ON THE CAPTURE OF CERTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON.

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who

can,

The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man ;

Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease

Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these!

I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast

Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest;

And if, my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame,

'Tis but my Bay-State dialect, our fathers spake the same!

Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on

stone

To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and

gone,

While we look coldly on, and see law-shielded ruffians slay

The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day!

Are we pledged to craven silence? O fling it to the wind,

The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind,——

That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly

stand at rest,

While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast!

Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first;

The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed;

Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,

Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God !

We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer,

more,

To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core ;

Our country claims our fealty; we grant it So,

then

but

Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made

us men.

He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done,

To the humblest and the weakest, neath the allbeholding sun,

That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base,

Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race.

God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free

With parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or

sea.

Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as

ye will,

From soul to soul o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.

Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart,

With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart:

When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay-State's iron shore,

The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more.

Out from the land of bondage 'tis decreed our slaves shall go,

And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh;
If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore,
Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges
are of gore.

'Tis ours to save our brethren, with peace and love to win

Their darkened hearts from error, ere they harden it to sin;

But if before his duty man with listless spirit stands, Ere long the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands.

TO THE DANDELION.

DEAR common flower, that grow'st beside the way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,

Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,

Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth,-thou art more dear to

me

Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow

Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,

Though most hearts never understand To take it at God's value, but pass by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest me

Are in the heart, and heed not space or time :
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent,

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,-
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,—
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind,-of waters blue

That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap,—and of a sky above,
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth

move.

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with

thee;

The sight of thee calls back the robin's song,
Who, from the dark old tree

Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listened as if I heard an angel sing

With news from heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears,

When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem

More sacredly of every human heart,

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,

And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.