Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn

It had been safer, doubtless, for the time,

To flatter treason, and avoid offence

To that Dark Power whose underlying crime

Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence.

But if thine be the fate of all who break

The ground for truth's seed, or forerun their years

Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make

A lane for freedom through the level spears,

Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee,

Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free!

The land shakes with them, and the slave's dull ear

Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear.

Who would recall them now must first arrest

The winds that blow down from the free Northwest,

Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back

The Mississippi to its upper springs.

Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack

But the full time to harden into things.

1861.

THE WATCHERS.

BESIDE a stricken field I stood;

On the torn turf, on grass and wood,

Hung heavily the dew of blood.

Still in their fresh mounds lay the slain,

But all the air was quick with pain

And gusty sighs and tearful rain.

Two angels, each with drooping head

And folded wings and noiseless tread,

Watched by that valley of the dead.

The one, with forehead saintly bland

And lips of blessing, not command,

Leaned, weeping, on her olive wand.

The other's brows were scarred and knit,

His restless eyes were watch-fires lit,

His hands for battle-gauntlets fit.

"How long!"—I knew the voice of Peace,—

"Is there no respite? no release?

When shall the hopeless quarrel cease?

"O Lord, how long!! One human soul

Is more than any parchment scroll,

Or any flag thy winds unroll.

"What price was Ellsworth's, young and brave?

How weigh the gift that Lyon gave,

Or count the cost of Winthrop's grave?

"O brother! if thine eye can see,

Tell how and when the end shall be,

What hope remains for thee and me."

Then Freedom sternly said: "I shun

No strife nor pang beneath the sun,

When human rights are staked and won.

"I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock,

I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock,

I walked with Sidney to the block.

"The moor of Marston felt my tread,

Through Jersey snows the march I led,

My voice Magenta's charges sped.

"But now, through weary day and night,

I watch a vague and aimless fight

For leave to strike one blow aright.

"On either side my foe they own

One guards through love his ghastly throne,

And one through fear to reverence grown.

"Why wait we longer, mocked, betrayed,

By open foes, or those afraid

To speed thy coming through my aid?

"Why watch to see who win or fall?

I shake the dust against them all,

I leave them to their senseless brawl."

"Nay," Peace implored: "yet longer wait;

The doom is near, the stake is great

God knoweth if it be too late.

"Still wait and watch; the way prepare

Where I with folded wings of prayer

May follow, weaponless and bare."

"Too late!" the stern, sad voice replied,

"Too late!" its mournful echo sighed,

In low lament the answer died.

A rustling as of wings in flight,

An upward gleam of lessening white,

So passed the vision, sound and sight.

But round me, like a silver bell

Rung down the listening sky to tell

Of holy help, a sweet voice fell.

"Still hope and trust," it sang; "the rod

Must fall, the wine-press must be trod,

But all is possible with God!"

1862.

TO ENGLISHMEN.

Written when, in the stress of our terrible war, the English ruling class, with few exceptions, were either coldly indifferent or hostile to the party of freedom. Their attitude was illustrated by caricatures of America, among which was one of a slaveholder and cowhide, with the motto, "Haven't I a right to wallop my nigger?"

You flung your taunt across the wave

We bore it as became us,

Well knowing that the fettered slave

Left friendly lips no option save

To pity or to blame us.

You scoffed our plea. "Mere lack of will,

Not lack of power," you told us

We showed our free-state records; still

You mocked, confounding good and ill,

Slave-haters and slaveholders.

We struck at Slavery; to the verge

Of power and means we checked it;

Lo!—presto, change! its claims you urge,

Send greetings to it o'er the surge,

And comfort and protect it.

But yesterday you scarce could shake,

In slave-abhorring rigor,

Our Northern palms for conscience' sake

To-day you clasp the hands that ache

With "walloping the nigger!"

O Englishmen!—in hope and creed,

In blood and tongue our brothers!

We too are heirs of Runnymede;

And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed

Are not alone our mother's.

"Thicker than water," in one rill

Through centuries of story

Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still

We share with you its good and ill,

The shadow and the glory.

Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave

Nor length of years can part us

Your right is ours to shrine and grave,

The common freehold of the brave,

The gift of saints and martyrs.

Our very sins and follies teach

Our kindred frail and human

We carp at faults with bitter speech,

The while, for one unshared by each,

We have a score in common.

We bowed the heart, if not the knee,

To England's Queen, God bless her

We praised you when your slaves went free

We seek to unchain ours. Will ye

Join hands with the oppressor?

And is it Christian England cheers

The bruiser, not the bruised?

And must she run, despite the tears

And prayers of eighteen hundred years,

Amuck in Slavery's crusade?

Oh, black disgrace! Oh, shame and loss

Too deep for tongue to phrase on

Tear from your flag its holy cross,

And in your van of battle toss

The pirate's skull-bone blazon!

1862.

MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS.

It is recorded that the Chians, when subjugated by Mithridates of Cappadocia, were delivered up to their own slaves, to be carried away captive to Colchis. Athenxus considers this a just punishment for their wickedness in first introducing the slave-trade into Greece. From this ancient villany of the Chians the proverb arose, "The Chian hath bought himself a master."

KNOW'ST thou, O slave-cursed land

How, when the Chian's cup of guilt

Was full to overflow, there came

God's justice in the sword of flame

That, red with slaughter to its hilt,

Blazed in the Cappadocian victor's hand?

The heavens are still and far;

But, not unheard of awful Jove,

The sighing of the island slave

Was answered, when the AEgean wave

The keels of Mithridates clove,

And the vines shrivelled in the breath of war.

"Robbers of Chios! hark,"

The victor cried, "to Heaven's decree!

Pluck your last cluster from the vine,

Drain your last cup of Chian wine;

Slaves of your slaves, your doom shall be,

In Colchian mines by Phasis rolling dark."

Then rose the long lament

From the hoar sea-god's dusky caves

The priestess rent her hair and cried,

"Woe! woe! The gods are sleepless-eyed!"

And, chained and scourged, the slaves of slaves,

The lords of Chios into exile went.

"The gods at last pay well,"

So Hellas sang her taunting song,

"The fisher in his net is caught,

The Chian hath his master bought;"

And isle from isle, with laughter long,

Took up and sped the mocking parable.

Once more the slow, dumb years

Bring their avenging cycle round,

And, more than Hellas taught of old,

Our wiser lesson shall be told,

Of slaves uprising, freedom-crowned,

To break, not wield, the scourge wet with their

blood and tears.

1868.

AT PORT ROYAL.

In November, 1861, a Union force under Commodore Dupont and General Sherman captured Port Royal, and from this point as a basis of operations, the neighboring islands between Charleston and Savannah were taken possession of. The early occupation of this district, where the negro population was greatly in excess of the white, gave an opportunity which was at once seized upon, of practically emancipating the slaves and of beginning that work of civilization which was accepted as the grave responsibility of those who had labored for freedom.

THE tent-lights glimmer on the land,

The ship-lights on the sea;

The night-wind smooths with drifting sand

Our track on lone Tybee.

At last our grating keels outslide,

Our good boats forward swing;

And while we ride the land-locked tide,

Our negroes row and sing.

For dear the bondman holds his gifts

Of music and of song

The gold that kindly Nature sifts

Among his sands of wrong:

The power to make his toiling days

And poor home-comforts please;

The quaint relief of mirth that plays

With sorrow's minor keys.

Another glow than sunset's fire

Has filled the west with light,

Where field and garner, barn and byre,

Are blazing through the night.

The land is wild with fear and hate,

The rout runs mad and fast;

From hand to hand, from gate to gate

The flaming brand is passed.

The lurid glow falls strong across

Dark faces broad with smiles

Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss

That fire yon blazing piles.

With oar-strokes timing to their song,

They weave in simple lays

The pathos of remembered wrong,

The hope of better days,—

The triumph-note that Miriam sung,

The joy of uncaged birds

Softening with Afric's mellow tongue

Their broken Saxon words.

SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN.

Oh, praise an' tanks! De Lord he come

To set de people free;

An' massa tink it day ob doom,

An' we ob jubilee.

De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves

He jus' as 'trong as den;

He say de word: we las' night slaves;

To-day, de Lord's freemen.

De yam will grow, de cotton blow,

We'll hab de rice an' corn;

Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear

De driver blow his horn!

Ole massa on he trabbels gone;

He leaf de land behind

De Lord's breff blow him furder on,

Like corn-shuck in de wind.

We own de hoe, we own de plough,

We own de hands dat hold;

We sell de pig, we sell de cow,

But nebber chile be sold.

De yam will grow, de cotton blow,

We'll hab de rice an' corn;

Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear

De driver blow his horn!

We pray de Lord: he gib us signs

Dat some day we be free;

De norf-wind tell it to de pines,

De wild-duck to de sea;

We tink it when de church-bell ring,

We dream it in de dream;

De rice-bird mean it when he sing,

De eagle when be scream.

De yam will grow, de cotton blow,

We'll hab de rice an' corn

Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear

De driver blow his horn!

We know de promise nebber fail,

An' nebber lie de word;

So like de 'postles in de jail,

We waited for de Lord

An' now he open ebery door,

An' trow away de key;

He tink we lub him so before,

We hub him better free.

De yam will grow, de cotton blow,

He'll gib de rice an' corn;

Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear

De driver blow his horn!

So sing our dusky gondoliers;

And with a secret pain,

And smiles that seem akin to tears,

We hear the wild refrain.

We dare not share the negro's trust,

Nor yet his hope deny;

We only know that God is just,

And every wrong shall die.

Rude seems the song; each swarthy face,

Flame-lighted, ruder still

We start to think that hapless race

Must shape our good or ill;

That laws of changeless justice bind

Oppressor with oppressed;

And, close as sin and suffering joined,

We march to Fate abreast.

Sing on, poor hearts! your chant shall be

Our sign of blight or bloom,

The Vala-song of Liberty,

Or death-rune of our doom!

1862.

ASTRAEA AT THE CAPITOL.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1862.

WHEN first I saw our banner wave

Above the nation's council-hall,

I heard beneath its marble wall

The clanking fetters of the slave!

In the foul market-place I stood,

And saw the Christian mother sold,

And childhood with its locks of gold,

Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood.

I shut my eyes, I held my breath,

And, smothering down the wrath and shame

That set my Northern blood aflame,

Stood silent,—where to speak was death.

Beside me gloomed the prison-cell

Where wasted one in slow decline

For uttering simple words of mine,

And loving freedom all too well.

The flag that floated from the dome

Flapped menace in the morning air;

I stood a perilled stranger where

The human broker made his home.

For crime was virtue: Gown and Sword

And Law their threefold sanction gave,

And to the quarry of the slave

Went hawking with our symbol-bird.

On the oppressor's side was power;

And yet I knew that every wrong,

However old, however strong,

But waited God's avenging hour.

I knew that truth would crush the lie,

Somehow, some time, the end would be;

Yet scarcely dared I hope to see

The triumph with my mortal eye.

But now I see it! In the sun

A free flag floats from yonder dome,

And at the nation's hearth and home

The justice long delayed is done.

Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer,

The message of deliverance comes,

But heralded by roll of drums

On waves of battle-troubled air!

Midst sounds that madden and appall,

The song that Bethlehem's shepherds knew!

The harp of David melting through

The demon-agonies of Saul!

Not as we hoped; but what are we?

Above our broken dreams and plans

God lays, with wiser hand than man's,

The corner-stones of liberty.

I cavil not with Him: the voice

That freedom's blessed gospel tells

Is sweet to me as silver bells,

Rejoicing! yea, I will rejoice!

Dear friends still toiling in the sun;

Ye dearer ones who, gone before,

Are watching from the eternal shore

The slow work by your hands begun,

Rejoice with me! The chastening rod

Blossoms with love; the furnace heat

Grows cool beneath His blessed feet

Whose form is as the Son of God!

Rejoice! Our Marah's bitter springs

Are sweetened; on our ground of grief

Rise day by day in strong relief

The prophecies of better things.

Rejoice in hope! The day and night

Are one with God, and one with them

Who see by faith the cloudy hem

Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light.

1862.

THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.

THE flags of war like storm-birds fly,

The charging trumpets blow;

Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,

No earthquake strives below.

And, calm and patient, Nature keeps

Her ancient promise well,

Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps

The battle's breath of hell.

And still she walks in golden hours

Through harvest-happy farms,

And still she wears her fruits and flowers

Like jewels on her arms.

What mean the gladness of the plain,

This joy of eve and morn,

The mirth that shakes the beard of grain

And yellow locks of corn?

Ah! eyes may well be full of tears,

And hearts with hate are hot;

But even-paced come round the years,

And Nature changes not.

She meets with smiles our bitter grief,

With songs our groans of pain;

She mocks with tint of flower and leaf

The war-field's crimson stain.

Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear

Her sweet thanksgiving-psalm;

Too near to God for doubt or fear,

She shares the eternal calm.

She knows the seed lies safe below

The fires that blast and burn;

For all the tears of blood we sow

She waits the rich return.

She sees with clearer eve than ours

The good of suffering born,—

The hearts that blossom like her flowers,

And ripen like her corn.

Oh, give to us, in times like these,

The vision of her eyes;

And make her fields and fruited trees

Our golden prophecies

Oh, give to us her finer ear

Above this stormy din,

We too would hear the bells of cheer

Ring peace and freedom in.

1862.

HYMN,

SUNG AT CHRISTMAS BY THE SCHOLARS OF ST. HELENA'S ISLAND, S. C.

OH, none in all the world before

Were ever glad as we!

We're free on Carolina's shore,

We're all at home and free.

Thou Friend and Helper of the poor,

Who suffered for our sake,

To open every prison door,

And every yoke to break!

Bend low Thy pitying face and mild,

And help us sing and pray;

The hand that blessed the little child,

Upon our foreheads lay.

We hear no more the driver's horn,

No more the whip we fear,

This holy day that saw Thee born

Was never half so dear.

The very oaks are greener clad,

The waters brighter smile;

Oh, never shone a day so glad

On sweet St. Helen's Isle.

We praise Thee in our songs to-day,

To Thee in prayer we call,

Make swift the feet and straight the way

Of freedom unto all.

Come once again, O blessed Lord!

Come walking on the sea!

And let the mainlands hear the word

That sets the islands free!

1863.

THE PROCLAMATION.

President Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation was issued January 1, 1863.

SAINT PATRICK, slave to Milcho of the herds

Of Ballymena, wakened with these words

"Arise, and flee

Out from the land of bondage, and be free!"

Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heaven

The angels singing of his sins forgiven,

And, wondering, sees

His prison opening to their golden keys,

He rose a man who laid him down a slave,

Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave,

And outward trod

Into the glorious liberty of God.

He cast the symbols of his shame away;

And, passing where the sleeping Milcho lay,

Though back and limb

Smarted with wrong, he prayed, "God pardon

him!"

So went he forth; but in God's time he came

To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame;

And, dying, gave

The land a saint that lost him as a slave.

O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb

Waiting for God, your hour at last has come,

And freedom's song

Breaks the long silence of your night of wrong!

Arise and flee! shake off the vile restraint

Of ages; but, like Ballymena's saint,

The oppressor spare,

Heap only on his head the coals of prayer.

Go forth, like him! like him return again,

To bless the land whereon in bitter pain

Ye toiled at first,

And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed.

1863.

ANNIVERSARY POEM.

Read before the Alumni of the Friends' Yearly Meeting School, at the Annual Meeting at Newport, R. I., 15th 6th mo., 1863.

ONCE more, dear friends, you meet beneath

A clouded sky

Not yet the sword has found its sheath,

And on the sweet spring airs the breath

Of war floats by.

Yet trouble springs not from the ground,

Nor pain from chance;

The Eternal order circles round,

And wave and storm find mete and bound

In Providence.

Full long our feet the flowery ways

Of peace have trod,

Content with creed and garb and phrase:

A harder path in earlier days

Led up to God.

Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,

Are made our own;

Too long the world has smiled to hear

Our boast of full corn in the ear

By others sown;

To see us stir the martyr fires

Of long ago,

And wrap our satisfied desires

In the singed mantles that our sires

Have dropped below.

But now the cross our worthies bore

On us is laid;

Profession's quiet sleep is o'er,

And in the scale of truth once more

Our faith is weighed.

The cry of innocent blood at last

Is calling down

An answer in the whirlwind-blast,

The thunder and the shadow cast

From Heaven's dark frown.

The land is red with judgments. Who

Stands guiltless forth?

Have we been faithful as we knew,

To God and to our brother true,

To Heaven and Earth.

How faint, through din of merchandise

And count of gain,

Have seemed to us the captive's cries!

How far away the tears and sighs

Of souls in pain!

This day the fearful reckoning comes

To each and all;

We hear amidst our peaceful homes

The summons of the conscript drums,

The bugle's call.

Our path is plain; the war-net draws

Round us in vain,

While, faithful to the Higher Cause,

We keep our fealty to the laws

Through patient pain.

The levelled gun, the battle-brand,

We may not take

But, calmly loyal, we can stand

And suffer with our suffering land

For conscience' sake.

Why ask for ease where all is pain?

Shall we alone

Be left to add our gain to gain,

When over Armageddon's plain

The trump is blown?

To suffer well is well to serve;

Safe in our Lord

The rigid lines of law shall curve

To spare us; from our heads shall swerve

Its smiting sword.

And light is mingled with the gloom,

And joy with grief;

Divinest compensations come,

Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom

In sweet relief.

Thanks for our privilege to bless,

By word and deed,

The widow in her keen distress,

The childless and the fatherless,

The hearts that bleed!

For fields of duty, opening wide,

Where all our powers

Are tasked the eager steps to guide

Of millions on a path untried

The slave is ours!

Ours by traditions dear and old,

Which make the race

Our wards to cherish and uphold,

And cast their freedom in the mould

Of Christian grace.

And we may tread the sick-bed floors

Where strong men pine,

And, down the groaning corridors,

Pour freely from our liberal stores

The oil and wine.

Who murmurs that in these dark days

His lot is cast?

God's hand within the shadow lays

The stones whereon His gates of praise

Shall rise at last.

Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand

Nor stint, nor stay;

The years have never dropped their sand

On mortal issue vast and grand

As ours to-day.

Already, on the sable ground

Of man's despair

Is Freedom's glorious picture found,

With all its dusky hands unbound

Upraised in prayer.

Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice

And pain and loss,

When God shall wipe the weeping eyes,

For suffering give the victor's prize,

The crown for cross.

BARBARA FRIETCHIE.

This poem was written in strict conformity to the account of the incident as I had it from respectable and trustworthy sources. It has since been the subject of a good deal of conflicting testimony, and the story was probably incorrect in some of its details. It is admitted by all that Barbara Frietchie was no myth, but a worthy and highly esteemed gentlewoman, intensely loyal and a hater of the Slavery Rebellion, holding her Union flag sacred and keeping it with her Bible; that when the Confederates halted before her house, and entered her dooryard, she denounced them in vigorous language, shook her cane in their faces, and drove them out; and when General Burnside's troops followed close upon Jackson's, she waved her flag and cheered them. It is stated that May Qnantrell, a brave and loyal lady in another part of the city, did wave her flag in sight of the Confederates. It is possible that there has been a blending of the two incidents.

Up from the meadows rich with corn,

Clear in the cool September morn.

The clustered spires of Frederick stand

Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,

Apple and peach tree fruited deep,

Fair as the garden of the Lord

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall

When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;

Over the mountains winding down,

Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,

Forty flags with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun

Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,

Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

Bravest of all in Frederick town,

She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,

To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,

Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right

He glanced; the old flag met his sight.

"Halt!"—the dust-brown ranks stood fast.

"Fire!"—out blazed the rifle-blast.

It shivered the window, pane and sash;

It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff

Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.

She leaned far out on the window-sill,

And shook it forth with a royal will.

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country's flag," she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,

Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred

To life at that woman's deed and word.

"Who touches a hair of yon gray head

Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.

All day long through Frederick street

Sounded the tread of marching feet.

All day long that free flag tost

Over the heads of the rebel host.

Ever its torn folds rose and fell

On the loyal winds that loved it well;

And through the hill-gaps sunset light

Shone over it with a warm good-night.

Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,

And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

Honor to her! and let a tear

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,

Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

Peace and order and beauty draw

Round thy symbol of light and law;

And ever the stars above look down

On thy stars below in Frederick town!

1863.

WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.

THE birds against the April wind

Flew northward, singing as they flew;

They sang, "The land we leave behind

Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."

"O wild-birds, flying from the South,

What saw and heard ye, gazing down?"

"We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,

The sickened camp, the blazing town!

"Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,

We saw your march-worn children die;

In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,

We saw your dead uncoffined lie.

"We heard the starving prisoner's sighs,

And saw, from line and trench, your sons

Follow our flight with home-sick eyes

Beyond the battery's smoking guns."

"And heard and saw ye only wrong

And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?"

"We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song,

The crash of Slavery's broken locks!

"We saw from new, uprising States

The treason-nursing mischief spurned,

As, crowding Freedom's ample gates,

The long estranged and lost returned.

"O'er dusky faces, seamed and old,

And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,

With hope in every rustling fold,

We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.

"And struggling up through sounds accursed,

A grateful murmur clomb the air;

A whisper scarcely heard at first,

It filled the listening heavens with prayer.

"And sweet and far, as from a star,

Replied a voice which shall not cease,

Till, drowning all the noise of war,

It sings the blessed song of peace!"

So to me, in a doubtful day

Of chill and slowly greening spring,

Low stooping from the cloudy gray,

The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.

They vanished in the misty air,

The song went with them in their flight;

But lo! they left the sunset fair,

And in the evening there was light.

April, 1864.

THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATHA.

A LEGEND OF "THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE," A. D. 1154-1864.

A STRONG and mighty Angel,

Calm, terrible, and bright,

The cross in blended red and blue

Upon his mantle white.

Two captives by him kneeling,

Each on his broken chain,

Sang praise to God who raiseth

The dead to life again!

Dropping his cross-wrought mantle,

"Wear this," the Angel said;

"Take thou, O Freedom's priest, its sign,

The white, the blue, and red."

Then rose up John de Matha

In the strength the Lord Christ gave,

And begged through all the land of France

The ransom of the slave.

The gates of tower and castle

Before him open flew,

The drawbridge at his coming fell,

The door-bolt backward drew.

For all men owned his errand,

And paid his righteous tax;

And the hearts of lord and peasant

Were in his hands as wax.

At last, outbound from Tunis,

His bark her anchor weighed,

Freighted with seven-score Christian souls

Whose ransom he had paid.

But, torn by Paynim hatred,

Her sails in tatters hung;

And on the wild waves, rudderless,

A shattered hulk she swung.

"God save us!" cried the captain,

"For naught can man avail;

Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks

Her rudder and her sail!

"Behind us are the Moormen;

At sea we sink or strand

There's death upon the water,

There's death upon the land!"

Then up spake John de Matha

"God's errands never fail!

Take thou the mantle which I wear,

And make of it a sail."

They raised the cross-wrought mantle,

The blue, the white, the red;

And straight before the wind off-shore

The ship of Freedom sped.

"God help us!" cried the seamen,

"For vain is mortal skill

The good ship on a stormy sea

Is drifting at its will."

Then up spake John de Matha

"My mariners, never fear

The Lord whose breath has filled her sail

May well our vessel steer!"

So on through storm and darkness

They drove for weary hours;

And lo! the third gray morning shone

On Ostia's friendly towers.

And on the walls the watchers

The ship of mercy knew,

They knew far off its holy cross,

The red, the white, and blue.

And the bells in all the steeples

Rang out in glad accord,

To welcome home to Christian soil

The ransomed of the Lord.

So runs the ancient legend

By bard and painter told;

And lo! the cycle rounds again,

The new is as the old!

With rudder foully broken,

And sails by traitors torn,

Our country on a midnight sea

Is waiting for the morn.

Before her, nameless terror;

Behind, the pirate foe;

The clouds are black above her,

The sea is white below.

The hope of all who suffer,

The dread of all who wrong,

She drifts in darkness and in storm,

How long, O Lord I how long?

But courage, O my mariners

Ye shall not suffer wreck,

While up to God the freedman's prayers

Are rising from your deck.

Is not your sail the banner

Which God hath blest anew,

The mantle that De Matha wore,

The red, the white, the blue?

Its hues are all of heaven,

The red of sunset's dye,

The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud,

The blue of morning's sky.

Wait cheerily, then, O mariners,

For daylight and for land;

The breath of God is in your sail,

Your rudder is His hand.

Sail on, sail on, deep-freighted

With blessings and with hopes;

The saints of old with shadowy hands

Are pulling at your ropes.

Behind ye holy martyrs

Uplift the palm and crown;

Before ye unborn ages send

Their benedictions down.

Take heart from John de Matha!—

God's errands never fail!

Sweep on through storm and darkness,

The thunder and the hail!

Sail on! The morning cometh,

The port ye yet shall win;

And all the bells of God shall ring

The good ship bravely in!

1865.

LAUS DEO!

On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The resolution was adopted by Congress, January 31, 1865. The ratification by the requisite number of states was announced December 18, 1865.

IT is done!

Clang of bell and roar of gun

Send the tidings up and down.

How the belfries rock and reel!

How the great guns, peal on peal,

Fling the joy from town to town!

Ring, O bells!

Every stroke exulting tells

Of the burial hour of crime.

Loud and long, that all may hear,

Ring for every listening ear

Of Eternity and Time!

Let us kneel

God's own voice is in that peal,

And this spot is holy ground.

Lord, forgive us! What are we,

That our eyes this glory see,

That our ears have heard the sound!

For the Lord

On the whirlwind is abroad;

In the earthquake He has spoken;

He has smitten with His thunder

The iron walls asunder,

And the gates of brass are broken.

Loud and long

Lift the old exulting song;

Sing with Miriam by the sea,

He has cast the mighty down;

Horse and rider sink and drown;

"He hath triumphed gloriously!"

Did we dare,

In our agony of prayer,

Ask for more than He has done?

When was ever His right hand

Over any time or land

Stretched as now beneath the sun?

How they pale,

Ancient myth and song and tale,

In this wonder of our days,

When the cruel rod of war

Blossoms white with righteous law,

And the wrath of man is praise!

Blotted out

All within and all about

Shall a fresher life begin;

Freer breathe the universe

As it rolls its heavy curse

On the dead and buried sin!

It is done!

In the circuit of the sun

Shall the sound thereof go forth.

It shall bid the sad rejoice,

It shall give the dumb a voice,

It shall belt with joy the earth!

Ring and swing,

Bells of joy! On morning's wing

Send the song of praise abroad!

With a sound of broken chains

Tell the nations that He reigns,

Who alone is Lord and God!

1865.

HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPATION AT NEWBURYPORT.

NOT unto us who did but seek

The word that burned within to speak,

Not unto us this day belong

The triumph and exultant song.

Upon us fell in early youth

The burden of unwelcome truth,

And left us, weak and frail and few,

The censor's painful work to do.

Thenceforth our life a fight became,

The air we breathed was hot with blame;

For not with gauged and softened tone

We made the bondman's cause our own.

We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn,

The private hate, the public scorn;

Yet held through all the paths we trod

Our faith in man and trust in God.

We prayed and hoped; but still, with awe,

The coming of the sword we saw;

We heard the nearing steps of doom,

We saw the shade of things to come.

In grief which they alone can feel

Who from a mother's wrong appeal,

With blended lines of fear and hope

We cast our country's horoscope.

For still within her house of life

We marked the lurid sign of strife,

And, poisoning and imbittering all,

We saw the star of Wormwood fall.

Deep as our love for her became

Our hate of all that wrought her shame,

And if, thereby, with tongue and pen

We erred,—we were but mortal men.

We hoped for peace; our eyes survey

The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day

We prayed for love to loose the chain;

'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain!

Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours

Has mined and heaved the hostile towers;

Not by our hands is turned the key

That sets the sighing captives free.

A redder sea than Egypt's wave

Is piled and parted for the slave;

A darker cloud moves on in light;

A fiercer fire is guide by night.

The praise, O Lord! is Thine alone,

In Thy own way Thy work is done!

Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast,

To whom be glory, first and last!

1865.

AFTER THE WAR.

THE PEACE AUTUMN.

Written for the Fssex County Agricultural Festival, 1865.

THANK God for rest, where none molest,

And none can make afraid;

For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest

Beneath the homestead shade!

Bring pike and gun, the sword's red scourge,

The negro's broken chains,

And beat them at the blacksmith's forge

To ploughshares for our plains.

Alike henceforth our hills of snow,

And vales where cotton flowers;

All streams that flow, all winds that blow,

Are Freedom's motive-powers.

Henceforth to Labor's chivalry

Be knightly honors paid;

For nobler than the sword's shall be

The sickle's accolade.

Build up an altar to the Lord,

O grateful hearts of ours

And shape it of the greenest sward

That ever drank the showers.

Lay all the bloom of gardens there,

And there the orchard fruits;

Bring golden grain from sun and air,

From earth her goodly roots.

There let our banners droop and flow,

The stars uprise and fall;

Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow,

Let sighing breezes call.

Their names let hands of horn and tan

And rough-shod feet applaud,

Who died to make the slave a man,

And link with toil reward.

There let the common heart keep time

To such an anthem sung

As never swelled on poet's rhyme,

Or thrilled on singer's tongue.

Song of our burden and relief,

Of peace and long annoy;

The passion of our mighty grief

And our exceeding joy!

A song of praise to Him who filled

The harvests sown in tears,

And gave each field a double yield

To feed our battle-years.

A song of faith that trusts the end

To match the good begun,

Nor doubts the power of Love to blend

The hearts of men as one!

TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS.

The thirty-ninth congress was that which met in 1865 after the close of the war, when it was charged with the great question of reconstruction; the uppermost subject in men's minds was the standing of those who had recently been in arms against the Union and their relations to the freedmen.

O PEOPLE-CHOSEN! are ye not

Likewise the chosen of the Lord,

To do His will and speak His word?

From the loud thunder-storm of war

Not man alone hath called ye forth,

But He, the God of all the earth!

The torch of vengeance in your hands

He quenches; unto Him belongs

The solemn recompense of wrongs.

Enough of blood the land has seen,

And not by cell or gallows-stair

Shall ye the way of God prepare.

Say to the pardon-seekers: Keep

Your manhood, bend no suppliant knees,

Nor palter with unworthy pleas.

Above your voices sounds the wail

Of starving men; we shut in vain *

Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain. **

What words can drown that bitter cry?

What tears wash out the stain of death?

What oaths confirm your broken faith?

From you alone the guaranty

Of union, freedom, peace, we claim;

We urge no conqueror's terms of shame.

Alas! no victor's pride is ours;

We bend above our triumphs won

Like David o'er his rebel son.

Be men, not beggars. Cancel all

By one brave, generous action; trust

Your better instincts, and be just.

Make all men peers before the law,

Take hands from off the negro's throat,

Give black and white an equal vote.

Keep all your forfeit lives and lands,

But give the common law's redress

To labor's utter nakedness.

Revive the old heroic will;

Be in the right as brave and strong

As ye have proved yourselves in wrong.

Defeat shall then be victory,

Your loss the wealth of full amends,

And hate be love, and foes be friends.

Then buried be the dreadful past,

Its common slain be mourned, and let

All memories soften to regret.

Then shall the Union's mother-heart

Her lost and wandering ones recall,

Forgiving and restoring all,—

And Freedom break her marble trance

Above the Capitolian dome,

Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome home

November, 1865.

*  Andersonville prison.

** The massacre of Negro troops at Fort Pillow.

THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG.

IN the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,

So terrible alive,

Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, became

The wandering wild bees' hive;

And he who, lone and naked-handed, tore

Those jaws of death apart,

In after time drew forth their honeyed store

To strengthen his strong heart.

Dead seemed the legend: but it only slept

To wake beneath our sky;

Just on the spot whence ravening Treason crept

Back to its lair to die,

Bleeding and torn from Freedom's mountain bounds,

A stained and shattered drum

Is now the hive where, on their flowery rounds,

The wild bees go and come.

Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel,

They wander wide and far,

Along green hillsides, sown with shot and shell,

Through vales once choked with war.

The low reveille of their battle-drum

Disturbs no morning prayer;

With deeper peace in summer noons their hum

Fills all the drowsy air.

And Samson's riddle is our own to-day,

Of sweetness from the strong,

Of union, peace, and freedom plucked away

From the rent jaws of wrong.

From Treason's death we draw a purer life,

As, from the beast he slew,

A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife

The old-time athlete drew!

1868.

HOWARD AT ATLANTA.

RIGHT in the track where Sherman

Ploughed his red furrow,

Out of the narrow cabin,

Up from the cellar's burrow,

Gathered the little black people,

With freedom newly dowered,

Where, beside their Northern teacher,

Stood the soldier, Howard.

He listened and heard the children

Of the poor and long-enslaved

Reading the words of Jesus,

Singing the songs of David.

Behold!—the dumb lips speaking,

The blind eyes seeing!

Bones of the Prophet's vision

Warmed into being!

Transformed he saw them passing

Their new life's portal

Almost it seemed the mortal

Put on the immortal.

No more with the beasts of burden,

No more with stone and clod,

But crowned with glory and honor

In the image of God!

There was the human chattel

Its manhood taking;

There, in each dark, bronze statue,

A soul was waking!

The man of many battles,

With tears his eyelids pressing,

Stretched over those dusky foreheads

His one-armed blessing.

And he said: "Who hears can never

Fear for or doubt you;

What shall I tell the children

Up North about you?"

Then ran round a whisper, a murmur,

Some answer devising:

And a little boy stood up: "General,

Tell 'em we're rising!"

O black boy of Atlanta!

But half was spoken

The slave's chain and the master's

Alike are broken.

The one curse of the races

Held both in tether

They are rising,—all are rising,

The black and white together!

O brave men and fair women!

Ill comes of hate and scorning

Shall the dark faces only

Be turned to mourning?—

Make Time your sole avenger,

All-healing, all-redressing;

Meet Fate half-way, and make it

A joy and blessing!

1869.

THE EMANCIPATION GROUP.

Moses Kimball, a citizen of Boston, presented to the city a duplicate of the Freedman's Memorial statue erected in Lincoln Square, Washington. The group, which stands in Park Square, represents the figure of a slave, from whose limbs the broken fetters have fallen, kneeling in gratitude at the feet of Lincoln. The group was designed by Thomas Ball, and was unveiled December 9, 1879. These verses were written for the occasion.

AMIDST thy sacred effigies

Of old renown give place,

O city, Freedom-loved! to his

Whose hand unchained a race.

Take the worn frame, that rested not

Save in a martyr's grave;

The care-lined face, that none forgot,

Bent to the kneeling slave.

Let man be free! The mighty word

He spake was not his own;

An impulse from the Highest stirred

These chiselled lips alone.

The cloudy sign, the fiery guide,

Along his pathway ran,

And Nature, through his voice, denied

The ownership of man.

We rest in peace where these sad eyes

Saw peril, strife, and pain;

His was the nation's sacrifice,

And ours the priceless gain.

O symbol of God's will on earth

As it is done above!

Bear witness to the cost and worth

Of justice and of love.

Stand in thy place and testify

To coming ages long,

That truth is stronger than a lie,

And righteousness than wrong.

THE JUBILEE SINGERS.

A number of students of Fisk University, under the direction of one of the officers, gave a series of concerts in the Northern States, for the purpose of establishing the college on a firmer financial foundation. Their hymns and songs, mostly in a minor key, touched the hearts of the people, and were received as peculiarly expressive of a race delivered from bondage.

VOICE of a people suffering long,

The pathos of their mournful song,

The sorrow of their night of wrong!

Their cry like that which Israel gave,

A prayer for one to guide and save,

Like Moses by the Red Sea's wave!

The stern accord her timbrel lent

To Miriam's note of triumph sent

O'er Egypt's sunken armament!

The tramp that startled camp and town,

And shook the walls of slavery down,

The spectral march of old John Brown!

The storm that swept through battle-days,

The triumph after long delays,

The bondmen giving God the praise!

Voice of a ransomed race, sing on

Till Freedom's every right is won,

And slavery's every wrong undone

1880.

GARRISON.

The earliest poem in this division was my youthful tribute to the great reformer when himself a young man he was first sounding his trumpet in Essex County. I close with the verses inscribed to him at the end of his earthly career, May 24, 1879. My poetical service in the cause of freedom is thus almost synchronous with his life of devotion to the same cause.

THE storm and peril overpast,

The hounding hatred shamed and still,

Go, soul of freedom! take at last

The place which thou alone canst fill.

Confirm the lesson taught of old—

Life saved for self is lost, while they

Who lose it in His service hold

The lease of God's eternal day.

Not for thyself, but for the slave

Thy words of thunder shook the world;

No selfish griefs or hatred gave

The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.

From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew

We heard a tender under song;

Thy very wrath from pity grew,

From love of man thy hate of wrong.

Now past and present are as one;

The life below is life above;

Thy mortal years have but begun

Thy immortality of love.

With somewhat of thy lofty faith

We lay thy outworn garment by,

Give death but what belongs to death,

And life the life that cannot die!

Not for a soul like thine the calm

Of selfish ease and joys of sense;

But duty, more than crown or palm,

Its own exceeding recompense.

Go up and on thy day well done,

Its morning promise well fulfilled,

Arise to triumphs yet unwon,

To holier tasks that God has willed.

Go, leave behind thee all that mars

The work below of man for man;

With the white legions of the stars

Do service such as angels can.

Wherever wrong shall right deny

Or suffering spirits urge their plea,

Be thine a voice to smite the lie,

A hand to set the captive free!

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME.

THE Quaker of the olden time!

How calm and firm and true,

Unspotted by its wrong and crime,

He walked the dark earth through.

The lust of power, the love of gain,

The thousand lures of sin

Around him, had no power to stain

The purity within.

With that deep insight which detects

All great things in the small,

And knows how each man's life affects

The spiritual life of all,

He walked by faith and not by sight,

By love and not by law;

The presence of the wrong or right

He rather felt than saw.

He felt that wrong with wrong partakes,

That nothing stands alone,

That whoso gives the motive, makes

His brother's sin his own.

And, pausing not for doubtful choice

Of evils great or small,

He listened to that inward voice

Which called away from all.

O Spirit of that early day,

So pure and strong and true,

Be with us in the narrow way

Our faithful fathers knew.

Give strength the evil to forsake,

The cross of Truth to bear,

And love and reverent fear to make

Our daily lives a prayer!

1838.

DEMOCRACY.

All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.—MATTHEW vii. 12.

BEARER of Freedom's holy light,

Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod,

The foe of all which pains the sight,

Or wounds the generous ear of God!

Beautiful yet thy temples rise,

Though there profaning gifts are thrown;

And fires unkindled of the skies

Are glaring round thy altar-stone.

Still sacred, though thy name be breathed

By those whose hearts thy truth deride;

And garlands, plucked from thee, are wreathed

Around the haughty brows of Pride.

Oh, ideal of my boyhood's time!

The faith in which my father stood,

Even when the sons of Lust and Crime

Had stained thy peaceful courts with blood!

Still to those courts my footsteps turn,

For through the mists which darken there,

I see the flame of Freedom burn,—

The Kebla of the patriot's prayer!

The generous feeling, pure and warm,

Which owns the right of all divine;

The pitying heart, the helping arm,

The prompt self-sacrifice, are thine.

Beneath thy broad, impartial eye,

How fade the lines of caste and birth!

How equal in their suffering lie

The groaning multitudes of earth!

Still to a stricken brother true,

Whatever clime hath nurtured him;

As stooped to heal the wounded Jew

The worshipper of Gerizim.

By misery unrepelled, unawed

By pomp or power, thou seest a Man

In prince or peasant, slave or lord,

Pale priest, or swarthy artisan.

Through all disguise, form, place, or name,

Beneath the flaunting robes of sin,

Through poverty and squalid shame,

Thou lookest on the man within.

On man, as man, retaining yet,

Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim,

The crown upon his forehead set,

The immortal gift of God to him.

And there is reverence in thy look;

For that frail form which mortals wear

The Spirit of the Holiest took,

And veiled His perfect brightness there.

Not from the shallow babbling fount

Of vain philosophy thou art;

He who of old on Syria's Mount

Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the listener's heart,

In holy words which cannot die,

In thoughts which angels leaned to know,

Proclaimed thy message from on high,

Thy mission to a world of woe.

That voice's echo hath not died!

From the blue lake of Galilee,

And Tabor's lonely mountain-side,

It calls a struggling world to thee.

Thy name and watchword o'er this land

I hear in every breeze that stirs,

And round a thousand altars stand

Thy banded party worshippers.

Not, to these altars of a day,

At party's call, my gift I bring;

But on thy olden shrine I lay

A freeman's dearest offering.

The voiceless utterance of his will,—

His pledge to Freedom and to Truth,

That manhood's heart remembers still

The homage of his generous youth.

Election Day, 1841

THE GALLOWS.

Written on reading pamphlets published by clergymen against the abolition of the gallows.

I.

THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone

Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made

The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,

And mountain moss, a pillow for His head;

And He, who wandered with the peasant Jew,

And broke with publicans the bread of shame,

And drank with blessings, in His Father's name,

The water which Samaria's outcast drew,

Hath now His temples upon every shore,

Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dim

Evermore rising, with low prayer and hymn,

From lips which press the temple's marble floor,

Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.

II.

Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing good,"

He fed a blind and selfish multitude,

And even the poor companions of His lot

With their dim earthly vision knew Him not,

How ill are His high teachings understood

Where He hath spoken Liberty, the priest

At His own altar binds the chain anew;

Where He hath bidden to Life's equal feast,

The starving many wait upon the few;

Where He hath spoken Peace, His name hath been

The loudest war-cry of contending men;

Priests, pale with vigils, in His name have blessed

The unsheathed sword, and laid the spear in rest,

Wet the war-banner with their sacred wine,

And crossed its blazon with the holy sign;

Yea, in His name who bade the erring live,

And daily taught His lesson, to forgive!

Twisted the cord and edged the murderous steel;

And, with His words of mercy on their lips,

Hung gloating o'er the pincer's burning grips,

And the grim horror of the straining wheel;

Fed the slow flame which gnawed the victim's limb,

Who saw before his searing eyeballs swim

The image of their Christ in cruel zeal,

Through the black torment-smoke, held mockingly to him!

III.

The blood which mingled with the desert sand,

And beaded with its red and ghastly dew

The vines and olives of the Holy Land;

The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew;

The white-sown bones of heretics, where'er

They sank beneath the Crusade's holy spear;

Goa's dark dungeons, Malta's sea-washed cell,

Where with the hymns the ghostly fathers sung

Mingled the groans by subtle torture wrung,

Heaven's anthem blending with the shriek of hell!

The midnight of Bartholomew, the stake

Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flame

Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's lake;

New England's scaffold, and the priestly sneer

Which mocked its victims in that hour of fear,

When guilt itself a human tear might claim,—

Bear witness, O Thou wronged and merciful One!

That Earth's most hateful crimes have in Thy

name been done!

IV.

Thank God! that I have lived to see the time

When the great truth begins at last to find

An utterance from the deep heart of mankind,

Earnest and clear, that all Revenge is Crime,

That man is holier than a creed, that all

Restraint upon him must consult his good,

Hope's sunshine linger on his prison wall,

And Love look in upon his solitude.

The beautiful lesson which our Saviour taught

Through long, dark centuries its way hath wrought

Into the common mind and popular thought;

And words, to which by Galilee's lake shore

The humble fishers listened with hushed oar,

Have found an echo in the general heart,

And of the public faith become a living part.

V.

Who shall arrest this tendency? Bring back

The cells of Venice and the bigot's rack?

Harden the softening human heart again

To cold indifference to a brother's pain?

Ye most unhappy men! who, turned away

From the mild sunshine of the Gospel day,

Grope in the shadows of Man's twilight time,

What mean ye, that with ghoul-like zest ye brood,

O'er those foul altars streaming with warm blood,

Permitted in another age and clime?

Why cite that law with which the bigot Jew

Rebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he knew

No evil in the Just One? Wherefore turn

To the dark, cruel past? Can ye not learn

From the pure Teacher's life how mildly free

Is the great Gospel of Humanity?

The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and no more

Mexitli's altars soak with human gore,

No more the ghastly sacrifices smoke

Through the green arches of the Druid's oak;

And ye of milder faith, with your high claim

Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest name,

Will ye become the Druids of our time

Set up your scaffold-altars in our land,

And, consecrators of Law's darkest crime,

Urge to its loathsome work the hangman's hand?

Beware, lest human nature, roused at last,

From its peeled shoulder your encumbrance cast,

And, sick to loathing of your cry for blood,

Rank ye with those who led their victims round

The Celt's red altar and the Indian's mound,

Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, a pagan brotherhood!

1842.

SEED-TIME AND HARVEST.

As o'er his furrowed fields which lie

Beneath a coldly dropping sky,

Yet chill with winter's melted snow,

The husbandman goes forth to sow,

Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast

The ventures of thy seed we cast,

And trust to warmer sun and rain

To swell the germs and fill the grain.

Who calls thy glorious service hard?

Who deems it not its own reward?

Who, for its trials, counts it less.

A cause of praise and thankfulness?

It may not be our lot to wield

The sickle in the ripened field;

Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,

The reaper's song among the sheaves.

Yet where our duty's task is wrought

In unison with God's great thought,

The near and future blend in one,

And whatsoe'er is willed, is done!

And ours the grateful service whence

Comes day by day the recompense;

The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed,

The fountain and the noonday shade.

And were this life the utmost span,

The only end and aim of man,

Better the toil of fields like these

Than waking dream and slothful ease.

But life, though falling like our grain,

Like that revives and springs again;

And, early called, how blest are they

Who wait in heaven their harvest-day!

1843.

TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND.

This poem was addressed to those who like Richard Cobden and John Bright were seeking the reform of political evils in Great Britain by peaceful and Christian means. It will be remembered that the Anti-Corn Law League was in the midst of its labors at this time.

GOD bless ye, brothers! in the fight

Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail,

For better is your sense of right

Than king-craft's triple mail.

Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban,

More mighty is your simplest word;

The free heart of an honest man

Than crosier or the sword.

Go, let your blinded Church rehearse

The lesson it has learned so well;

It moves not with its prayer or curse

The gates of heaven or hell.

Let the State scaffold rise again;

Did Freedom die when Russell died?

Forget ye how the blood of Vane

From earth's green bosom cried?

The great hearts of your olden time

Are beating with you, full and strong;

All holy memories and sublime

And glorious round ye throng.

The bluff, bold men of Runnymede

Are with ye still in times like these;

The shades of England's mighty dead,

Your cloud of witnesses!

The truths ye urge are borne abroad

By every wind and every tide;

The voice of Nature and of God

Speaks out upon your side.

The weapons which your hands have found

Are those which Heaven itself has wrought,

Light, Truth, and Love; your battle-ground

The free, broad field of Thought.

No partial, selfish purpose breaks

The simple beauty of your plan,

Nor lie from throne or altar shakes

Your steady faith in man.

The languid pulse of England starts

And bounds beneath your words of power,

The beating of her million hearts

Is with you at this hour!

O ye who, with undoubting eyes,

Through present cloud and gathering storm,

Behold the span of Freedom's skies,

And sunshine soft and warm;

Press bravely onward! not in vain

Your generous trust in human-kind;

The good which bloodshed could not gain

Your peaceful zeal shall find.

Press on! the triumph shall be won

Of common rights and equal laws,

The glorious dream of Harrington,

And Sidney's good old cause.

Blessing the cotter and the crown,

Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup;

And, plucking not the highest down,

Lifting the lowest up.

Press on! and we who may not share

The toil or glory of your fight

May ask, at least, in earnest prayer,

God's blessing on the right!

1843.

THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.

Some leading sectarian papers had lately published the letter of a clergyman, giving an account of his attendance upon a criminal (who had committed murder during a fit of intoxication), at the time of his execution, in western New York. The writer describes the agony of the wretched being, his abortive attempts at prayer, his appeal for life, his fear of a violent death; and, after declaring his belief that the poor victim died without hope of salvation, concludes with a warm eulogy upon the gallows, being more than ever convinced of its utility by the awful dread and horror which it inspired.

I.

FAR from his close and noisome cell,

By grassy lane and sunny stream,

Blown clover field and strawberry dell,

And green and meadow freshness, fell

The footsteps of his dream.

Again from careless feet the dew

Of summer's misty morn he shook;

Again with merry heart he threw

His light line in the rippling brook.

Back crowded all his school-day joys;

He urged the ball and quoit again,

And heard the shout of laughing boys

Come ringing down the walnut glen.

Again he felt the western breeze,

With scent of flowers and crisping hay;

And down again through wind-stirred trees

He saw the quivering sunlight play.

An angel in home's vine-hung door,

He saw his sister smile once more;

Once more the truant's brown-locked head

Upon his mother's knees was laid,

And sweetly lulled to slumber there,

With evening's holy hymn and prayer!

II.

He woke. At once on heart and brain

The present Terror rushed again;

Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain

He woke, to hear the church-tower tell

Time's footfall on the conscious bell,

And, shuddering, feel that clanging din

His life's last hour had ushered in;

To see within his prison-yard,

Through the small window, iron barred,

The gallows shadow rising dim

Between the sunrise heaven and him;

A horror in God's blessed air;

A blackness in his morning light;

Like some foul devil-altar there

Built up by demon hands at night.

And, maddened by that evil sight,

Dark, horrible, confused, and strange,

A chaos of wild, weltering change,

All power of check and guidance gone,

Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on.

In vain he strove to breathe a prayer,

In vain he turned the Holy Book,

He only heard the gallows-stair

Creak as the wind its timbers shook.

No dream for him of sin forgiven,

While still that baleful spectre stood,

With its hoarse murmur, "Blood for Blood!"

Between him and the pitying Heaven.

III.

Low on his dungeon floor he knelt,

And smote his breast, and on his chain,

Whose iron clasp he always felt,

His hot tears fell like rain;

And near him, with the cold, calm look

And tone of one whose formal part,

Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart,

Is measured out by rule and book,

With placid lip and tranquil blood,

The hangman's ghostly ally stood,

Blessing with solemn text and word

The gallows-drop and strangling cord;

Lending the sacred Gospel's awe

And sanction to the crime of Law.

IV.

He saw the victim's tortured brow,

The sweat of anguish starting there,

The record of a nameless woe

In the dim eye's imploring stare,

Seen hideous through the long, damp hair,—

Fingers of ghastly skin and bone

Working and writhing on the stone!

And heard, by mortal terror wrung

From heaving breast and stiffened tongue,

The choking sob and low hoarse prayer;

As o'er his half-crazed fancy came

A vision of the eternal flame,

Its smoking cloud of agonies,

Its demon-worm that never dies,

The everlasting rise and fall

Of fire-waves round the infernal wall;

While high above that dark red flood,

Black, giant-like, the gallows stood;

Two busy fiends attending there

One with cold mocking rite and prayer,

The other with impatient grasp,

Tightening the death-rope's strangling clasp.

V.

The unfelt rite at length was done,

The prayer unheard at length was said,

An hour had passed: the noonday sun

Smote on the features of the dead!

And he who stood the doomed beside,

Calm gauger of the swelling tide

Of mortal agony and fear,

Heeding with curious eye and ear

Whate'er revealed the keen excess

Of man's extremest wretchedness

And who in that dark anguish saw

An earnest of the victim's fate,

The vengeful terrors of God's law,

The kindlings of Eternal hate,

The first drops of that fiery rain

Which beats the dark red realm of pain,

Did he uplift his earnest cries

Against the crime of Law, which gave

His brother to that fearful grave,

Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies,

And Faith's white blossoms never wave

To the soft breath of Memory's sighs;

Which sent a spirit marred and stained,

By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,

In madness and in blindness stark,

Into the silent, unknown dark?

No, from the wild and shrinking dread,

With which he saw the victim led

Beneath the dark veil which divides

Ever the living from the dead,

And Nature's solemn secret hides,

The man of prayer can only draw

New reasons for his bloody law;

New faith in staying Murder's hand

By murder at that Law's command;

New reverence for the gallows-rope,

As human nature's latest hope;

Last relic of the good old time,

When Power found license for its crime,

And held a writhing world in check

By that fell cord about its neck;

Stifled Sedition's rising shout,

Choked the young breath of Freedom out,

And timely checked the words which sprung

From Heresy's forbidden tongue;

While in its noose of terror bound,

The Church its cherished union found,

Conforming, on the Moslem plan,

The motley-colored mind of man,

Not by the Koran and the Sword,

But by the Bible and the Cord.

VI.

O Thou at whose rebuke the grave

Back to warm life its sleeper gave,

Beneath whose sad and tearful glance

The cold and changed countenance

Broke the still horror of its trance,

And, waking, saw with joy above,

A brother's face of tenderest love;

Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,

The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,

And from Thy very garment's hem

Drew life and healing unto them,

The burden of Thy holy faith

Was love and life, not hate and death;

Man's demon ministers of pain,

The fiends of his revenge, were sent

From thy pure Gospel's element

To their dark home again.

Thy name is Love! What, then, is he,

Who in that name the gallows rears,

An awful altar built to Thee,

With sacrifice of blood and tears?

Oh, once again Thy healing lay

On the blind eyes which knew Thee not,

And let the light of Thy pure day

Melt in upon his darkened thought.

Soften his hard, cold heart, and show

The power which in forbearance lies,

And let him feel that mercy now

Is better than old sacrifice.

VII.

As on the White Sea's charmed shore,

The Parsee sees his holy hill (10)

With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained o'er,

Yet knows beneath them, evermore,

The low, pale fire is quivering still;

So, underneath its clouds of sin,

The heart of man retaineth yet

Gleams of its holy origin;

And half-quenched stars that never set,

Dim colors of its faded bow,

And early beauty, linger there,

And o'er its wasted desert blow

Faint breathings of its morning air.

Oh, never yet upon the scroll

Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul,

Hath Heaven inscribed "Despair!"

Cast not the clouded gem away,

Quench not the dim but living ray,—

My brother man, Beware!

With that deep voice which from the skies

Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,

God's angel cries, Forbear.

1843

SONGS OF LABOR.

DEDICATION.

Prefixed to the volume of which the group of six poems following this prelude constituted the first portion.

I WOULD the gift I offer here

Might graces from thy favor take,

And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere,

On softened lines and coloring, wear

The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake.

Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain

But what I have I give to thee,

The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain,

And paler flowers, the latter rain

Calls from the westering slope of life's autumnal lea.

Above the fallen groves of green,

Where youth's enchanted forest stood,

Dry root and mossed trunk between,

A sober after-growth is seen,

As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple wood!

Yet birds will sing, and breezes play

Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree;

And through the bleak and wintry day

It keeps its steady green alway,—

So, even my after-thoughts may have a charm for thee.

Art's perfect forms no moral need,

And beauty is its own excuse;

But for the dull and flowerless weed

Some healing virtue still must plead,

And the rough ore must find its honors in its use.

So haply these, my simple lays

Of homely toil, may serve to show

The orchard bloom and tasselled maize

That skirt and gladden duty's ways,

The unsung beauty hid life's common things below.

Haply from them the toiler, bent

Above his forge or plough, may gain,

A manlier spirit of content,

And feel that life is wisest spent

Where the strong working hand makes strong the

working brain.

The doom which to the guilty pair

Without the walls of Eden came,

Transforming sinless ease to care

And rugged toil, no more shall bear

The burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame.

A blessing now, a curse no more;

Since He, whose name we breathe with awe,

The coarse mechanic vesture wore,

A poor man toiling with the poor,

In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law.

1850.

THE SHOEMAKERS.

Ho! workers of the old time styled

The Gentle Craft of Leather

Young brothers of the ancient guild,

Stand forth once more together!

Call out again your long array,

In the olden merry manner

Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day,

Fling out your blazoned banner!

Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone

How falls the polished hammer

Rap, rap I the measured sound has grown

A quick and merry clamor.

Now shape the sole! now deftly curl

The glossy vamp around it,

And bless the while the bright-eyed girl

Whose gentle fingers bound it!

For you, along the Spanish main

A hundred keels are ploughing;

For you, the Indian on the plain

His lasso-coil is throwing;

For you, deep glens with hemlock dark

The woodman's fire is lighting;

For you, upon the oak's gray bark,

The woodman's axe is smiting.

For you, from Carolina's pine

The rosin-gum is stealing;

For you, the dark-eyed Florentine

Her silken skein is reeling;

For you, the dizzy goatherd roams

His rugged Alpine ledges;

For you, round all her shepherd homes,

Bloom England's thorny hedges.

The foremost still, by day or night,

On moated mound or heather,

Where'er the need of trampled right

Brought toiling men together;

Where the free burghers from the wall

Defied the mail-clad master,

Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call,

No craftsmen rallied faster.

Let foplings sneer, let fools deride,

Ye heed no idle scorner;

Free hands and hearts are still your pride,

And duty done, your honor.

Ye dare to trust, for honest fame,

The jury Time empanels,

And leave to truth each noble name

Which glorifies your annals.

Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet,

In strong and hearty German;

And Bloomfield's lay, and Gifford's wit,

And patriot fame of Sherman;

Still from his book, a mystic seer,

The soul of Behmen teaches,

And England's priestcraft shakes to hear

Of Fox's leathern breeches.

The foot is yours; where'er it falls,

It treads your well-wrought leather,

On earthen floor, in marble halls,

On carpet, or on heather.

Still there the sweetest charm is found

Of matron grace or vestal's,

As Hebe's foot bore nectar round

Among the old celestials.

Rap, rap!—your stout and bluff brogan,

With footsteps slow and weary,

May wander where the sky's blue span

Shuts down upon the prairie.

On Beauty's foot your slippers glance,

By Saratoga's fountains,

Or twinkle down the summer dance

Beneath the Crystal Mountains!

The red brick to the mason's hand,

The brown earth to the tiller's,

The shoe in yours shall wealth command,

Like fairy Cinderella's!

As they who shunned the household maid

Beheld the crown upon her,

So all shall see your toil repaid

With hearth and home and honor.

Then let the toast be freely quaffed,

In water cool and brimming,—

"All honor to the good old Craft,

Its merry men and women!"

Call out again your long array,

In the old time's pleasant manner

Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day,

Fling out his blazoned banner!

1845.

THE FISHERMEN.

HURRAH! the seaward breezes

Sweep down the bay amain;

Heave up, my lads, the anchor!

Run up the sail again

Leave to the lubber landsmen

The rail-car and the steed;

The stars of heaven shall guide us,

The breath of heaven shall speed.

From the hill-top looks the steeple,

And the lighthouse from the sand;

And the scattered pines are waving

Their farewell from the land.

One glance, my lads, behind us,

For the homes we leave one sigh,

Ere we take the change and chances

Of the ocean and the sky.

Now, brothers, for the icebergs

Of frozen Labrador,

Floating spectral in the moonshine,

Along the low, black shore!

Where like snow the gannet's feathers

On Brador's rocks are shed,

And the noisy murr are flying,

Like black scuds, overhead;

Where in mist tie rock is hiding,

And the sharp reef lurks below,

And the white squall smites in summer,

And the autumn tempests blow;

Where, through gray and rolling vapor,

From evening unto morn,

A thousand boats are hailing,

Horn answering unto horn.

Hurrah! for the Red Island,

With the white cross on its crown

Hurrah! for Meccatina,

And its mountains bare and brown!

Where the Caribou's tall antlers

O'er the dwarf-wood freely toss,

And the footstep of the Mickmack

Has no sound upon the moss.

There we'll drop our lines, and gather

Old Ocean's treasures in,

Where'er the mottled mackerel

Turns up a steel-dark fin.

The sea's our field of harvest,

Its scaly tribes our grain;

We'll reap the teeming waters

As at home they reap the plain.

Our wet hands spread the carpet,

And light the hearth of home;

From our fish, as in the old time,

The silver coin shall come.

As the demon fled the chamber

Where the fish of Tobit lay,

So ours from all our dwellings

Shall frighten Want away.

Though the mist upon our jackets

In the bitter air congeals,

And our lines wind stiff and slowly

From off the frozen reels;

Though the fog be dark around us,

And the storm blow high and loud,

We will whistle down the wild wind,

And laugh beneath the cloud!

In the darkness as in daylight,

On the water as on land,

God's eye is looking on us,

And beneath us is His hand!

Death will find us soon or later,

On the deck or in the cot;

And we cannot meet him better

Than in working out our lot.

Hurrah! hurrah! the west-wind

Comes freshening down the bay,

The rising sails are filling;

Give way, my lads, give way!

Leave the coward landsman clinging

To the dull earth, like a weed;

The stars of heaven shall guide us,

The breath of heaven shall speed!

1845.

THE LUMBERMEN.

WILDLY round our woodland quarters

Sad-voiced Autumn grieves;

Thickly down these swelling waters

Float his fallen leaves.

Through the tall and naked timber,

Column-like and old,

Gleam the sunsets of November,

From their skies of gold.

O'er us, to the southland heading,

Screams the gray wild-goose;

On the night-frost sounds the treading

Of the brindled moose.

Noiseless creeping, while we're sleeping,

Frost his task-work plies;

Soon, his icy bridges heaping,

Shall our log-piles rise.

When, with sounds of smothered thunder,

On some night of rain,

Lake and river break asunder

Winter's weakened chain,

Down the wild March flood shall bear them

To the saw-mill's wheel,

Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them

With his teeth of steel.

Be it starlight, be it moonlight,

In these vales below,

When the earliest beams of sunlight

Streak the mountain's snow,

Crisps the boar-frost, keen and early,

To our hurrying feet,

And the forest echoes clearly

All our blows repeat.

Where the crystal Ambijejis

Stretches broad and clear,

And Millnoket's pine-black ridges

Hide the browsing deer

Where, through lakes and wide morasses,

Or through rocky walls,

Swift and strong, Penobscot passes

White with foamy falls;

Where, through clouds, are glimpses given

Of Katahdin's sides,—

Rock and forest piled to heaven,

Torn and ploughed by slides!

Far below, the Indian trapping,

In the sunshine warm;

Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping

Half the peak in storm!

Where are mossy carpets better

Than the Persian weaves,

And than Eastern perfumes sweeter

Seem the fading leaves;

And a music wild and solemn,

From the pine-tree's height,

Rolls its vast and sea-like volume

On the wind of night;

Make we here our camp of winter;

And, through sleet and snow,

Pitchy knot and beechen splinter

On our hearth shall glow.

Here, with mirth to lighten duty,

We shall lack alone

Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty,

Childhood's lisping tone.

But their hearth is brighter burning

For our toil to-day;

And the welcome of returning

Shall our loss repay,

When, like seamen from the waters,

From the woods we come,

Greeting sisters, wives, and daughters,

Angels of our home!

Not for us the measured ringing

From the village spire,

Not for us the Sabbath singing

Of the sweet-voiced choir,

Ours the old, majestic temple,

Where God's brightness shines

Down the dome so grand and ample,

Propped by lofty pines!

Through each branch-enwoven skylight,

Speaks He in the breeze,

As of old beneath the twilight

Of lost Eden's trees!

For His ear, the inward feeling

Needs no outward tongue;

He can see the spirit kneeling

While the axe is swung.

Heeding truth alone, and turning

From the false and dim,

Lamp of toil or altar burning

Are alike to Him.

Strike, then, comrades! Trade is waiting

On our rugged toil;

Far ships waiting for the freighting

Of our woodland spoil.

Ships, whose traffic links these highlands,

Bleak and cold, of ours,

With the citron-planted islands

Of a clime of flowers;

To our frosts the tribute bringing

Of eternal heats;

In our lap of winter flinging

Tropic fruits and sweets.

Cheerly, on the axe of labor,

Let the sunbeams dance,

Better than the flash of sabre

Or the gleam of lance!

Strike! With every blow is given

Freer sun and sky,

And the long-hid earth to heaven

Looks, with wondering eye!

Loud behind us grow the murmurs

Of the age to come;

Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers,

Bearing harvest home!

Here her virgin lap with treasures

Shall the green earth fill;

Waving wheat and golden maize-ears

Crown each beechen hill.

Keep who will the city's alleys

Take the smooth-shorn plain';

Give to us the cedarn valleys,

Rocks and hills of Maine!

In our North-land, wild and woody,

Let us still have part

Rugged nurse and mother sturdy,

Hold us to thy heart!

Oh, our free hearts beat the warmer

For thy breath of snow;

And our tread is all the firmer

For thy rocks below.

Freedom, hand in hand with labor,

Walketh strong and brave;

On the forehead of his neighbor

No man writeth Slave!

Lo, the day breaks! old Katahdin's

Pine-trees show its fires,

While from these dim forest gardens

Rise their blackened spires.

Up, my comrades! up and doing!

Manhood's rugged play

Still renewing, bravely hewing

Through the world our way!

1845.

THE SHIP-BUILDERS

THE sky is ruddy in the east,

The earth is gray below,

And, spectral in the river-mist,

The ship's white timbers show.

Then let the sounds of measured stroke

And grating saw begin;

The broad-axe to the gnarled oak,

The mallet to the pin!

Hark! roars the bellows, blast on blast,

The sooty smithy jars,

And fire-sparks, rising far and fast,

Are fading with the stars.

All day for us the smith shall stand

Beside that flashing forge;

All day for us his heavy hand

The groaning anvil scourge.

From far-off hills, the panting team

For us is toiling near;

For us the raftsmen down the stream

Their island barges steer.

Rings out for us the axe-man's stroke

In forests old and still;

For us the century-circled oak

Falls crashing down his hill.

Up! up! in nobler toil than ours

No craftsmen bear a part

We make of Nature's giant powers

The slaves of human Art.

Lay rib to rib and beam to beam,

And drive the treenails free;

Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam

Shall tempt the searching sea.

Where'er the keel of our good ship

The sea's rough field shall plough;

Where'er her tossing spars shall drip

With salt-spray caught below;

That ship must heed her master's beck,

Her helm obey his hand,

And seamen tread her reeling deck

As if they trod the land.

Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak

Of Northern ice may peel;

The sunken rock and coral peak

May grate along her keel;

And know we well the painted shell

We give to wind and wave,

Must float, the sailor's citadel,

Or sink, the sailor's grave.

Ho! strike away the bars and blocks,

And set the good ship free!

Why lingers on these dusty rocks

The young bride of the sea?

Look! how she moves adown the grooves,

In graceful beauty now!

How lowly on the breast she loves

Sinks down her virgin prow.

God bless her! wheresoe'er the breeze

Her snowy wing shall fan,

Aside the frozen Hebrides,

Or sultry Hindostan!

Where'er, in mart or on the main,

With peaceful flag unfurled,

She helps to wind the silken chain

Of commerce round the world!

Speed on the ship! But let her bear

No merchandise of sin,

No groaning cargo of despair

Her roomy hold within;

No Lethean drug for Eastern lands,

Nor poison-draught for ours;

But honest fruits of toiling hands

And Nature's sun and showers.

Be hers the Prairie's golden grain,

The Desert's golden sand,

The clustered fruits of sunny Spain,

The spice of Morning-land!

Her pathway on the open main

May blessings follow free,

And glad hearts welcome back again

Her white sails from the sea

1846.

THE DROVERS.

THROUGH heat and cold, and shower and sun,

Still onward cheerly driving

There's life alone in duty done,

And rest alone in striving.

But see! the day is closing cool,

The woods are dim before us;

The white fog of the wayside pool

Is creeping slowly o'er us.

The night is falling, comrades mine,

Our footsore beasts are weary,

And through yon elms the tavern sign

Looks out upon us cheery.

The landlord beckons from his door,

His beechen fire is glowing;

These ample barns, with feed in store,

Are filled to overflowing.

From many a valley frowned across

By brows of rugged mountains;

From hillsides where, through spongy moss,

Gush out the river fountains;

From quiet farm-fields, green and low,

And bright with blooming clover;

From vales of corn the wandering crow

No richer hovers over;

Day after day our way has been

O'er many a hill and hollow;

By lake and stream, by wood and glen,

Our stately drove we follow.

Through dust-clouds rising thick and dun,

As smoke of battle o'er us,

Their white horns glisten in the sun,

Like plumes and crests before us.

We see them slowly climb the hill,

As slow behind it sinking;

Or, thronging close, from roadside rill,

Or sunny lakelet, drinking.

Now crowding in the narrow road,

In thick and struggling masses,

They glare upon the teamster's load,

Or rattling coach that passes.

Anon, with toss of horn and tail,

And paw of hoof, and bellow,

They leap some farmer's broken pale,

O'er meadow-close or fallow.

Forth comes the startled goodman; forth

Wife, children, house-dog, sally,

Till once more on their dusty path

The baffled truants rally.

We drive no starvelings, scraggy grown,

Loose-legged, and ribbed and bony,

Like those who grind their noses down

On pastures bare and stony,—

Lank oxen, rough as Indian dogs,

And cows too lean for shadows,

Disputing feebly with the frogs

The crop of saw-grass meadows!

In our good drove, so sleek and fair,

No bones of leanness rattle;

No tottering hide-bound ghosts are there,

Or Pharaoh's evil cattle.

Each stately beeve bespeaks the hand

That fed him unrepining;

The fatness of a goodly land

In each dun hide is shining.

We've sought them where, in warmest nooks,

The freshest feed is growing,

By sweetest springs and clearest brooks

Through honeysuckle flowing;

Wherever hillsides, sloping south,

Are bright with early grasses,

Or, tracking green the lowland's drouth,

The mountain streamlet passes.

But now the day is closing cool,

The woods are dim before us,

The white fog of the wayside pool

Is creeping slowly o'er us.

The cricket to the frog's bassoon

His shrillest time is keeping;

The sickle of yon setting moon

The meadow-mist is reaping.

The night is falling, comrades mine,

Our footsore beasts are weary,

And through yon elms the tavern sign

Looks out upon us cheery.

To-morrow, eastward with our charge

We'll go to meet the dawning,

Ere yet the pines of Kearsarge

Have seen the sun of morning.

When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth,

Instead of birds, are flitting;

When children throng the glowing hearth,

And quiet wives are knitting;

While in the fire-light strong and clear

Young eyes of pleasure glisten,

To tales of all we see and hear

The ears of home shall listen.

By many a Northern lake and bill,

From many a mountain pasture,

Shall Fancy play the Drover still,

And speed the long night faster.

Then let us on, through shower and sun,

And heat and cold, be driving;

There 's life alone in duty done,

And rest alone in striving.

1847.

THE HUSKERS.

IT was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain

Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again;

The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay

With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow-flowers of May.

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad and red,

At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped;

Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued,

On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood.

And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the night,

He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow light;

Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified the hill;

And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, greener still.

And shouting boys in woodland haunts caught glimpses of that sky,

Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and laughed, they knew not why;

And school-girls, gay with aster-flowers, beside the meadow brooks,

Mingled the glow of autumn with the sunshine of sweet looks.

From spire and barn looked westerly the patient weathercocks;

But even the birches on the hill stood motionless as rocks.

No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's dropping shell,

And the yellow leaves among the boughs, low rustling as they fell.

The summer grains were harvested; the stubble-fields lay dry,

Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the pale green waves

of rye;

But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed with wood,

Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn crop stood.

Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks that, dry and sere,

Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the yellow ear;

Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a verdant fold,

And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin's sphere of gold.

There wrought the busy harvesters; and many a creaking wain

Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load of husk and grain;

Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank down, at last,

And like a merry guest's farewell, the day in brightness passed.

And to! as through the western pines, on meadow, stream, and pond,

Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire beyond,

Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory shone,

And the sunset and the moonrise were mingled into one!

As thus into the quiet night the twilight lapsed away,

And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil shadows lay;

From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet without name,

Their milking and their home-tasks done, the  merry huskers came.

Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from pitchforks in the mow,

Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scene below;

The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears before,

And laughing eyes and busy hands and brown cheeks glimmering o'er.

Half hidden, in a quiet nook, serene of look and heart,

Talking their old times over, the old men sat apart;

While up and down the unhusked pile, or nestling in its shade,

At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, the happy children played.

Urged by the good host's daughter, a maiden young and fair,

Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of soft brown hair,

The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue,

To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking ballad sung.

THE CORN-SONG.

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard

Heap high the golden corn

No richer gift has Autumn poured

From out her lavish horn!

Let other lands, exulting, glean

The apple from the pine,

The orange from its glossy green,

The cluster from the vine;

We better love the hardy gift

Our rugged vales bestow,

To cheer us when the storm shall drift

Our harvest-fields with snow.

Through vales of grass and mends of flowers

Our ploughs their furrows made,

While on the hills the sun and showers

Of changeful April played.

We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain

Beneath the sun of May,

And frightened from our sprouting grain

The robber crows away.

All through the long, bright days of June

Its leaves grew green and fair,

And waved in hot midsummer's noon

Its soft and yellow hair.

And now, with autumn's moonlit eves,

Its harvest-time has come,

We pluck away the frosted leaves,

And bear the treasure home.

There, when the snows about us drift,

And winter winds are cold,

Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,

And knead its meal of gold.

Let vapid idlers loll in silk

Around their costly board;

Give us the bowl of samp and milk,

By homespun beauty poured!

Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth

Sends up its smoky curls,

Who will not thank the kindly earth,

And bless our farmer girls!

Then shame on all the proud and vain,

Whose folly laughs to scorn

The blessing of our hardy grain,

Our wealth of golden corn.

Let earth withhold her goodly root,

Let mildew blight the rye,

Give to the worm the orchard's fruit,

The wheat-field to the fly.

But let the good old crop adorn

The hills our fathers trod;

Still let us, for his golden corn,

Send up our thanks to God!

1847.

THE REFORMER.

ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan,

I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,

Smiting the godless shrines of man

Along his path.

The Church, beneath her trembling dome,

Essayed in vain her ghostly charm

Wealth shook within his gilded home

With strange alarm.

Fraud from his secret chambers fled

Before the sunlight bursting in

Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head

To drown the din.

"Spare," Art implored, "yon holy pile;

That grand, old, time-worn turret spare;"

Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,

Cried out, "Forbear!"

Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,

Groped for his old accustomed stone,

Leaned on his staff, and wept to find

His seat o'erthrown.

Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes,

O'erhung with paly locks of gold,—

"Why smite," he asked in sad surprise,

"The fair, the old?"

Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke,

Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam;

Shuddering and sick of heart I woke,

As from a dream.

I looked: aside the dust-cloud rolled,

The Waster seemed the Builder too;

Upspringing from the ruined Old

I saw the New.

'T was but the ruin of the bad,—

The wasting of the wrong and ill;

Whate'er of good the old time had

Was living still.

Calm grew the brows of him I feared;

The frown which awed me passed away,

And left behind a smile which cheered

Like breaking day.

The grain grew green on battle-plains,

O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the cow;

The slave stood forging from his chains

The spade and plough.

Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay

And cottage windows, flower-entwined,

Looked out upon the peaceful bay

And hills behind.

Through vine-wreathed cups with wine once red,

The lights on brimming crystal fell,

Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head

And mossy well.

Through prison walls, like Heaven-sent hope,

Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams strayed,

And with the idle gallows-rope

The young child played.

Where the doomed victim in his cell

Had counted o'er the weary hours,

Glad school-girls, answering to the bell,

Came crowned with flowers.

Grown wiser for the lesson given,

I fear no longer, for I know

That, where the share is deepest driven,

The best fruits grow.

The outworn rite, the old abuse,

The pious fraud transparent grown,

The good held captive in the use

Of wrong alone,—

These wait their doom, from that great law

Which makes the past time serve to-day;

And fresher life the world shall draw

From their decay.

Oh, backward-looking son of time!

The new is old, the old is new,

The cycle of a change sublime

Still sweeping through.

So wisely taught the Indian seer;

Destroying Seva, forming Brahm,

Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear,

Are one, the same.

Idly as thou, in that old day

Thou mournest, did thy sire repine;

So, in his time, thy child grown gray

Shall sigh for thine.

But life shall on and upward go;

Th' eternal step of Progress beats

To that great anthem, calm and slow,

Which God repeats.

Take heart! the Waster builds again,

A charmed life old Goodness bath;

The tares may perish, but the grain

Is not for death.

God works in all things; all obey

His first propulsion from the night

Wake thou and watch! the world is gray

With morning light!

1848.

THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS.

STILL in thy streets, O Paris! doth the stain

Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain;

Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins through,

And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew,

When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread,

At a crowned murderer's beck of license, fed

The yawning trenches with her noble dead;

Still, doomed Vienna, through thy stately halls

The shell goes crashing and the red shot falls,

And, leagued to crush thee, on the Danube's side,

The bearded Croat and Bosniak spearman ride;

Still in that vale where Himalaya's snow

Melts round the cornfields and the vines below,

The Sikh's hot cannon, answering ball for ball,

Flames in the breach of Moultan's shattered wall;

On Chenab's side the vulture seeks the slain,

And Sutlej paints with blood its banks again.

"What folly, then," the faithless critic cries,

With sneering lip, and wise world-knowing eyes,

"While fort to fort, and post to post, repeat

The ceaseless challenge of the war-drum's beat,

And round the green earth, to the church-bell's chime,

The morning drum-roll of the camp keeps time,

To dream of peace amidst a world in arms,

Of swords to ploughshares changed by Scriptural charms,

Of nations, drunken with the wine of blood,

Staggering to take the Pledge of Brotherhood,

Like tipplers answering Father Matthew's call;

The sullen Spaniard, and the mad-cap Gaul,

The bull-dog Briton, yielding but with life,

The Yankee swaggering with his bowie-knife,

The Russ, from banquets with the vulture shared,

The blood still dripping from his amber beard,

Quitting their mad Berserker dance to hear

The dull, meek droning of a drab-coat seer;

Leaving the sport of Presidents and Kings,

Where men for dice each titled gambler flings,

To meet alternate on the Seine and Thames,

For tea and gossip, like old country dames

No! let the cravens plead the weakling's cant,

Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent rant,

Let Sturge preach peace to democratic throngs,

And Burritt, stammering through his hundred tongues,

Repeat, in all, his ghostly lessons o'er,

Timed to the pauses of the battery's roar;

Check Ban or Kaiser with the barricade

Of "Olive-leaves" and Resolutions made,

Spike guns with pointed Scripture-texts, and hope

To capsize navies with a windy trope;

Still shall the glory and the pomp of War

Along their train the shouting millions draw;

Still dusty Labor to the passing Brave

His cap shall doff, and Beauty's kerchief wave;

Still shall the bard to Valor tune his song,

Still Hero-worship kneel before the Strong;

Rosy and sleek, the sable-gowned divine,

O'er his third bottle of suggestive wine,

To plumed and sworded auditors, shall prove

Their trade accordant with the Law of Love;

And Church for State, and State for Church, shall fight,

And both agree, that "Might alone is Right!"

Despite of sneers like these, O faithful few,

Who dare to hold God's word and witness true,

Whose clear-eyed faith transcends our evil time,

And o'er the present wilderness of crime

Sees the calm future, with its robes of green,

Its fleece-flecked mountains, and soft streams between,—

Still keep the path which duty bids ye tread,

Though worldly wisdom shake the cautious head;

No truth from Heaven descends upon our sphere,

Without the greeting of the skeptic's sneer;

Denied and mocked at, till its blessings fall,

Common as dew and sunshine, over all."

Then, o'er Earth's war-field, till the strife shall cease,

Like Morven's harpers, sing your song of peace;

As in old fable rang the Thracian's lyre,

Midst howl of fiends and roar of penal fire,

Till the fierce din to pleasing murmurs fell,

And love subdued the maddened heart of hell.

Lend, once again, that holy song a tongue,

Which the glad angels of the Advent sung,

Their cradle-anthem for the Saviour's birth,

Glory to God, and peace unto the earth

Through the mad discord send that calming word

Which wind and wave on wild Genesareth heard,

Lift in Christ's name his Cross against the Sword!

Not vain the vision which the prophets saw,

Skirting with green the fiery waste of war,

Through the hot sand-gleam, looming soft and calm

On the sky's rim, the fountain-shading palm.

Still lives for Earth, which fiends so long have trod,

The great hope resting on the truth of God,—

Evil shall cease and Violence pass away,

And the tired world breathe free through a long

Sabbath day.

11th mo., 1848.

THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.

Before the law authorizing imprisonment for debt had been abolished in Massachusetts, a revolutionary pensioner was confined in Charlestown jail for a debt of fourteen dollars, and on the fourth of July was seen waving a handkerchief from the bars of his cell in honor of the day.

Look on him! through his dungeon grate,

Feebly and cold, the morning light

Comes stealing round him, dim and late,

As if it loathed the sight.

Reclining on his strawy bed,

His hand upholds his drooping head;

His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard,

Unshorn his gray, neglected beard;

And o'er his bony fingers flow

His long, dishevelled locks of snow.

No grateful fire before him glows,

And yet the winter's breath is chill;

And o'er his half-clad person goes

The frequent ague thrill!

Silent, save ever and anon,

A sound, half murmur and half groan,

Forces apart the painful grip

Of the old sufferer's bearded lip;

Oh, sad and crushing is the fate

Of old age chained and desolate!

Just God! why lies that old man there?

A murderer shares his prison bed,

Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,

Gleam on him, fierce and red;

And the rude oath and heartless jeer

Fall ever on his loathing ear,

And, or in wakefulness or sleep,

Nerve, flesh, and pulses thrill and creep

Whene'er that ruffian's tossing limb,

Crimson with murder, touches him!

What has the gray-haired prisoner done?

Has murder stained his hands with gore?

Not so; his crime's a fouler one;

God made the old man poor!

For this he shares a felon's cell,

The fittest earthly type of hell

For this, the boon for which he poured

His young blood on the invader's sword,

And counted light the fearful cost;

His blood-gained liberty is lost!

And so, for such a place of rest,

Old prisoner, dropped thy blood as rain

On Concord's field, and Bunker's crest,

And Saratoga's plain?

Look forth, thou man of many scars,

Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars;

It must be joy, in sooth, to see

Yon monument upreared to thee;

Piled granite and a prison cell,

The land repays thy service well!

Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,

And fling the starry banner out;

Shout "Freedom!" till your lisping ones

Give back their cradle-shout;

Let boastful eloquence declaim

Of honor, liberty, and fame;

Still let the poet's strain be heard,

With glory for each second word,

And everything with breath agree

To praise "our glorious liberty!"

But when the patron cannon jars

That prison's cold and gloomy wall,

And through its grates the stripes and stars

Rise on the wind, and fall,

Think ye that prisoner's aged ear

Rejoices in the general cheer?

Think ye his dim and failing eye

Is kindled at your pageantry?

Sorrowing of soul, and chained of limb,

What is your carnival to him?

Down with the law that binds him thus!

Unworthy freemen, let it find

No refuge from the withering curse

Of God and human-kind

Open the prison's living tomb,

And usher from its brooding gloom

The victims of your savage code

To the free sun and air of God;

No longer dare as crime to brand

The chastening of the Almighty's hand.

1849.

THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.

The reader of the biography of William Allen, the philanthropic associate of Clarkson and Romilly, cannot fail to admire his simple and beautiful record of a tour through Europe, in the years 1818 and 1819, in the company of his American friend, Stephen Grellett.

No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest

Goaded from shore to shore;

No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest,

The leaves of empire o'er.

Simple of faith, and bearing in their hearts

The love of man and God,

Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient marts,

And Scythia's steppes, they trod.

Where the long shadows of the fir and pine

In the night sun are cast,

And the deep heart of many a Norland mine

Quakes at each riving blast;

Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa stands,

A baptized Scythian queen,

With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled hands,

The North and East between!

Where still, through vales of Grecian fable, stray

The classic forms of yore,

And beauty smiles, new risen from the spray,

And Dian weeps once more;

Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart resounds;

And Stamboul from the sea

Lifts her tall minarets over burial-grounds

Black with the cypress-tree.

From Malta's temples to the gates of Rome,

Following the track of Paul,

And where the Alps gird round the Switzer's home

Their vast, eternal wall;

They paused not by the ruins of old time,

They scanned no pictures rare,

Nor lingered where the snow-locked mountains

climb

The cold abyss of air!

But unto prisons, where men lay in chains,

To haunts where Hunger pined,

To kings and courts forgetful of the pains

And wants of human-kind,

Scattering sweet words, and quiet deeds of good,

Along their way, like flowers,

Or pleading, as Christ's freemen only could,

With princes and with powers;

Their single aim the purpose to fulfil

Of Truth, from day to day,

Simply obedient to its guiding will,

They held their pilgrim way.

Yet dream not, hence, the beautiful and old

Were wasted on their sight,

Who in the school of Christ had learned to hold

All outward things aright.

Not less to them the breath of vineyards blown

From off the Cyprian shore,

Not less for them the Alps in sunset shone,

That man they valued more.

A life of beauty lends to all it sees

The beauty of its thought;

And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies

Make glad its way, unsought.

In sweet accordancy of praise and love,

The singing waters run;

And sunset mountains wear in light above

The smile of duty done;

Sure stands the promise,—ever to the meek

A heritage is given;

Nor lose they Earth who, single-hearted, seek

The righteousness of Heaven!

1849.

THE MEN OF OLD.

"WELL speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast!

Yet all unworthy of its trust thou art,

If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving heart,

Thou tread'st the solemn Pantheon of the Past,

By the great Future's dazzling hope made blind

To all the beauty, power, and truth behind.

Not without reverent awe shouldst thou put by

The cypress branches and the amaranth blooms,

Where, with clasped hands of prayer, upon their tombs

The effigies of old confessors lie,

God's witnesses; the voices of His will,

Heard in the slow march of the centuries still

Such were the men at whose rebuking frown,

Dark with God's wrath, the tyrant's knee went down;

Such from the terrors of the guilty drew

The vassal's freedom and the poor man's due."

St. Anselm (may he rest forevermore

In Heaven's sweet peace!) forbade, of old, the sale

Of men as slaves, and from the sacred pale

Hurled the Northumbrian buyers of the poor.

To ransom souls from bonds and evil fate

St. Ambrose melted down the sacred plate,—

Image of saint, the chalice, and the pix,

Crosses of gold, and silver candlesticks.

"Man is worth more than temples!" he replied

To such as came his holy work to chide.

And brave Cesarius, stripping altars bare,

And coining from the Abbey's golden hoard

The captive's freedom, answered to the prayer

Or threat of those whose fierce zeal for the Lord

Stifled their love of man,—"An earthen dish

The last sad supper of the Master bore

Most miserable sinners! do ye wish

More than your Lord, and grudge His dying poor

What your own pride and not His need requires?

Souls, than these shining gauds, He values more

Mercy, not sacrifice, His heart desires!"

O faithful worthies! resting far behind

In your dark ages, since ye fell asleep,

Much has been done for truth and human-kind;

Shadows are scattered wherein ye groped blind;

Man claims his birthright, freer pulses leap

Through peoples driven in your day like sheep;

Yet, like your own, our age's sphere of light,

Though widening still, is walled around by night;

With slow, reluctant eye, the Church has read,

Skeptic at heart, the lessons of its Head;

Counting, too oft, its living members less

Than the wall's garnish and the pulpit's dress;

World-moving zeal, with power to bless and feed

Life's fainting pilgrims, to their utter need,

Instead of bread, holds out the stone of creed;

Sect builds and worships where its wealth and

pride

And vanity stand shrined and deified,

Careless that in the shadow of its walls

God's living temple into ruin falls.

We need, methinks, the prophet-hero still,

Saints true of life, and martyrs strong of will,

To tread the land, even now, as Xavier trod

The streets of Goa, barefoot, with his bell,

Proclaiming freedom in the name of God,

And startling tyrants with the fear of hell

Soft words, smooth prophecies, are doubtless well;

But to rebuke the age's popular crime,

We need the souls of fire, the hearts of that old

time!

1849.

TO PIUS IX.

The writer of these lines is no enemy of Catholics. He has, on more than one occasion, exposed himself to the censures of his Protestant brethren, by his strenuous endeavors to procure indemnification for the owners of the convent destroyed near Boston. He defended the cause of the Irish patriots long before it had become popular in this country; and he was one of the first to urge the most liberal aid to the suffering and starving population of the Catholic island. The severity of his language finds its ample apology in the reluctant confession of one of the most eminent Romish priests, the eloquent and devoted Father Ventura.

THE cannon's brazen lips are cold;

No red shell blazes down the air;

And street and tower, and temple old,

Are silent as despair.

The Lombard stands no more at bay,

Rome's fresh young life has bled in vain;

The ravens scattered by the day

Come back with night again.

Now, while the fratricides of France

Are treading on the neck of Rome,

Hider at Gaeta, seize thy chance!

Coward and cruel, come!

Creep now from Naples' bloody skirt;

Thy mummer's part was acted well,

While Rome, with steel and fire begirt,

Before thy crusade fell!

Her death-groans answered to thy prayer;

Thy chant, the drum and bugle-call;

Thy lights, the burning villa's glare;

Thy beads, the shell and ball!

Let Austria clear thy way, with hands

Foul from Ancona's cruel sack,

And Naples, with his dastard bands

Of murderers, lead thee back!

Rome's lips are dumb; the orphan's wail,

The mother's shriek, thou mayst not hear

Above the faithless Frenchman's hail,

The unsexed shaveling's cheer!

Go, bind on Rome her cast-off weight,

The double curse of crook and crown,

Though woman's scorn and manhood's hate

From wall and roof flash down!

Nor heed those blood-stains on the wall,

Not Tiber's flood can wash away,

Where, in thy stately Quirinal,

Thy mangled victims lay!

Let the world murmur; let its cry

Of horror and disgust be heard;

Truth stands alone; thy coward lie

Is backed by lance and sword!

The cannon of St. Angelo,

And chanting priest and clanging bell,

And beat of drum and bugle blow,

Shall greet thy coming well!

Let lips of iron and tongues of slaves

Fit welcome give thee; for her part,

Rome, frowning o'er her new-made graves,

Shall curse thee from her heart!

No wreaths of sad Campagna's flowers

Shall childhood in thy pathway fling;

No garlands from their ravaged bowers

Shall Terni's maidens bring;

But, hateful as that tyrant old,

The mocking witness of his crime,

In thee shall loathing eyes behold

The Nero of our time!

Stand where Rome's blood was freest shed,

Mock Heaven with impious thanks, and call

Its curses on the patriot dead,

Its blessings on the Gaul!

Or sit upon thy throne of lies,

A poor, mean idol, blood-besmeared,

Whom even its worshippers despise,

Unhonored, unrevered!

Yet, Scandal of the World! from thee

One needful truth mankind shall learn

That kings and priests to Liberty

And God are false in turn.

Earth wearies of them; and the long

Meek sufferance of the Heavens doth fail;

Woe for weak tyrants, when the strong

Wake, struggle, and prevail!

Not vainly Roman hearts have bled

To feed the Crosier and the Crown,

If, roused thereby, the world shall tread

The twin-born vampires down.

1849.

CALEF IN BOSTON.

1692.

IN the solemn days of old,

Two men met in Boston town,

One a tradesman frank and bold,

One a preacher of renown.

Cried the last, in bitter tone:

"Poisoner of the wells of truth

Satan's hireling, thou hast sown

With his tares the heart of youth!"

Spake the simple tradesman then,

"God be judge 'twixt thee and me;

All thou knowed of truth hath been

Once a lie to men like thee.

"Falsehoods which we spurn to-day

Were the truths of long ago;

Let the dead boughs fall away,

Fresher shall the living grow.

"God is good and God is light,

In this faith I rest secure;

Evil can but serve the right,

Over all shall love endure.

"Of your spectral puppet play

I have traced the cunning wires;

Come what will, I needs must say,

God is true, and ye are liars."

When the thought of man is free,

Error fears its lightest tones;

So the priest cried, "Sadducee!"

And the people took up stones.

In the ancient burying-ground,

Side by side the twain now lie;

One with humble grassy mound,

One with marbles pale and high.

But the Lord hath blest the seed

Which that tradesman scattered then,

And the preacher's spectral creed

Chills no more the blood of men.

Let us trust, to one is known

Perfect love which casts out fear,

While the other's joys atone

For the wrong he suffered here.

1849.

OUR STATE.

THE South-land boasts its teeming cane,

The prairied West its heavy grain,

And sunset's radiant gates unfold

On rising marts and sands of gold.

Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State

Is scant of soil, of limits strait;

Her yellow sands are sands alone,

Her only mines are ice and stone!

From Autumn frost to April rain,

Too long her winter woods complain;

From budding flower to falling leaf,

Her summer time is all too brief.

Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands,

And wintry hills, the school-house stands,

And what her rugged soil denies,

The harvest of the mind supplies.

The riches of the Commonwealth

Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health;

And more to her than gold or grain,

The cunning hand and cultured brain.

For well she keeps her ancient stock,

The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock;

And still maintains, with milder laws,

And clearer light, the Good Old Cause.

Nor heeds the skeptic's puny hands,

While near her school the church-spire stands;

Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule,

While near her church-spire stands the school.

1849.

THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES.

I HAVE been thinking of the victims bound

In Naples, dying for the lack of air

And sunshine, in their close, damp cells of pain,

Where hope is not, and innocence in vain

Appeals against the torture and the chain!

Unfortunates! whose crime it was to share

Our common love of freedom, and to dare,

In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple-crowned,

And her base pander, the most hateful thing

Who upon Christian or on Pagan ground

Makes vile the old heroic name of king.

O God most merciful! Father just and kind

Whom man hath bound let thy right hand unbind.

Or, if thy purposes of good behind

Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers find

Strong consolations; leave them not to doubt

Thy providential care, nor yet without

The hope which all thy attributes inspire,

That not in vain the martyr's robe of fire

Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting chain;

Since all who suffer for thy truth send forth,

Electrical, with every throb of pain,

Unquenchable sparks, thy own baptismal rain

Of fire and spirit over all the earth,

Making the dead in slavery live again.

Let this great hope be with them, as they lie

Shut from the light, the greenness, and the sky;

From the cool waters and the pleasant breeze,

The smell of flowers, and shade of summer trees;

Bound with the felon lepers, whom disease

And sins abhorred make loathsome; let them share

Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear

Years of unutterable torment, stern and still,

As the chained Titan victor through his will!

Comfort them with thy future; let them see

The day-dawn of Italian liberty;

For that, with all good things, is hid with Thee,

And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its time to be.

I, who have spoken for freedom at the cost

Of some weak friendships, or some paltry prize

Of name or place, and more than I have lost

Have gained in wider reach of sympathies,

And free communion with the good and wise;

May God forbid that I should ever boast

Such easy self-denial, or repine

That the strong pulse of health no more is mine;

That, overworn at noonday, I must yield

To other hands the gleaning of the field;

A tired on-looker through the day's decline.

For blest beyond deserving still, and knowing

That kindly Providence its care is showing

In the withdrawal as in the bestowing,

Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray.

Beautiful yet for me this autumn day

Melts on its sunset hills; and, far away,

For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm,

To me the pine-woods whisper; and for me

Yon river, winding through its vales of calm,

By greenest banks, with asters purple-starred,

And gentian bloom and golden-rod made gay,

Flows down in silent gladness to the sea,

Like a pure spirit to its great reward!

Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near and dear,

Whose love is round me like this atmosphere,

Warm, soft, and golden. For such gifts to me

What shall I render, O my God, to thee?

Let me not dwell upon my lighter share

Of pain and ill that human life must bear;

Save me from selfish pining; let my heart,

Drawn from itself in sympathy, forget

The bitter longings of a vain regret,

The anguish of its own peculiar smart.

Remembering others, as I have to-day,

In their great sorrows, let me live alway

Not for myself alone, but have a part,

Such as a frail and erring spirit may,

In love which is of Thee, and which indeed Thou art!

1851.

THE PEACE OF EUROPE.

"GREAT peace in Europe! Order reigns

From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains!"

So say her kings and priests; so say

The lying prophets of our day.

Go lay to earth a listening ear;

The tramp of measured marches hear;

The rolling of the cannon's wheel,

The shotted musket's murderous peal,

The night alarm, the sentry's call,

The quick-eared spy in hut and hall!

From Polar sea and tropic fen

The dying-groans of exiled men!

The bolted cell, the galley's chains,

The scaffold smoking with its stains!

Order, the hush of brooding slaves

Peace, in the dungeon-vaults and graves!

O Fisher! of the world-wide net,

With meshes in all waters set,

Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell

Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell,

And open wide the banquet-hall,

Where kings and priests hold carnival!

Weak vassal tricked in royal guise,

Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies;

Base gambler for Napoleon's crown,

Barnacle on his dead renown!

Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan,

Crowned scandal, loathed of God and man

And thou, fell Spider of the North!

Stretching thy giant feelers forth,

Within whose web the freedom dies

Of nations eaten up like flies!

Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and Czar I

If this be Peace, pray what is War?

White Angel of the Lord! unmeet

That soil accursed for thy pure feet.

Never in Slavery's desert flows

The fountain of thy charmed repose;

No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves

Of lilies and of olive-leaves;

Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell,

Thus saith the Eternal Oracle;

Thy home is with the pure and free!

Stern herald of thy better day,

Before thee, to prepare thy way,

The Baptist Shade of Liberty,

Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, must press

With bleeding feet the wilderness!

Oh that its voice might pierces the ear

Of princes, trembling while they hear

A cry as of the Hebrew seer

Repent! God's kingdom draweth near!

1852.

ASTRAEA.

"Jove means to settle

Astraea in her seat again,

And let down from his golden chain

An age of better metal."

BEN JONSON, 1615.

O POET rare and old!

Thy words are prophecies;

Forward the age of gold,

The new Saturnian lies.

The universal prayer

And hope are not in vain;

Rise, brothers! and prepare

The way for Saturn's reign.

Perish shall all which takes

From labor's board and can;

Perish shall all which makes

A spaniel of the man!

Free from its bonds the mind,

The body from the rod;

Broken all chains that bind

The image of our God.

Just men no longer pine

Behind their prison-bars;

Through the rent dungeon shine

The free sun and the stars.

Earth own, at last, untrod

By sect, or caste, or clan,

The fatherhood of God,

The brotherhood of man!

Fraud fail, craft perish, forth

The money-changers driven,

And God's will done on earth,

As now in heaven.

1852.

THE DISENTHRALLED.

HE had bowed down to drunkenness,

An abject worshipper

The pride of manhood's pulse had grown

Too faint and cold to stir;

And he had given his spirit up

To the unblessed thrall,

And bowing to the poison cup,

He gloried in his fall!

There came a change—the cloud rolled off,

And light fell on his brain—

And like the passing of a dream

That cometh not again,

The shadow of the spirit fled.

He saw the gulf before,

He shuddered at the waste behind,

And was a man once more.

He shook the serpent folds away,

That gathered round his heart,

As shakes the swaying forest-oak

Its poison vine apart;

He stood erect; returning pride

Grew terrible within,

And conscience sat in judgment, on

His most familiar sin.

The light of Intellect again

Along his pathway shone;

And Reason like a monarch sat

Upon his olden throne.

The honored and the wise once more

Within his presence came;

And lingered oft on lovely lips

His once forbidden name.

There may be glory in the might,

That treadeth nations down;

Wreaths for the crimson conqueror,

Pride for the kingly crown;

But nobler is that triumph hour,

The disenthralled shall find,

When evil passion boweth down,

Unto the Godlike mind.

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY.

THE proudest now is but my peer,

The highest not more high;

To-day, of all the weary year,

A king of men am I.

To-day, alike are great and small,

The nameless and the known;

My palace is the people's hall,

The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves to-day upon the list

Beside the served shall stand;

Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,

The gloved and dainty hand!

The rich is level with the poor,

The weak is strong to-day;

And sleekest broadcloth counts no more

Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence

My stubborn right abide;

I set a plain man's common sense

Against the pedant's pride.

To-day shall simple manhood try

The strength of gold and land;

The wide world has not wealth to buy

The power in my right hand!

While there's a grief to seek redress,

Or balance to adjust,

Where weighs our living manhood less

Than Mammon's vilest dust,—

While there's a right to need my vote,

A wrong to sweep away,

Up! clouted knee and ragged coat

A man's a man to-day.

1848.

THE DREAM OF PIO NONO.

IT chanced that while the pious troops of France

Fought in the crusade Pio Nono preached,

What time the holy Bourbons stayed his hands

(The Hun and Aaron meet for such a Moses),

Stretched forth from Naples towards rebellious Rome

To bless the ministry of Oudinot,

And sanctify his iron homilies

And sharp persuasions of the bayonet,

That the great pontiff fell asleep, and dreamed.

He stood by Lake Tiberias, in the sun

Of the bight Orient; and beheld the lame,

The sick, and blind, kneel at the Master's feet,

And rise up whole. And, sweetly over all,

Dropping the ladder of their hymn of praise

From heaven to earth, in silver rounds of song,

He heard the blessed angels sing of peace,

Good-will to man, and glory to the Lord.

Then one, with feet unshod, and leathern face

Hardened and darkened by fierce summer suns

And hot winds of the desert, closer drew

His fisher's haick, and girded up his loins,

And spake, as one who had authority

"Come thou with me."

Lakeside and eastern sky

And the sweet song of angels passed away,

And, with a dream's alacrity of change,

The priest, and the swart fisher by his side,

Beheld the Eternal City lift its domes

And solemn fanes and monumental pomp

Above the waste Campagna. On the hills

The blaze of burning villas rose and fell,

And momently the mortar's iron throat

Roared from the trenches; and, within the walls,

Sharp crash of shells, low groans of human pain,

Shout, drum beat, and the clanging larum-bell,

And tramp of hosts, sent up a mingled sound,

Half wail and half defiance. As they passed

The gate of San Pancrazio, human blood

Flowed ankle-high about them, and dead men

Choked the long street with gashed and gory piles,—

A ghastly barricade of mangled flesh,

From which at times, quivered a living hand,

And white lips moved and moaned. A father tore

His gray hairs, by the body of his son,

In frenzy; and his fair young daughter wept

On his old bosom. Suddenly a flash

Clove the thick sulphurous air, and man and maid

Sank, crushed and mangled by the shattering shell.

Then spake the Galilean: "Thou hast seen

The blessed Master and His works of love;

Look now on thine! Hear'st thou the angels sing

Above this open hell? Thou God's high-priest!

Thou the Vicegerent of the Prince of Peace!

Thou the successor of His chosen ones!

I, Peter, fisherman of Galilee,

In the dear Master's name, and for the love

Of His true Church, proclaim thee Antichrist,

Alien and separate from His holy faith,

Wide as the difference between death and life,

The hate of man and the great love of God!

Hence, and repent!"

Thereat the pontiff woke,

Trembling, and muttering o'er his fearful dream.

"What means he?" cried the Bourbon, "Nothing more

Than that your majesty hath all too well

Catered for your poor guests, and that, in sooth,

The Holy Father's supper troubleth him,"

Said Cardinal Antonelli, with a smile.

1853.

THE VOICES.

WHY urge the long, unequal fight,

Since Truth has fallen in the street,

Or lift anew the trampled light,

Quenched by the heedless million's feet?

"Give o'er the thankless task; forsake

The fools who know not ill from good

Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take

Thine ease among the multitude.

"Live out thyself; with others share

Thy proper life no more; assume

The unconcern of sun and air,

For life or death, or blight or bloom.

"The mountain pine looks calmly on

The fires that scourge the plains below,

Nor heeds the eagle in the sun

The small birds piping in the snow!

"The world is God's, not thine; let Him

Work out a change, if change must be

The hand that planted best can trim

And nurse the old unfruitful tree."

So spake the Tempter, when the light

Of sun and stars had left the sky;

I listened, through the cloud and night,

And beard, methought, a voice reply:

"Thy task may well seem over-hard,

Who scatterest in a thankless soil

Thy life as seed, with no reward

Save that which Duty gives to Toil.

"Not wholly is thy heart resigned

To Heaven's benign and just decree,

Which, linking thee with all thy kind,

Transmits their joys and griefs to thee.

"Break off that sacred chain, and turn

Back on thyself thy love and care;

Be thou thine own mean idol, burn

Faith, Hope, and Trust, thy children, there.

"Released from that fraternal law

Which shares the common bale and bliss,

No sadder lot could Folly draw,

Or Sin provoke from Fate, than this.

"The meal unshared is food unblest

Thou hoard'st in vain what love should spend;

Self-ease is pain; thy only rest

Is labor for a worthy end;

"A toil that gains with what it yields,

And scatters to its own increase,

And hears, while sowing outward fields,

The harvest-song of inward peace.

"Free-lipped the liberal streamlets run,

Free shines for all the healthful ray;

The still pool stagnates in the sun,

The lurid earth-fire haunts decay.

"What is it that the crowd requite

Thy love with hate, thy truth with lies?

And but to faith, and not to sight,

The walls of Freedom's temple rise?

"Yet do thy work; it shall succeed

In thine or in another's day;

And, if denied the victor's meed,

Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay.

"Faith shares the future's promise; Love's

Self-offering is a triumph won;

And each good thought or action moves

The dark world nearer to the sun.

"Then faint not, falter not, nor plead

Thy weakness; truth itself is strong;

The lion's strength, the eagle's speed,

Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong.

"Thy nature, which, through fire and flood,

To place or gain finds out its way,

Hath power to seek the highest good,

And duty's holiest call obey!

"Strivest thou in darkness?—Foes without

In league with traitor thoughts within;

Thy night-watch kept with trembling Doubt

And pale Remorse the ghost of Sin?

"Hast thou not, on some week of storm,

Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair,

And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form

The curtains of its tent of prayer?

"So, haply, when thy task shall end,

The wrong shall lose itself in right,

And all thy week-day darkness blend

With the long Sabbath of the light!"

1854.

THE NEW EXODUS.

Written upon hearing that slavery had been formally abolished in Egypt. Unhappily, the professions and pledges of the vacillating government of Egypt proved unreliable.

BY fire and cloud, across the desert sand,

And through the parted waves,

From their long bondage, with an outstretched hand,

God led the Hebrew slaves!

Dead as the letter of the Pentateuch,

As Egypt's statues cold,

In the adytum of the sacred book

Now stands that marvel old.

"Lo, God is great!" the simple Moslem says.

We seek the ancient date,

Turn the dry scroll, and make that living phrase

A dead one: "God was great!"

And, like the Coptic monks by Mousa's wells,

We dream of wonders past,

Vague as the tales the wandering Arab tells,

Each drowsier than the last.

O fools and blind! Above the Pyramids

Stretches once more that hand,

And tranced Egypt, from her stony lids,

Flings back her veil of sand.

And morning-smitten Memnon, singing, wakes;

And, listening by his Nile,

O'er Ammon's grave and awful visage breaks

A sweet and human smile.

Not, as before, with hail and fire, and call

Of death for midnight graves,

But in the stillness of the noonday, fall

The fetters of the slaves.

No longer through the Red Sea, as of old,

The bondmen walk dry shod;

Through human hearts, by love of Him controlled,

Runs now that path of God.

1856.

THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND.

"Joseph Sturge, with a companion, Thomas Harvey, has been visiting the shores of Finland, to ascertain the amount of mischief and loss to poor and peaceable sufferers, occasioned by the gun-boats of the allied squadrons in the late war, with a view to obtaining relief for them."— Friends' Review.

ACROSS the frozen marshes

The winds of autumn blow,

And the fen-lands of the Wetter

Are white with early snow.

But where the low, gray headlands

Look o'er the Baltic brine,

A bark is sailing in the track

Of England's battle-line.

No wares hath she to barter

For Bothnia's fish and grain;

She saileth not for pleasure,

She saileth not for gain.

But still by isle or mainland

She drops her anchor down,

Where'er the British cannon

Rained fire on tower and town.

Outspake the ancient Amtman,

At the gate of Helsingfors

"Why comes this ship a-spying

In the track of England's wars?"

"God bless her," said the coast-guard,—

"God bless the ship, I say.

The holy angels trim the sails

That speed her on her way!

"Where'er she drops her anchor,

The peasant's heart is glad;

Where'er she spreads her parting sail,

The peasant's heart is sad.

"Each wasted town and hamlet

She visits to restore;

To roof the shattered cabin,

And feed the starving poor.

"The sunken boats of fishers,

The foraged beeves and grain,

The spoil of flake and storehouse,

The good ship brings again.

"And so to Finland's sorrow

The sweet amend is made,

As if the healing hand of Christ

Upon her wounds were laid!"

Then said the gray old Amtman,

"The will of God be done!

The battle lost by England's hate,

By England's love is won!

"We braved the iron tempest

That thundered on our shore;

But when did kindness fail to find

The key to Finland's door?

"No more from Aland's ramparts

Shall warning signal come,

Nor startled Sweaborg hear again

The roll of midnight drum.

"Beside our fierce Black Eagle

The Dove of Peace shall rest;

And in the mouths of cannon

The sea-bird make her nest.

"For Finland, looking seaward,

No coming foe shall scan;

And the holy bells of Abo

Shall ring, 'Good-will to man!'

"Then row thy boat, O fisher!

In peace on lake and bay;

And thou, young maiden, dance again

Around the poles of May!

"Sit down, old men, together,

Old wives, in quiet spin;

Henceforth the Anglo-Saxon

Is the brother of the Finn!"

1856.

THE EVE OF ELECTION.

FROM gold to gray

Our mild sweet day

Of Indian Summer fades too soon;

But tenderly

Above the sea

Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's moon.

In its pale fire,

The village spire

Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance;

The painted walls

Whereon it falls

Transfigured stand in marble trance!

O'er fallen leaves

The west-wind grieves,

Yet comes a seed-time round again;

And morn shall see

The State sown free

With baleful tares or healthful grain.

Along the street

The shadows meet

Of Destiny, whose hands conceal

The moulds of fate

That shape the State,

And make or mar the common weal.

Around I see

The powers that be;

I stand by Empire's primal springs;

And princes meet,

In every street,

And hear the tread of uncrowned kings!

Hark! through the crowd

The laugh runs loud,

Beneath the sad, rebuking moon.

God save the land

A careless hand

May shake or swerve ere morrow's noon!

No jest is this;

One cast amiss

May blast the hope of Freedom's year.

Oh, take me where

Are hearts of prayer,

And foreheads bowed in reverent fear!

Not lightly fall

Beyond recall

The written scrolls a breath can float;

The crowning fact

The kingliest act

Of Freedom is the freeman's vote!

For pearls that gem

A diadem

The diver in the deep sea dies;

The regal right

We boast to-night

Is ours through costlier sacrifice;

The blood of Vane,

His prison pain

Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod,

And hers whose faith

Drew strength from death,

And prayed her Russell up to God!

Our hearts grow cold,

We lightly hold

A right which brave men died to gain;

The stake, the cord,

The axe, the sword,

Grim nurses at its birth of pain.

The shadow rend,

And o'er us bend,

O martyrs, with your crowns and palms;

Breathe through these throngs

Your battle songs,

Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms.

Look from the sky,

Like God's great eye,

Thou solemn moon, with searching beam,

Till in the sight

Of thy pure light

Our mean self-seekings meaner seem.

Shame from our hearts

Unworthy arts,

The fraud designed, the purpose dark;

And smite away

The hands we lay

Profanely on the sacred ark.

To party claims

And private aims,

Reveal that august face of Truth,

Whereto are given

The age of heaven,

The beauty of immortal youth.

So shall our voice

Of sovereign choice

Swell the deep bass of duty done,

And strike the key

Of time to be,

When God and man shall speak as one!

1858.

FROM PERUGIA.

"The thing which has the most dissevered the people from the Pope,—the unforgivable thing,—the breaking point between him and them,—has been the encouragement and promotion he gave to the officer under whom were executed the slaughters of Perugia. That made the breaking point in many honest hearts that had clung to him before."—HARRIET BEECHER STOWE'S Letters from Italy.

The tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails have spread,

Flaming out in their violet, yellow, and red;

And behind go the lackeys in crimson and buff,

And the chamberlains gorgeous in velvet and ruff;

Next, in red-legged pomp, come the cardinals forth,

Each a lord of the church and a prince of the earth.

What's this squeak of the fife, and this batter of drum

Lo! the Swiss of the Church from Perugia come;

The militant angels, whose sabres drive home

To the hearts of the malcontents, cursed and abhorred,

The good Father's missives, and "Thus saith the Lord!"

And lend to his logic the point of the sword!

O maids of Etruria, gazing forlorn

O'er dark Thrasymenus, dishevelled and torn!

O fathers, who pluck at your gray beards for shame!

O mothers, struck dumb by a woe without name!

Well ye know how the Holy Church hireling behaves,

And his tender compassion of prisons and graves!

There they stand, the hired stabbers, the blood-stains yet fresh,

That splashed like red wine from the vintage of flesh;

Grim instruments, careless as pincers and rack

How the joints tear apart, and the strained sinews crack;

But the hate that glares on them is sharp as their swords,

And the sneer and the scowl print the air with fierce words!

Off with hats, down with knees, shout your vivas like mad!

Here's the Pope in his holiday righteousness clad,

From shorn crown to toe-nail, kiss-worn to the quick,

Of sainthood in purple the pattern and pick,

Who the role of the priest and the soldier unites,

And, praying like Aaron, like Joshua fights!

Is this Pio Nono the gracious, for whom

We sang our hosannas and lighted all Rome;

With whose advent we dreamed the new era began

When the priest should be human, the monk be a man?

Ah, the wolf's with the sheep, and the fox with the fowl,

When freedom we trust to the crosier and cowl!

Stand aside, men of Rome! Here's a hangman-faced Swiss—

(A blessing for him surely can't go amiss)—

Would kneel down the sanctified slipper to kiss.

Short shrift will suffice him,—he's blest beyond doubt;

But there 's blood on his hands which would scarcely wash out,

Though Peter himself held the baptismal spout!

Make way for the next! Here's another sweet son

What's this mastiff-jawed rascal in epaulets done?

He did, whispers rumor, (its truth God forbid!)

At Perugia what Herod at Bethlehem did.

And the mothers? Don't name them! these humors of war

They who keep him in service must pardon him for.

Hist! here's the arch-knave in a cardinal's hat,

With the heart of a wolf, and the stealth of a cat

(As if Judas and Herod together were rolled),

Who keeps, all as one, the Pope's conscience and gold,

Mounts guard on the altar, and pilfers from thence,

And flatters St. Peter while stealing his pence!

Who doubts Antonelli? Have miracles ceased

When robbers say mass, and Barabbas is priest?

When the Church eats and drinks, at its mystical board,

The true flesh and blood carved and shed by its sword,

When its martyr, unsinged, claps the crown on his head,

And roasts, as his proxy, his neighbor instead!

There! the bells jow and jangle the same blessed way

That they did when they rang for Bartholomew's day.

Hark! the tallow-faced monsters, nor women nor boys,

Vex the air with a shrill, sexless horror of noise.

Te Deum laudamus! All round without stint

The incense-pot swings with a taint of blood in 't!

And now for the blessing! Of little account,

You know, is the old one they heard on the Mount.

Its giver was landless, His raiment was poor,

No jewelled tiara His fishermen wore;

No incense, no lackeys, no riches, no home,

No Swiss guards!  We order things better at Rome.

So bless us the strong hand, and curse us the weak;

Let Austria's vulture have food for her beak;

Let the wolf-whelp of Naples play Bomba again,

With his death-cap of silence, and halter, and chain;

Put reason, and justice, and truth under ban;

For the sin unforgiven is freedom for man!

1858.

ITALY.

ACROSS the sea I heard the groans

Of nations in the intervals

Of wind and wave. Their blood and bones

Cried out in torture, crushed by thrones,

And sucked by priestly cannibals.

I dreamed of Freedom slowly gained

By martyr meekness, patience, faith,

And lo! an athlete grimly stained,

With corded muscles battle-strained,

Shouting it from the fields of death!

I turn me, awe-struck, from the sight,

Among the clamoring thousands mute,

I only know that God is right,

And that the children of the light

Shall tread the darkness under foot.

I know the pent fire heaves its crust,

That sultry skies the bolt will form

To smite them clear; that Nature must

The balance of her powers adjust,

Though with the earthquake and the storm.

God reigns, and let the earth rejoice!

I bow before His sterner plan.

Dumb are the organs of my choice;

He speaks in battle's stormy voice,

His praise is in the wrath of man!

Yet, surely as He lives, the day

Of peace He promised shall be ours,

To fold the flags of war, and lay

Its sword and spear to rust away,

And sow its ghastly fields with flowers!

1860.

FREEDOM IN BRAZIL.

WITH clearer light, Cross of the South, shine forth

In blue Brazilian skies;

And thou, O river, cleaving half the earth

From sunset to sunrise,

From the great mountains to the Atlantic waves

Thy joy's long anthem pour.

Yet a few years (God make them less!) and slaves

Shall shame thy pride no more.

No fettered feet thy shaded margins press;

But all men shall walk free

Where thou, the high-priest of the wilderness,

Hast wedded sea to sea.

And thou, great-hearted ruler, through whose mouth

The word of God is said,

Once more, "Let there be light!"—Son of the South,

Lift up thy honored head,

Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert

More than by birth thy own,

Careless of watch and ward; thou art begirt

By grateful hearts alone.

The moated wall and battle-ship may fail,

But safe shall justice prove;

Stronger than greaves of brass or iron mail

The panoply of love.

Crowned doubly by man's blessing and God's grace,

Thy future is secure;

Who frees a people makes his statue's place

In Time's Valhalla sure.

Lo! from his Neva's banks the Scythian Czar

Stretches to thee his hand,

Who, with the pencil of the Northern star,

Wrote freedom on his land.

And he whose grave is holy by our calm

And prairied Sangamon,

From his gaunt hand shall drop the martyr's palm

To greet thee with "Well done!"

And thou, O Earth, with smiles thy face make sweet,

And let thy wail be stilled,

To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat

Her promise half fulfilled.

The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks still,

No sound thereof hath died;

Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal will

Shall yet be satisfied.

The years are slow, the vision tarrieth long,

And far the end may be;

But, one by one, the fiends of ancient wrong

Go out and leave thee free.

1867.

AFTER ELECTION.

THE day's sharp strife is ended now,

Our work is done, God knoweth how!

As on the thronged, unrestful town

The patience of the moon looks down,

I wait to hear, beside the wire,

The voices of its tongues of fire.

Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at first

Be strong, my heart, to know the worst!

Hark! there the Alleghanies spoke;

That sound from lake and prairie broke,

That sunset-gun of triumph rent

The silence of a continent!

That signal from Nebraska sprung,

This, from Nevada's mountain tongue!

Is that thy answer, strong and free,

O loyal heart of Tennessee?

What strange, glad voice is that which calls

From Wagner's grave and Sumter's walls?

From Mississippi's fountain-head

A sound as of the bison's tread!

There rustled freedom's Charter Oak

In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke!

Cheer answers cheer from rise to set

Of sun. We have a country yet!

The praise, O God, be thine alone!

Thou givest not for bread a stone;

Thou hast not led us through the night

To blind us with returning light;

Not through the furnace have we passed,

To perish at its mouth at last.

O night of peace, thy flight restrain!

November's moon, be slow to wane!

Shine on the freedman's cabin floor,

On brows of prayer a blessing pour;

And give, with full assurance blest,

The weary heart of Freedom rest!

1868.

DISARMAMENT.

"PUT up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more

Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,

O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped

And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped

With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow

Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe

Down which a groaning diapason runs

From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons

Of desolate women in their far-off homes,

Waiting to hear the step that never comes!

O men and brothers! let that voice be heard.

War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword!

Fear not the end. There is a story told

In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold,

And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit

With grave responses listening unto it

Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,

Buddha, the holy and benevolent,

Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of look,

Whose awful voice the hills and forests shook.

"O son of peace!" the giant cried, "thy fate

Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to hate."

The unarmed Buddha looking, with no trace

Of fear or anger, in the monster's face,

In pity said: "Poor fiend, even thee I love."

Lo! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank

To hand-breadth size; the huge abhorrence shrank

Into the form and fashion of a dove;

And where the thunder of its rage was heard,

Circling above him sweetly sang the bird

"Hate hath no harm for love," so ran the song;

"And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!"

1871.

THE PROBLEM.

I.

NOT without envy Wealth at times must look

On their brown strength who wield the reaping-hook

And scythe, or at the forge-fire shape the plough

Or the steel harness of the steeds of steam;

All who, by skill and patience, anyhow

Make service noble, and the earth redeem

From savageness. By kingly accolade

Than theirs was never worthier knighthood made.

Well for them, if, while demagogues their vain

And evil counsels proffer, they maintain

Their honest manhood unseduced, and wage

No war with Labor's right to Labor's gain

Of sweet home-comfort, rest of hand and brain,

And softer pillow for the head of Age.

II.

And well for Gain if it ungrudging yields

Labor its just demand; and well for Ease

If in the uses of its own, it sees

No wrong to him who tills its pleasant fields

And spreads the table of its luxuries.

The interests of the rich man and the poor

Are one and same, inseparable evermore;

And, when scant wage or labor fail to give

Food, shelter, raiment, wherewithal to live,

Need has its rights, necessity its claim.

Yea, even self-wrought misery and shame

Test well the charity suffering long and kind.

The home-pressed question of the age can find

No answer in the catch-words of the blind

Leaders of blind. Solution there is none

Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone.

1877.

OUR COUNTRY.

Read at Woodstock, Conn., July 4,1883.

WE give thy natal day to hope,

O Country of our love and prayer I

Thy way is down no fatal slope,

But up to freer sun and air.

Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet

By God's grace only stronger made,

In future tasks before thee set

Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid.

The fathers sleep, but men remain

As wise, as true, and brave as they;

Why count the loss and not the gain?

The best is that we have to-day.

Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime,

Within thy mighty bounds transpires,

With speed defying space and time

Comes to us on the accusing wires;

While of thy wealth of noble deeds,

Thy homes of peace, thy votes unsold,

The love that pleads for human needs,

The wrong redressed, but half is told!

We read each felon's chronicle,

His acts, his words, his gallows-mood;

We know the single sinner well

And not the nine and ninety good.

Yet if, on daily scandals fed,

We seem at times to doubt thy worth,

We know thee still, when all is said,

The best and dearest spot on earth.

From the warm Mexic Gulf, or where

Belted with flowers Los Angeles

Basks in the semi-tropic air,

To where Katahdin's cedar trees

Are dwarfed and bent by Northern winds,

Thy plenty's horn is yearly filled;

Alone, the rounding century finds

Thy liberal soil by free hands tilled.

A refuge for the wronged and poor,

Thy generous heart has borne the blame

That, with them, through thy open door,

The old world's evil outcasts came.

But, with thy just and equal rule,

And labor's need and breadth of lands,

Free press and rostrum, church and school,

Thy sure, if slow, transforming hands

Shall mould even them to thy design,

Making a blessing of the ban;

And Freedom's chemistry combine

The alien elements of man.

The power that broke their prison bar

And set the dusky millions free,

And welded in the flame of war

The Union fast to Liberty,

Shall it not deal with other ills,

Redress the red man's grievance, break

The Circean cup which shames and kills,

And Labor full requital make?

Alone to such as fitly bear

Thy civic honors bid them fall?

And call thy daughters forth to share

The rights and duties pledged to all?

Give every child his right of school,

Merge private greed in public good,

And spare a treasury overfull

The tax upon a poor man's food?

No lack was in thy primal stock,

No weakling founders builded here;

Thine were the men of Plymouth Rock,

The Huguenot and Cavalier;

And they whose firm endurance gained

The freedom of the souls of men,

Whose hands, unstained with blood, maintained

The swordless commonwealth of Penn.

And thine shall be the power of all

To do the work which duty bids,

And make the people's council hall

As lasting as the Pyramids!

Well have thy later years made good

Thy brave-said word a century back,

The pledge of human brotherhood,

The equal claim of white and black.

That word still echoes round the world,

And all who hear it turn to thee,

And read upon thy flag unfurled

The prophecies of destiny.

Thy great world-lesson all shall learn,

The nations in thy school shall sit,

Earth's farthest mountain-tops shall burn

With watch-fires from thy own uplit.

Great without seeking to be great

By fraud or conquest, rich in gold,

But richer in the large estate

Of virtue which thy children hold,

With peace that comes of purity

And strength to simple justice due,

So runs our loyal dream of thee;

God of our fathers! make it true.

O Land of lands! to thee we give

Our prayers, our hopes, our service free;

For thee thy sons shall nobly live,

And at thy need shall die for thee!

ON THE BIG HORN.

In the disastrous battle on the Big Horn River, in which General Custer and his entire force were slain, the chief Rain-in-the-Face was one of the fiercest leaders of the Indians. In Longfellow's poem on the massacre, these lines will be remembered:—

"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,

"Revenge upon all the race

Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"

And the mountains dark and high

From their crags reechoed the cry

Of his anger and despair.

He is now a man of peace; and the agent at Standing Rock, Dakota, writes, September 28, 1886: "Rain-in-the-Face is very anxious to go to Hampton. I fear he is too old, but he desires very much to go." The Southern Workman, the organ of General Armstrong's Industrial School at Hampton, Va., says in a late number:—

"Rain-in-the-Face has applied before to come to Hampton, but his age would exclude him from the school as an ordinary student. He has shown himself very much in earnest about it, and is anxious, all say, to learn the better ways of life. It is as unusual as it is striking to see a man of his age, and one who has had such an experience, willing to give up the old way, and put himself in the position of a boy and a student."

THE years are but half a score,

And the war-whoop sounds no more

With the blast of bugles, where

Straight into a slaughter pen,

With his doomed three hundred men,

Rode the chief with the yellow hair.

O Hampton, down by the sea!

What voice is beseeching thee

For the scholar's lowliest place?

Can this be the voice of him

Who fought on the Big Horn's rim?

Can this be Rain-in-the-Face?

His war-paint is washed away,

His hands have forgotten to slay;

He seeks for himself and his race

The arts of peace and the lore

That give to the skilled hand more

Than the spoils of war and chase.

O chief of the Christ-like school!

Can the zeal of thy heart grow cool

When the victor scarred with fight

Like a child for thy guidance craves,

And the faces of hunters and braves

Are turning to thee for light?

The hatchet lies overgrown

With grass by the Yellowstone,

Wind River and Paw of Bear;

And, in sign that foes are friends,

Each lodge like a peace-pipe sends

Its smoke in the quiet air.

The hands that have done the wrong

To right the wronged are strong,

And the voice of a nation saith

"Enough of the war of swords,

Enough of the lying words

And shame of a broken faith!"

The hills that have watched afar

The valleys ablaze with war

Shall look on the tasselled corn;

And the dust of the grinded grain,

Instead of the blood of the slain,

Shall sprinkle thy banks, Big Horn!

The Ute and the wandering Crow

Shall know as the white men know,

And fare as the white men fare;

The pale and the red shall be brothers,

One's rights shall be as another's,

Home, School, and House of Prayer!

O mountains that climb to snow,

O river winding below,

Through meadows by war once trod,

O wild, waste lands that await

The harvest exceeding great,

Break forth into praise of God!

1887.

NOTES

Note 1, page 18. The reader may, perhaps, call to mind the beautiful sonnet of William Wordsworth, addressed to Toussaint L'Ouverture, during his confinement in France.

"Toussaint!—thou most unhappy man of men

Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough

Within thy hearing, or thou liest now

Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den;

O miserable chieftain!—where and when

Wilt thou find patience?—Yet, die not, do thou

Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow;

Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,

Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind

Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies,—

There's not a breathing of the common wind

That will forget thee; thou hast great allies.

Thy friends are exultations, agonies,

And love, and man's unconquerable mind."

Note 2, page 67. The Northern author of the Congressional rule against receiving petitions of the people on the subject of Slavery.

Note 3, page 88. There was at the time when this poem was written an Association in Liberty County, Georgia, for the religious instruction of negroes. One of their annual reports contains an address by the Rev. Josiah Spry Law, in which the following passage occurs: "There is a growing interest in this community in the religious instruction of negroes. There is a conviction that religious instruction promotes the quiet and order of the people, and the pecuniary interest of the owners."

Note 4, page 117. The book-establishment of the Free-Will Baptists in Dover was refused the act of incorporation by the New Hampshire Legislature, for the reason that the newspaper organ of that sect and its leading preachers favored abolition.

Note 5, page 118. The senatorial editor of the Belknap Gazette all along manifested a peculiar horror of "niggers" and "nigger parties."

Note 6, page 118. The justice before whom Elder Storrs was brought for preaching abolition on a writ drawn by Hon. M. N., Jr., of Pittsfield. The sheriff served the writ while the elder was praying.

Note 7, page 118. The academy at Canaan, N. H., received one or two colored scholars, and was in consequence dragged off into a swamp by Democratic teams.

Note 8, page 119. "Papers and memorials touching the subject of slavery shall be laid on the table without reading, debate, or reference." So read the gag-law, as it was called, introduced in the House by Mr. Atherton.

Note 9, page 120. The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its first meeting in Concord, was assailed with stones and brickbats.

Note 10, page 168. The election of Charles Sumner to the United States Senate "followed hard upon" the rendition of the fugitive Sims by the United States officials and the armed police of Boston.

Note 11, page 290. For the idea of this line, I am indebted to Emerson, in his inimitable sonnet to the Rhodora,—

"If eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being."

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Table of Contents

THE WORKS OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, Volume III. (of VII)

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS and SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

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

HYMN

THE FAREWELL OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD

INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE.

PENNSYLVANIA HALL.

THE NEW YEAR.

Addressed to the Patrons of the Pennsylvania Freeman.

THE RELIC.

THE WORLD'S CONVENTION OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION,

HELD IN LONDON IN 1840.

MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN

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.

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

THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.

THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS.

PAEAN.

THE CRISIS.

Written on learning the terms of the treaty with Mexico.

LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER.

DERNE.

A SABBATH SCENE.

IN THE EVIL DAYS.

MOLOCH IN STATE STREET.

OFFICIAL PIETY.

THE RENDITION.

ARISEN AT LAST.

THE HASCHISH.

FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE.

Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason against the slave power.

THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS.

LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH,

IN KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN.

BURIAL OF BARBER.

Thomas Barber was shot December 6, 1855, near Lawrence, Kansas.

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, OF MELROSE.

THY WILL BE DONE.

A WORD FOR THE HOUR.

"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT."

LUTHER'S HYMN.

TO JOHN C. FREMONT.

THE WATCHERS.

TO ENGLISHMEN.

MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS.

AT PORT ROYAL.

SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN.

ASTRAEA AT THE CAPITOL.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1862.

THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.

HYMN,

SUNG AT CHRISTMAS BY THE SCHOLARS OF ST. HELENA'S ISLAND, S. C.

THE PROCLAMATION.

ANNIVERSARY POEM.

BARBARA FRIETCHIE.

WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.

THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATHA.

A LEGEND OF "THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE," A. D. 1154-1864.

LAUS DEO!

HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPATION AT NEWBURYPORT.

AFTER THE WAR.

THE PEACE AUTUMN.

Written for the Fssex County Agricultural Festival, 1865.

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 CORN-SONG.

THE REFORMER.

THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS.

THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.

THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.

THE MEN OF OLD.

TO PIUS IX.

CALEF IN BOSTON.

1692.

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.

Read at Woodstock, Conn., July 4,1883.

ON THE BIG HORN.

NOTES

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE