With Slavery's lash upon her back,
And herds of office-holders
To shout applause, as, with a crack,
It peels her patient shoulders.
"We forefathers to such a rout!
No, by my faith in God's Word!" Half rose the ghost, and half drew
The ghost of his old broadsword, Then thrust it slowly back again, And said, with reverent gesture, "No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain
The hem of thy white vesture.
"I feel the soul in me draw near
The mount of prophesying:
In this bleak wilderness I hear
A John the Baptist crying;
Far in the east I see upleap
The streaks of first forewarning, And they who sowed the light shall reap
The golden sheaves of morning.
"Child of our travail and our woe, Light in our day of sorrow, Through my rapt spirit I foreknow The glory of thy morrow;
I hear great steps, that through the shade
Draw nigher still and nigher, And voices call like that which bade
The prophet come up higher."
I looked, no form mine eyes could find
I heard the red cock crowing, And through my window-chinks the wind
A dismal tune was blowing; Thought I: My neighbour Buckingham
Hath somewhat in him gritty, Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham,
And he will print my ditty.
ON THE CAPTURE OF FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASH INGTON.
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
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?
Oh, fling it to the wind, The parchment wall that bars us
from the least of human kind, That makes us cringe and tempo
rise, and dumbly stand at rest, While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast!
Though we break our father's pro
mise, 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, but then
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 all-beholding 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, Erelong the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands.
DEAR Common flower, thatgrow'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
Spirits sadder and more dread
Than from out the clay have fled,
Buried, beyond hope of light,
In the body's haunted night!
See ye not that woman pale?
There are bloodhounds on her trail!
Bloodhounds two, all gaunt and lean
(For the soul their scent is keen),
Want and Sin, and Sin is last,
They have followed far and fast;
Want gave tongue, and, at her howl,
Sin awakened with a growl.
Ah, poor girl! she had a right
To a blessing from the light;
Title-deeds to sky and earth
God gave to her at her birth;
But, before they were enjoyed,
Poverty had made them void,
And had drunk the sunshine up
From all Nature's ample cup,
Leaving her a first-born's share
In the dregs of darkness there.
Often, on the sidewalk bleak,
Hungry, all alone, and weak,
She has seen, in night and storm,
Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm,
Which, outside the window-glass,
Doubled all the cold, alas!
Till each ray that on her fell
Stabbed her like an icicle,
And she almost loved the wail
Of the bloodhounds on her trail.
Till the floor becomes her bier,
She shall feel their pantings near,
Close upon her very heels,
Spite of all the din of wheels;
Shivering on her pallet poor,
She shall hear them at the door
Whine and scratch to be let in,
Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin!
Hark! that rustle of a dress,
Stiff with lavish costliness!
Here comes one whose cheek would
flush
But to have her garment brush
'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin
Wove the weary broidery in,
Bending backward from her toil,
Lest her tears the silk might soil,
And, in midnights chill and murk,
Stitched her life into the work,
Shaping from her bitter thought
Heart's-ease and forget-me-not,
Satirising her despair
With the emblems woven there.
Little doth the wearer heed
Of the heart-break in the brede;
A hyena by her side
Skulks, down-looking,—it is Pride.
He digs for her in the earth,
Where lie all her claims of birth,
With his foul paws rooting o'er
Some long-buried ancestor,
Who, perhaps, a statue won
By the ill deeds he had done,
By the innocent blood he shed,
By the desolation spread
Over happy villages,
Blotting out the smile of peace.
There walks Judas, he who sold
Yesterday his Lord for gold,
Sold God's presence in his heart
For a proud step in the mart;
He hath dealt in flesh and blood;
At the bank his name is good;
At the bank, and only there,
"Tis a marketable ware.
In his eyes that stealthy gleam
Was not learned of sky or stream,
But it has the cold, hard glint
Of new dollars from the mint.
Open now your spirit's eyes,
Look through that poor clay dis-
guise,
Which has thickened, day by day,
Till it keeps all light at bay,
And his soul in pitchy gloom
Gropes about its narrow tomb,
From whose dank and slimy walls
Drop by drop the horror falls.
Look! a serpent lank and cold
Hugs his spirit fold on fold;
From his heart, all day and night,
It doth suck God's blessed light.
Drink it will, and drink it must,
Till the cup holds naught but dust;
All day long he hears it hiss,
Writhing in its fiendish bliss;
All night long he sees its eyes
Flicker with foul ecstasies,
As the spirit ebbs away
Into the absorbing clay.
Who is he that skulks, afraid
Of the trust he has betrayed,
Shuddering if perchance a gleam
Of old nobleness should stream
Through the pent, unwholesome
Where his shrunk soul cowers in gloom,
Spirit sad beyond the rest
By more instinct for the best?
'Tis a poet who was sent
For a bad world's punishment,
By compelling it to see
Golden glimpses of To Be,
By compelling it to hear
Songs that prove the angels near ;
Who was sent to be the tongue
Of the weak and spirit-wrung,
Whence the fiery-winged Despair
In men's shrinking eyes might flare.
'Tis our hope doth fashion us
To base use or glorious:
He who might have been a lark
Of Truth's morning, from the dark
Raining down melodious hope
Of a freer, broader scope,
Aspirations, prophecies,
Of the spirit's full sunrise,
Chose to be a bird of night,
That, with eyes refusing light,
Hooted from some hollow tree
Of the world's idolatry.
'Tis his punishment to hear
Flutterings of pinions near,
And his own vain wings to feel
Drooping downward to his heel,
All their grace and import lost,
Burdening his weary ghost:
Ever walking by his side
He must see his angel guide,
Who at intervals doth turn
Looks on him so sadly stern,
With such ever-new surprise
Of hushed anguish in her eyes,
That it seems the light of day
From around him shrinks away,
Or drops blunted from the wall
Built around him by his fall.
Then the mountains, whose white
peaks
Catch the morning's earliest
He must see, where prophets sit,
Turning east their faces lit,
Whence, with footsteps beautiful,
To the earth, yet dim and dull,
They the gladsome tidings bring
Of the sunlight's hastening:
Never can these hills of bliss
Be o'erclimbed by feet like his!
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