The horror of a breaking heart
Poured through a mother's groan !

Up from that loathsome prison
The stricken blind ones came :
Below, had all been darkness-
Above, was still the same.
Yet the holy breath of heaven
Was sweetly breathing there,
And the heated brow of fever
Cooled in the soft sea air.

"Overboard with them, shipmates!"
Cutlass and dirk were plied;
Fettered and blind, one after one,
Plunged down the vessel's side.
The sabre smote above-

Beneath, the lean shark lay,
Waiting with wide and bloody jaw
His quick and human prey.

God of the earth! what cries
Rang upward unto Thee?
Voices of agony and blood,
From ship-deck and from sea.
The last dull plunge was heard—
The last wave caught its stain-
And the unsated shark looked up
For human hearts in vain.

Red glowed the western waters-
The setting sun was there,
Scattering alike on wave and cloud

His fiery mesh of hair.

Amidst a group in blindness,

A solitary eye

Gazed, from the burdened slaver's deck,

Into that burning sky.

"A storm," spoke out the gazer,
"Is gathering and at hand-
Curse on't-I'd give my other eye

For one firm rood of land."
And then he laughed-but only
His echoed laugh replied—
For the blinded and the suffering
Alone were at his side.

Night settled on the waters,
And on a stormy heaven,
While fiercely on that lone ship's track
The thunder-gust was driven.
"A sail!-thank God, a sail!"
And as the helmsman spoke,
Up through the stormy murmur,
A shout of gladness broke.

Down came the stranger vessel
Unheeding on her way,
So near, that on the slaver's deck
Fell off her driven spray.
"Ho! for the love of mercy-
We're perishing and blind!”
A wail of utter agony

66

Came back upon the wind:

Help us! for we are stricken
With blindness every one;
Ten days we've floated fearfully,
Unnoting star or sun.

Our ship's the slaver Leon-
We've but a score on board-
Our slaves are all gone over-
Help-for the love of God!”

On livid brows of agony
The broad red lightning shone

But the roar of wind and thunder
Stifled the answering groan.
Wailed from the broken waters
A last despairing cry,

As, kindling in the stormy light,
The stranger ship went by.

In the sunny Guadaloupe
A dark hulled vessel lay-
With a crew who noted never
The night-fall or the day.
The blossom of the orange

Was white by every stream,
And tropic leaf, and flower, ana bird
Were in the warm sun-beam.

And the sky was bright as ever,
And the moonlight slept as well,
On the palm-trees by the hill-side,
And the streamlet of the dell:
And the glances of the Creole
Were still as archly deep,
And her smiles as full as ever
Of passion and of sleep.

But vain were bird and blossom,
The green earth and the sky,
And the smile of human faces,
To the slaver's darkened eye;
At the breaking of the morning,
At the star-lit evening time,
O'er a world of light and beauty,
Fell the blackness of his crime.

STANZAS.

["THE despotism which our fathers could not bear in their native country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her reformed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the United States-the free United States, which could not bear the bonds of a king, cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?"-Dr. Follen's Address.

"Genius of America!-Spirit of our free institutions-where art thou?-How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! son of the morning -how art thou fallen from Heaven! Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming!-The kings of the earth cry out to thee, Aha! Aha!-ART THOU BECOME LIKE UNTO Us?"-Speech of Samuel J. May.]

OUR fellow-countrymen in chains!
Slaves-in a land of light and law!
Slaves-crouching on the very plains

Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!
from Eutaw's haunted wood-

A groan

A wail where Camden's martyrs fell-
By every shrine of patriot blood,

From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well!

By storied hill and hallowed grot,
By mossy wood and marshy glen,
Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,
And hurrying shout of Marion's men!
The groan of breaking hearts is there-
The falling lash-the fetter's clank!
Slaves-SLAVES are breathing in that air,
Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank!

What, ho!-our countrymen in chains!
The whip on WOMAN'S shrinking flesh!
Our soil yet reddening with the stains,
Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh!
What! mothers from their children riven!

What! God's own image bought and sold! AMERICANS to market driven,

And bartered as the brute for gold !

Speak! shall their agony of prayer
Come thrilling to our hearts in vain?
To us whose fathers scorned to bear
The paltry menace of a chain;
To us, whose boast is loud and long
Of holy Liberty and Light-

Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong,
Plead vainly for their plundered Right?

What! shall we send, with lavish breath,
Our sympathies across the wave,
Where Manhood, on the field of death,
Strikes for his freedom, or a grave?
Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung
For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning,
And millions hail with pen and tongue
Our light on all her altars burning?

Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France,
By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's wall,
And Poland, gasping on her lance,

The impulse of our cheering call?
And shall the SLAVE, beneath our eye,
Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain?

And toss his fettered arms on high,
And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain?

Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be
A refuge for the stricken slave?
And shall the Russian serf go free
By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave?
And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane
Relax the iron hand of pride,
And bid his bondmen cast the chain
From fettered soul and limb, aside?