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?
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 trueAre all Thy works and words and ways,And unto Thee alone are dueThanksgiving 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 HostsAnd when the bondman's chain is riven,And swells from all our guilty coastsThe 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.
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 strewsPoison with the falling dews,Where the sickly sunbeams glareThrough 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 lashSeams 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 layOn 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 moreGone, 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 aloneAll 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.
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 sawA 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 GodFar 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 hillSaw 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 gaveTheir 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 flungThe deep, clear cadence of the Roman tongue,Whence stern decrees, like words of fate, went forthTo 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 woeWet the cold marble with unheeded flow;And fetters clanked beneath the silver domeOf 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 oldFrom Roman hall or Grecian temple rolled;Thoughts shall find utterance such as never yetThe Propylea or the Forum met.Beneath its roof no gladiator's strifeShall 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 wrongShall 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 standWhere Pennsylvania's Founder led his band,From thy blue waters, Delaware!—to pressThe virgin verdure of the wilderness.Here, where all Europe with amazement sawThe soul's high freedom trammelled by no law;Here, where the fierce and warlike forest-menGathered, in peace, around the home of Penn,Awed by the weapons Love alone had givenDrawn from the holy armory of Heaven;Where Nature's voice against the bondman's wrongFirst 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 firstFrom 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 homeIf the dead fathers of the land look forthFrom 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 woodFreedom from man, and holy peace with God;Who first of all their testimonial gaveAgainst 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 doorIs 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 GainUnite 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 SabineWhen unto angel lips at last is givenThe 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 standThe best and noblest of a ransomed land—Pilgrims, like these who throng around the shrineOf Mecca, or of holy Palestine!A prouder glory shall that ruin ownThan that which lingers round the Parthenon.Here shall the child of after years be taughtThe 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 faithTrue 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 recordIts consecration unto Freedom's God!
THE wave is breaking on the shore,The echo fading from the chimeAgain the shadow moveth o'erThe dial-plate of time!O seer-seen Angel! waiting nowWith weary feet on sea and shore,Impatient for the last dread vowThat time shall be no more!Once more across thy sleepless eyeThe semblance of a smile has passed:The year departing leaves more nighTime's fearfullest and last.Oh, in that dying year hath beenThe 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 aboveAnd of her earth below;And man, in whom an angel's mindWith earth's low instincts finds abode,The highest of the links which bindBrute nature to her God;His infant eye bath seen the light,His childhood's merriest laughter rung,And active sports to manlier mightThe nerves of boyhood strung!And quiet love, and passion's fires,Have soothed or burned in manhood's breast,And lofty aims and low desiresBy turns disturbed his rest.The wailing of the newly-bornHas mingled with the funeral knell;And o'er the dying's ear has goneThe 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 seesA stain on every fold.Oh, tear the gorgeous emblem down!It gathers scorn from every eye,And despots smile and good men frownWhene'er it passes by.Shame! shame! its starry splendors glowAbove the slaver's loathsome jail;Its folds are ruffling even nowHis crimson flag of sale.Still round our country's proudest hallThe trade in human flesh is driven,And at each careless hammer-fallA human heart is riven.And this, too, sanctioned by the menVested with power to shield the right,And throw each vile and robber denWide open to the light.Yet, shame upon them! there they sit,Men of the North, subdued and still;Meek, pliant poltroons, only fitTo work a master's will.Sold, bargained off for Southern votes,A passive herd of Northern mules,Just braying through their purchased throatsWhate'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 doorAgainst the people clamoring there,An ass, to trample on their floorA people's right of prayer!Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast,Self-pilloried to the public view,A mark for every passing blastOf scorn to whistle through;There let him hang, and hear the boastOf 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 rightTorn from him: and the sons of thoseWhose blood in Freedom's sternest fightSprinkled the Jersey snows,Outlawed within the land of Penn,That Slavery's guilty fears might cease,And those whom God created menToil on as brutes in peace.Yet o'er the blackness of the stormA 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 rightEach 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 palisadesTo Alleghany's laurelled crest,O'er lakes and prairies, streams and glades,It shines upon the West.Speed on the light to those who dwellIn 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 quakeBefore that light poured full and strong,So shall the Southern heart awakeTo all the bondman's wrong.And from that rich and sunny landThe song of grateful millions rise,Like that of Israel's ransomed bandBeneath Arabia's skies:And all who now are bound beneathOur banner's shade, our eagle's wing,From Slavery's night of moral deathTo light and life shall spring.Broken the bondman's chain, and goneThe master's guilt, and hate, and fear,And unto both alike shall dawnA New and Happy Year.1839.
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 youthWith 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 tellsOf generous hand and heart sincere;Around that gift of friendship dwellsA 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 oldIn beauty blossoming:And buds of feeling, pure and good,Spring from its cold unconscious wood.Relic of Freedom's shrine! a brandPlucked from its burning! let it beDear as a jewel from the handOf 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 stoneWhich crumbled from the Forum's stairs,Or round the Parthenon;Or olive-bough from some wild treeHung over old Thermopylae:If leaflets from some hero's tomb,Or moss-wreath torn from ruins hoary;Or faded flowers whose sisters bloomOn fields renowned in story;Or fragment from the Alhambra's crest,Or the gray rock by Druids blessed;Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growingWhere Freedom led her stalwart kern,Or Scotia's "rough bur thistle" blowingOn Bruce's Bannockburn;Or Runnymede's wild English rose,Or lichen plucked from Sempach's snows!If it be true that things like theseTo heart and eye bright visions bring,Shall not far holier memoriesTo this memorial clingWhich needs no mellowing mist of timeTo 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 pleadingFor human hearts in bondage bleeding;Where, midst the sound of rushing feetAnd curses on the night-air flung,That pleading voice rose calm and sweetFrom 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 skiesIts 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 coldIts timbers are replying!A voice which slavery cannot killSpeaks from the crumbling arches still!And even this relic from thy shrine,O holy Freedom! Hath to meA potent power, a voice and signTo testify of thee;And, grasping it, methinks I feelA 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.
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 forthThe pledged philanthropy of Earth.From every land, whose hills have heardThe bugle blast of Freedom waking;Or shrieking of her symbol-birdFrom out his cloudy eyrie breakingWhere Justice hath one worshipper,Or truth one altar built to her;Where'er a human eye is weepingO'er wrongs which Earth's sad children know;Where'er a single heart is keepingIts prayerful watch with human woeThence let them come, and greet each other,And know in each a friend and brother!Yes, let them come! from each green valeWhere England's old baronial hallsStill bear upon their storied wallsThe grim crusader's rusted mail,Battered by Paynim spear and brandOn Malta's rock or Syria's sand!And mouldering pennon-staves once setWithin 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 givenThan that gray hermit's voice of old,Which unto all the winds of heavenThe banners of the Cross unrolled!Not for the long-deserted shrine;Not for the dull unconscious sod,Which tells not by one lingering signThat there the hope of Israel trod;But for that truth, for which aloneIn pilgrim eyes are sanctifiedThe garden moss, the mountain stone,Whereon His holy sandals pressed,—The fountain which His lip hath blessed,—Whate'er hath touched His garment's hemAt Bethany or Bethlehem,Or Jordan's river-side.For Freedom in the name of HimWho 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 passedAn ever-deepening trumpet blast,As if an angel's breath had lentIts 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 gladnessAnd 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 airOnce more her Cameronian's prayerAnd song of Freedom float.And cheering echoes shall replyFrom 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 palmAnd rosy fields and gales of balm,Where Eastern pomp and power are rolledThrough regal Ava's gates of gold;And from the lakes and ancient woodsAnd dim Canadian solitudes,Whence, sternly from her rocky throne,Queen of the North, Quebec looks down;And from those bright and ransomed IslesWhere all unwonted Freedom smiles,And the dark laborer still retainsThe scar of slavery's broken chains!From the hoar Alps, which sentinelThe gateways of the land of Tell,Where morning's keen and earliest glanceOn Jura's rocky wall is thrown,And from the olive bowers of FranceAnd vine groves garlanding the Rhone,—"Friends of the Blacks," as true and triedAs 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 songBreathed over Syria's holy sod,And, in the paths which Jesus trod,And murmured midst the hills which hemCrownless and sad Jerusalem,Hath echoes whereso'er the toneOf 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 sideProclaimed the deathless rights of man,Broke every bond and fetter off,And hailed in every sable serfA free and brother Mexican!Chiefs who across the Andes' chainHave followed Freedom's flowing pennon,And seen on Junin's fearful plain,Glare o'er the broken ranks of SpainThe fire-burst of Bolivar's cannon!And Hayti, from her mountain land,Shall send the sons of those who hurledDefiance 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 shameAll tyrants of a Christian name,When in the shade of Gizeh's pile,Or, where, from Abyssinian hillsEl Gerek's upper fountain fills,Or where from Mountains of the MoonEl Abiad bears his watery boon,Where'er thy lotus blossoms swimWithin 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 decreeForevermore shall pass from thee;And chains forsake each captive's limbOf all those tribes, whose hills aroundHave echoed back the cymbal soundAnd victor horn of Ibrahim.And thou whose glory and whose crimeTo 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 fenWould 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 stirredTo 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 claimUnweakened by thy, crime and shame;The sad reprovers of thy wrong;The children thou hast spurned so long.Still with affection's fondest yearningTo their unnatural mother turning.No traitors they! but tried and leal,Whose own is but thy general weal,Still blending with the patriot's zealThe Christian's love for human kind,To caste and climate unconfined.A holy gathering! peaceful allNo threat of war, no savage callFor vengeance on an erring brother!But in their stead the godlike planTo teach the brotherhood of manTo love and reverence one another,As sharers of a common blood,The children of a common GodYet, even at its lightest word,Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred:Spain, watching from her Moro's keepHer 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 fearIts 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 wallsThe driver plies his reeking thong;The hammer of the man-thief falls,O'er hypocritic cheek and browThe crimson flush of shame shall glowAnd all who for their native landAre pledging life and heart and hand,Worn watchers o'er her changing weal,Who fog her tarnished honor feel,Through cottage door and council-hallShall thunder an awakening call.The pen along its page shall burnWith all intolerable scorn;An eloquent rebuke shall goOn 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 hurledAgainst a sin-accursed world!Its wizard leaves the Press shall flingUnceasing from its iron wing,With characters inscribed thereon,As fearful in the despot's ballAs to the pomp of BabylonThe fire-sign on the palace wall!And, from her dark iniquities,Methinks I see my country riseNot challenging the nations roundTo note her tardy justice done;Her captives from their chains unbound;Her prisons opening to the sunBut tearfully her arms extendingOver the poor and unoffending;Her regal emblem now no longerA 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 strongerOh, then to Faith's anointed eyesThe 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.
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, stoutare the hearts which manThe 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 dayWhen o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachusetts menEncountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then?Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the callOf her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from Faneuil Hall?When, echoing back her Henry's cry, came pulsing on each breathOf Northern winds, the thrilling sounds of "Liberty or Death!"What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have provedFalse 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 airWith woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair;Cling closer to the "cleaving curse" that writes upon your plainsThe 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, whenThe 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 stillIn all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his preyBeneath 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 boundTo where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close her round;From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm reposeOf 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 BayAlong 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 withinThe 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 givenFor 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.