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And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt

sea spray

And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay!

Along 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

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hunted for our livesAnd shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves!

We wage no war-we lift no arm-we fling no torch within

The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin;

We leave ye with your bondmer, to wrestle, while

ye can,

With the strong upward tendencies and God-like soul of man!

But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given

For freedom and humanity, is registered in Heaven:

No slave-hunt in our borders-no pirate on o strand!

No fetters in the Bay State-no slave upon our

land!

THE RELIC.

[PENNSYLVANIA HALL, dedicated to Free Discussion and ho cause of human liberty, was destroyed by a mob in 1838. 'The following was written on receiving a cane wrought from a fragment of the wood-work which the fire had spared.]

TOKEN of friendship true and tried,
From one whose fiery heart of youth
With 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 tells

Of generous hand and heart sincere;
Around that gift of friendship dwells
A memory doubly dear—

Earth's noblest aim-man's holiest thought,
With that memorial frail inwrought!

Pure thoughts and sweet, like flowers unfold,
And precious memories round it cling,
Even as the Prophet's rod of old

In beauty blossoming:

And buds of feeling pure and good
Spring from its cold unconscious wood.

Relic of Freedom's shrine !-a brand
Plucked from its burning!-let it be
Dear as a jewel from the hand

Of 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 stone
Which crumbled from the Forum's stairs,
Or round the Parthenon;
Or olive bough from some wild tree
Hung over old Thermopyla:

If leaflets from some hero's tomb,

Or moss-wreath torn from ruins hoary,-
Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom
On fields renowned in story,—
Or fragment from the Alhambra's crest,
Or the gray rock by Druids blessed;

Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growing
Where Freedom led her stalwart kern,
Or Scotia's "rough bur thistle" blowing
On Bruce's Bannockburn-

Or Runnymede's wild English rose,
Or lichen plucked from Sempach's snows!—

If it be true that things like these

To heart and eye bright visions bring, Shall not far holier memories

To this memorial cling?

Which needs no mellowing mist of time
To 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 pleading For human hearts in bondage bleeding!—

Where midst the sound of rushing feet
And curses on the night air flung,
That pleading voice rose calm and sweet
From woman's earnest tongue;

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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 skies
Its 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 am
crying,

And from their ashes white and cold
Its timbers are replying!

A voice which slavery cannot kill
Speaks from the crumbling arches still!

And even this relic from thy shrine,
Oh, holy Freedom!-hath to me
A potent power, a voice and sign
To testify of thee;

And, grasping it, methinks I feel
A 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.

THE BRANDED HAND.

1846.

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 brutal

cravens aim

To make God's truth thy falsehood, his holiest work thy shame ?

When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,

How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn !

They change to wrong, the duty which God hath

written out

On the great heart of humanity too legible for doubt!

They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown,

Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!

Why, that brand is highest honor !—than its traces never yet

Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set;

And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand,

Shall tell with pride the story of their father's

BRANDED HAND!

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