Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

ON THE CAPTURE OF CERTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON.

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who

can,

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

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

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

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

breast

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

rest;

And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the

tame,

'T is but.my Bay-State dialect, our fathers spake the

same!

-

Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on

stone

To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and

gone,

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

slay

The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of

to-day!

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

wind,

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

[ocr errors]

That makes us cringe, and temporize, and dumbly stand

at rest,

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

breast!

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

The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most ac

cursed;

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-behold

ing 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 sout 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 't is 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.

'T is ours to save our brethren, with peace and love to

win

Their darkened hearts from error, ere they harden it to

sin;

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

« ElőzőTovább »