Ah! need I tell of places

You dream and dwell on still?
Those old familiar faces

Of English vale and hill, -
The sites you think of, sobbing,
And seek as pilgrims seek,
With brows and bosoms throbbing,
And tears upon your cheek.

Or should I touch on glories
That date in ages gone,
Those dear historic stories,

When England's name was won, ·
The tales your children thronging
So gladly hear you tell,
And note their father's longing,
And love that longing well.

For language, follies, fashions,
Religion, honor, shame,
And human loves, and passions,
Oh! we are just the same;
You, you are England growing
To Continental state,
And we Columbia, glowing

With all that makes you great.

I plead across the waters,
So deeply crimson-stained,
For Afric's sons and daughters
Whom freemen hold enchained!

I taunt you not unkindly

With ills you didn't make,
I would not wish you blindly
In haste the bond to break;
But tenderly and truly

To file away the chain,
And render justice duly

To Man's Estate again!

O judge ye how degrading-
A Christian bought and sold.
And human monsters trading
In human flesh for gold!
When ruthlessly they plunder
Poor Afric's homes defiled,
And all to sell-asunder!
The mother, and her child.

O free and fearless nation,
Wipe out this damning spot,
Earth's worst abomination,

And nature's blackest blot
Begin and speed thee rather
To help with hand and eye
The children of your Father
Beneath his tropic sky.

He He who formed and frees us,

And makes us white within,
Who knows how Holy Jesus
'May love that tinted skin!
For none can tell how darkly
The sun of Jewry shed
Its burning shadows starkly
On Jesus' homeless head!

CONCLUSION.

ALAS! poor Muse, thy songs are out of time,
Thy lot hath fallen on an iron age,
When unrelenting war the sordid wage
Against thee, counting it no venial crime

To fling down in thy cause the champion's gage, And utterly scorning him, who dares to rhyme:

O that thy thoughts had filled an earlier page,
And won the favoring ears of holier men!
Whose spirits might with thee have soared sublime,
Far above selfish Mammon's crowded den:

Thou hadst been more at home and happier then:
Yet be thou of good courage; there are still
Those "left seven thousand," whose affections will
Yearn on thy little good, and pardon thy much ill