The Project Gutenberg eBook ofAnti-Slavery Poems 2.This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Anti-Slavery Poems 2.Author: John Greenleaf WhittierRelease date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9576]Most recently updated: January 2, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: This eBook was produced by David Widger*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 2. ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Anti-Slavery Poems 2.Author: John Greenleaf WhittierRelease date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9576]Most recently updated: January 2, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: This eBook was produced by David Widger
Title: Anti-Slavery Poems 2.
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9576]Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
Credits: This eBook was produced by David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 2. ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger
TEXASVOICE OF NEW ENGLANDTO FANEUIL HALLTO MASSACHUSETTSNEW HAMPSHIRETHE PINE-TREETO A SOUTHERN STATESMANAT WASHINGTONTHE BRANDED HANDTHE FREED ISLANDSA LETTERLINES FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIENDDANIEL NEALLSONG OF SLAVES IN THE DESERTTo DELAWAREYORKTOWNRANDOLPH OF ROANOKETHE LOST STATESMANTHE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUETHE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERSPAEANTHE CRISISLINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER
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 siresFling 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 placeFor 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 SouthSpeak the word befitting both.
"What though Issachar be strongYe may load his back with wrongOvermuch 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 strainLink by link shall snap in twain.
"Vainly shall your sand-wrought ropeBind 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 roomFor 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 illWhich 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 lineFire beneath your feet the mine!
"Deeply, when the wide abyssYawns 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 soilLike 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.
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 dieShut 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, lookedOn your fathers' way;These your instant zeal demand,Shaking with their earthquake-callEvery rood of Pilgrim land,Ho, to Faneuil Hall!
From your capes and sandy bars,From your mountain-ridges cold,Through whose pines the westering starsStoop their crowns of gold;Come, and with your footsteps wakeEchoes from that holy wall;Once again, for Freedom's sake,Rock your fathers' hall!
Up, and tread beneath your feetEvery cord by party spun:Let your hearts together beatAs 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 speaksRing from thence to Southern plains,Sharply as the blow which breaksPrison-bolts and chains!Speak as well becomes the freeDreaded more than steel or ball,Shall your calmest utterance be,Heard from Faneuil Hall!
Have they wronged us? Let us thenRender 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!
WHAT though around thee blazesNo 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 approvingFrom Mammon's crowded mart?
Still, let the land be shakenBy 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 sequelGod holds the right side up!
But when, with thine uniting,Come voices long and loud,And far-off hills are writingThy fire-words on the cloud;When from Penobscot's fountainsA deep response is heard,And across the Western mountainsRolls 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 FreedomSpeed them onward far and fastOver hill and valley speed them,Like the sibyl's on the blast!
Lo! the Empire State is shakingThe shackles from her hand;With the rugged North is wakingThe level sunset land!On they come, the free battalionsEast and West and North they come,And the heart-beat of the millionsIs the beat of Freedom's drum.
"To the tyrant's plot no favorNo heed to place-fed knaves!Bar and bolt the door foreverAgainst the land of slaves!"Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it,The heavens above us spread!The land is roused,—its spiritWas sleeping, but not dead!1844.
GOD bless New Hampshire! from her granite peaksOnce more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.The long-bound vassal of the exulting SouthFor 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 changesThe 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 partAll is not lost. The angel of God's blessingEncamps with Freedom on the field of fight;Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing,Unlooked-for allies, striking for the rightCourage, then, Northern hearts! Be firm, be true:What one brave State hath done, can ye not also do?1845.
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'srusted shield,Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner'stattered field.Sons of men who sat in council with their Biblesround the board,Answering England's royal missive with a firm,"Thus saith the Lord!"Rise again for home and freedom! set the battlein array!What the fathers did of old time we their sonsmust 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 inBoston townSmote the Province House with terror, struck thecrest of Andros down!For another strong-voiced Adams in the city'sstreets to cry,"Up for God and Massachusetts! Set your feeton Mammon's lie!Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton'slatest pound,But in Heaven's name keep your honor, keep theheart o' the Bay State sound!"Where's the man for Massachusetts! Where'sthe voice to speak her free?Where's the hand to light up bonfires from hermountains to the sea?Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she dumbin her despair?Has she none to break the silence? Has she noneto do and dare?O my God! for one right worthy to lift up herrusted shield,And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner'stattered field1840.
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 fearWail 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 skillCalled 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 drownedSo, Carolinian, it may prove with thee,For God still overrules man's schemes, and takesCraftiness in its self-set snare, and makesThe wrath of man to praise Him. It may be,That the roused spirits of DemocracyMay leave to freer States the same wide doorThrough 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 combineAnd 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-lightOn its roofs and steeples shed,Shadows weaving with the sunlightFrom the gray sky overhead,Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-builttown 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 quickcurrent glide.
Underneath yon dome, whose copingSprings above them, vast and tall,Grave men in the dust are gropingFor the largess, base and small,Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbswhich from its table fall.
Base of heart! They vilely barterHonor's wealth for party's place;Step by step on Freedom's charterLeaving footprints of disgrace;For to-day's poor pittance turning from the greathope of their race.
Yet, where festal lamps are throwingGlory round the dancer's hair,Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowingBackward on the sunset air;And the low quick pulse of music beats its measuresweet and rare.
There to-night shall woman's glances,Star-like, welcome give to them;Fawning fools with shy advancesSeek to touch their garments' hem,With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds whichGod and Truth condemn.
From this glittering lie my visionTakes a broader, sadder range,Full before me have arisenOther pictures dark and strange;From the parlor to the prison must the scene andwitness change.
Hark! the heavy gate is swingingOn its hinges, harsh and slow;One pale prison lamp is flingingOn a fearful group belowSuch a light as leaves to terror whatsoe'er it doesnot show.
Pitying God! Is that a womanOn whose wrist the shackles clash?Is that shriek she utters human,Underneath the stinging lash?Are they men whose eyes of madness from that sadprocession flash?
Still the dance goes gayly onwardWhat is it to Wealth and PrideThat without the stars are lookingOn a scene which earth should hide?That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rockingon Potomac's tide!
Vainly to that mean AmbitionWhich, upon a rival's fall,Winds above its old condition,With a reptile's slimy crawl,Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slavein anguish call.
Vainly to the child of Fashion,Giving to ideal woeGraceful luxury of compassion,Shall the stricken mourner go;Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful thehollow 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 beartheir generous part.
And from yonder sunny valleys,Southward in the distance lost,Freedom yet shall summon alliesWorthier than the North can boast,With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling atseverer cost.
Now, the soul alone is willingFaint the heart and weak the knee;And as yet no lip is thrillingWith the mighty words, "Be Free!"Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel, but hisadvent is to be!
Meanwhile, turning from the revelTo 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 theSlaves, to-night!
"To thy duty now and ever!Dream no more of rest or stayGive to Freedom's great endeavorAll thou art and hast to-day:"Thus, above the city's murmur, saith a Voice, orseems to say.
Ye with heart and vision giftedTo discern and love the right,
Whose worn faces have been liftedTo the slowly-growing light,Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted slowlyback 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 sistersWould to God that ye were near,Gazing with me down the vistasOf a sorrow strange and drear;Would to God that ye were listeners to the VoiceI seem to hear!
With the storm above us driving,With the false earth mined below,Who shall marvel if thus strivingWe have counted friend as foe;Unto one another giving in the darkness blow forblow.
Well it may be that our naturesHave grown sterner and more hard,And the freshness of their featuresSomewhat harsh and battle-scarred,And their harmonies of feeling overtasked andrudely jarred.
Be it so. It should not swerve usFrom a purpose true and brave;Dearer Freedom's rugged serviceThan the pastime of the slave;Better is the storm above it than the quiet ofthe grave.
Let us then, uniting, buryAll our idle feuds in dust,And to future conflicts carryMutual faith and common trust;Always he who most forgiveth in his brother ismost just.
From the eternal shadow roundingAll our sun and starlight here,Voices of our lost ones soundingBid us be of heart and cheer,Through the silence, down the spaces, falling onthe inward ear.
Know we not our dead are lookingDownward with a sad surprise,All our strife of words rebukingWith their mild and loving eyes?Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloudtheir blessed skies?
Let us draw their mantles o'er usWhich 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 isnot day!
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 brutalcravens aimTo make God's truth thy falsehood, His holiestwork thy shame?When, all blood-quenched, from the torture theiron was withdrawn,How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools toscorn!
They change to wrong the duty which God hathwritten outOn the great heart of humanity, too legible fordoubt!They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched fromfootsole up to crown,Give to shame what God hath given unto honorand renown!
Why, that brand is highest honor! than its tracesnever yetUpon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazonset;And thy unborn generations, as they tread ourrocky strand,Shall tell with pride the story of their father'sbranded hand!
As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back-from Syrian warsThe 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 ofGod and man.
He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave,Thou for His living presence in the bound andbleeding 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-whipo'er him swung,From the tortured truths of freedom the lie ofslavery wrung,And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine,Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured thebondman's blood for wine;
While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviourknelt,And spurned, the while, the temple where a presentSaviour dwelt;Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prisonshadows dim,And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!
In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above andwave below,Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babblingschoolmen know;God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angelsonly can,That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope ofheaven is Man!
That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of lawand creed,In the depth of God's great goodness may findmercy in his need;But woe to him who crushes the soul with chainand rod,And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!
Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughmanof the wave!Its branded palm shall prophesy, "Salvation tothe Slave!"Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whosoreads may feelHis heart swell strong within him, his sinewschange to steel.
Hold it up before our sunshine, up against ourNorthern air;Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God,look there!Take it henceforth for your standard, like theBruce's heart of yore,In the dark strife closing round ye, let that handbe seen before!
And the masters of the slave-land shall tremble atthat sign,When it points its finger Southward along thePuritan lineCan the craft of State avail them? Can a Christlesschurch withstand,In the van of Freedom's onset, the coming of thatband?1846.
THE FREED ISLANDS. Written for the anniversary celebration of the first of August, at Milton, 7846.
A FEW brief years have passed awaySince Britain drove her million slavesBeneath the tropic's fiery rayGod willed their freedom; and to-dayLife 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 libertyWhich thrilled along the bondman's veins.
Though long delayed, and far, and slow,The Briton's triumph shall be oursWears slavery here a prouder browThan that which twelve short years agoScowled darkly from her island bowers?
Mighty alike for good or illWith mother-land, we fully shareThe 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 blewO'er her green islands, echoes throughEach valley of our forest land.
Hear it, old Europe! we have swornThe 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 showWhat deeds in Freedom's name we do;Yet know that every taunt ye throwAcross the waters, goads our slowProgression 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 doorSwing wide shall be their triumph time.
On then, my brothers! every blowYe deal is felt the wide earth through;Whatever here uplifts the lowOr 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 fearTo new-world tyrants, old-world kings!"
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 lostI hear the bells a-ringing;Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea hostI 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 moreWe've felt a sad foreboding;Our very dreams the burden boreOf central cliques exploding;Before our eyes a furnace shone,Where heads of dough were roasting,And one we took to be your ownThe traitor Hale was toasting!
Our Belknap brother [5] heard with aweThe Congo minstrels playing;At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt [6] sawThe 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, fledFrom the metamorphosed figure."Look there!" they said, "the Old Stone HeadHimself is turning nigger!"
The schoolhouse, out of Canaan hauledSeemed turning on its track again,And like a great swamp-turtle crawledTo Canaan village back again,Shook off the mud and settled flatUpon its underpinning;A nigger on its ridge-pole sat,From ear to ear a-grinning.
Gray H——d heard o' nights the soundOf rail-cars onward faring;Right over Democratic groundThe 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 "unreadAnd 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 availYour terrors of forewarning?We wake to find the nightmare HaleAstride our breasts at morning!From Portsmouth lights to Indian streamOur foes their throats are trying;The very factory-spindles seemTo mock us while they're flying.
The hills have bonfires; in our streetsFlags flout us in our faces;The newsboys, peddling off their sheets,Are hoarse with our disgraces.In vain we turn, for gibing witAnd shoutings follow after,As if old Kearsarge had splitHis granite sides with laughter.
What boots it that we pelted outThe anti-slavery women, [9]And bravely strewed their hall aboutWith tattered lace and trimming?Was it for such a sad reverseOur mobs became peacemakers,And kept their tar and wooden horseFor Englishmen and Quakers?
For this did shifty AthertonMake gag rules for the Great House?Wiped we for this our feet uponPetitions 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 scanThese crooked providences,Deducing from the wisest planThe saddest consequences!Strange that, in trampling as was meetThe nigger-men's petition,We sprang a mine beneath our feetWhich opened up perdition.
How goodly, Moses, was the gameIn which we've long been actors,Supplying freedom with the nameAnd slavery with the practiceOur 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 politicsThe world at large is learning;And men grown gray in all our tricksState's evidence are turning.Votes and preambles subtly spunThey cram with meanings louder,And load the Democratic gunWith abolition powder.
The ides of June! Woe worth the dayWhen, turning all things over,The traitor Hale shall make his hayFrom 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 forThe envied place of overseerOf 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 whileTo try the rice plantations.Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,To see us southward scamper;The slaves, we know, are "better offThan laborers in New Hampshire!"
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 hearOnce 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 dareThy truth in all its power to tell,Unmask the priestly thieves, and tearThe Bible from the grasp of hell!
From hollow rite and narrow spanOf law and sect by Thee released,Oh, teach him that the Christian manIs holier than the Jewish priest.
Chase back the shadows, gray and old,Of the dead ages, from his way,And let his hopeful eyes beholdThe dawn of Thy millennial day;
That day when fettered limb and mindShall know the truth which maketh free,And he alone who loves his kindShall, 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 whenThe need of battling Freedom called for menTo plant the banner on the outer wall;Gentle and kindly, ever at distressMelted to more than woman's tenderness,Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's postFronting the violence of a maddened host,Like some gray rock from which the waves aretossed!Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned notThe faith of one whose walk and word wereright;Who tranquilly in Life's great task-field wrought,And, side by side with evil, scarcely caughtA stain upon his pilgrim garb of whitePrompt to redress another's wrong, his ownLeaving 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 manHe blew no trumpet in the market-place,Nor in the church with hypocritic faceSupplied with cant the lack of Christian grace;Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful willWhat 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 understoodIn 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.
"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 greenBornou land we see no longer,Here we thirst and here we hunger,Here the Moor-man smites in angerWhere 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 twoWhitened bones our path are showing,Thou All-seeing, thou All-knowingHear us, tell us, where are we going,Where are we going, Rubee?
Moons of marches from our eyesBornou land behind us lies;Stranger round us day by dayBends 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 knowingThrough the strange world round us growing,Hear us, tell us where are we going,Where are we going, Rubee?1847.
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 bayShall 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 wearTheir snow-crowns brighter in the cold, keen air;And Massachusetts, with her rugged cheeksO'errun with grateful tears, shall turn to thee,When, at thy bidding, the electric wireShall tremble northward with its words of fire;Glory and praise to God! another State is free!1847.
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 hillWho curbs his steed at head of one?Hark! the low murmur: Washington!Who bends his keen, approving glance,Where down the gorgeous line of FranceShine knightly star and plume of snow?Thou too art victor, Rochambeau!The earth which bears this calm arrayShook with the war-charge yesterday,
Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel,Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel;October's clear and noonday sunPaled 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 linesStand moveless as the neighboring pines;While through them, sullen, grim, and slow,The conquered hosts of England goO'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 voiceLet all thy sister States rejoice;Let Freedom, in whatever climeShe waits with sleepless eye her time,Shouting from cave and mountain woodMake 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, waitWithin 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 graveSons of the Northland, ye who setStout hearts against the bayonet,And pressed with steady footfall nearThe 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 whereThe 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 dayThe 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 allBehold 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 ranksLaugh, Russia, from thy Neva's banks!Brave sport to see the fledgling bornOf Freedom by its parent torn!Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell,Safe drear Siberia's frozen hellWith Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled,What of the New World fears the Old?1847.
O MOTHER EARTH! upon thy lapThy weary ones receiving,And o'er them, silent as a dream,Thy grassy mantle weaving,Fold softly in thy long embraceThat heart so worn and broken,And cool its pulse of fire beneathThy shadows old and oaken.
Shut out from him the bitter wordAnd serpent hiss of scorning;Nor let the storms of yesterdayDisturb his quiet morning.Breathe over him forgetfulnessOf all save deeds of kindness,And, save to smiles of grateful eyes,Press down his lids in blindness.
There, where with living ear and eyeHe 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 sunSink down on wave and meadow.
Bard, Sage, and Tribune! in himselfAll moods of mind contrasting,—The tenderest wail of human woe,The scorn like lightning blasting;The pathos which from rival eyesUnwilling tears could summon,The stinging taunt, the fiery burstOf hatred scarcely human!
Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower,From lips of life-long sadness;Clear picturings of majestic thoughtUpon a ground of madness;And over all Romance and SongA classic beauty throwing,And laurelled Clio at his sideHer storied pages showing.
All parties feared him: each in turnBeheld its schemes disjointed,As right or left his fatal glanceAnd spectral finger pointed.Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it downWith trenchant wit unsparing,And, mocking, rent with ruthless handThe robe Pretence was wearing.
Too honest or too proud to feignA love he never cherished,Beyond Virginia's border lineHis patriotism perished.While others hailed in distant skiesOur eagle's dusky pinion,He only saw the mountain birdStoop o'er his Old Dominion!
Still through each change of fortune strange,Racked nerve, and brain all burning,His loving faith in Mother-landKnew 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 withalNo false and vain pretences,Nor paid a lying priest to seekFor Scriptural defences.His harshest words of proud rebuke,His bitterest taunt and scorning,Fell fire-like on the Northern browThat bent to him in fawning.
He held his slaves; yet kept the whileHis reverence for the Human;In the dark vassals of his willHe saw but Man and Woman!No hunter of God's outraged poorHis Roanoke valley entered;No trader in the souls of menAcross his threshold ventured.
And when the old and wearied manLay 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 handThe dying blest the living.
Oh, never bore his ancient StateA truer son or braverNone trampling with a calmer scornOn foreign hate or favor.He knew her faults, yet never stoopedHis proud and manly feelingTo poor excuses of the wrongOr meanness of concealing.
But none beheld with clearer eyeThe plague-spot o'er her spreading,None heard more sure the steps of DoomAlong 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 hidesThe Sage of Monticello,So from the leaf-strewn burial-stoneOf Randolph's lowly dwelling,Virginia! o'er thy land of slavesA warning voice is swelling!
And hark! from thy deserted fieldsAre sadder warnings spoken,From quenched hearths, where thy exiled sonsTheir household gods have broken.The curse is on thee,—wolves for men,And briers for corn-sheaves givingOh, more than all thy dead renownWere now one hero living1847.
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 lightQuenched in the darkness. At thy hour of noon,While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight,And, day by day, within thy spirit grewA 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 soonPortents 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 voiceHath called thee from thy task-field shall not lackYet bolder champions, to beat bravely backThe 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.
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 ancientJewish songScarcely has the toil of task-fields done her gracefulbeauty wrong.
He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal'sgarb and hue,Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his highernature true;
Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a freemanin his heart,As the gregree holds his Fetich from the whiteman's gaze apart.
Ever foremost of his comrades, when the driver'smorning hornCalls away to stifling mill-house, to the fields ofcane and corn.
Fall the keen and burning lashes never on his backor limb;Scarce with look or word of censure, turns thedriver unto him.
Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his eye ishard and stern;Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has neverdeigned 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 rebelsagainst a lotWhere the brute survives the human, and man'supright form is not!
As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral foldon foldRound the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers inhis hold;
Slow decays the forest monarch, closer girds thefell embrace,Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is inits place;
So a base and bestial nature round the vassal'smanhood twines,And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceibachoked with vines.
God is Love, saith the Evangel; and our world ofwoe and sinIs made light and happy only when a Love isshining in.
Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, finding, where-soe'er ye roam,Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, making allthe world like home;
In the veins of whose affections kindred blood isbut a part.,Of one kindly current throbbing from the universalheart;
Can ye know the deeper meaning of a love in Slaverynursed,Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in that Soilaccursed?
Love of Home, and Love of Woman!—dear to all,but doubly dearTo the heart whose pulses elsewhere measure onlyhate and fear.
All around the desert circles, underneath a brazensky,Only one green spot remaining where the dew isnever dry!
From the horror of that desert, from its atmosphereof hell,Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the diver seekshis bell.
'T is the fervid tropic noontime; faint and low thesea-waves beat;Hazy rise the inland mountains through the glimmerof 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 seenhis swarthy crew,Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and colortrue.
"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 joyand glad surprise,For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instantbeam her eyes!
But she looks across the valley, where her mother'shut is seen,Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and the lemon-leaves so green.
And she answers, sad and earnest: "It were wrongfor thee to stay;God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and hisfinger points the way.
"Well I know with what endurance, for the sakeof me and mine,Thou hast borne too long a burden never meantfor souls like thine.
"Go; and at the hour of midnight, when our lastfarewell is o'er,Kneeling on our place of parting, I will bless theefrom the shore.
"But for me, my mother, lying on her sick-bedall the day,Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming throughthe twilight gray.
"Should I leave her sick and helpless, even freedom,shared with thee,Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, andstripes to me.
"For my heart would die within me, and my brainwould soon be wild;I should hear my mother calling through the twilightfor her child!"
Blazing upward from the ocean, shines the sun ofmorning-time,Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and greenhedges of the lime.
Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the loverand the maid;Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, leaning forwardon his spade?
Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is the Haytien'ssail he sees,Like a white cloud of the mountains, driven seawardby the breeze.
But his arm a light hand presses, and he hears alow voice callHate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightierthan all.1848.