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ALMS-ALMS for our hunters! why will ye delay,
When their pride and their glory are melting away
The parson has turned; for, on charge of his own,
Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone?
The politic statesman looks back with a sigh-
There is doubt in his heart-there is fear in his eye.
Oh! haste, lest that doubting and fear shall prevail,
And the head of his steed take the place of the tail
Oh! haste, ere he leave us! for who will ride then,
For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of men?

1835.

CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.

[IN the Report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in Charleston, S. C., on the 4th of the 9th month, 1835, published in the Courier of that city, it is stated, "The CLERGY of all denominations attended in a body, LENDING THEIR SANCTION TO THE PROCEEDINGS, and adding by their presence to the impressive char acter of the scene!"]

JUST God!-and these are they

Who minister at thine altar, God of Right!
Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay
On Israel's Ark of light!

What! preach and kidnap men?
Give thanks-and rob thy own afflicted poor?
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
Bolt hard the captive's door?

What! servants of thy own

Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
The homeless and the outcast,-fettering down
The tasked and plundered slave!

Pilate and Herod, friends!

Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!
Just God and holy ! is that church, which lends
Strength to the spoiler, thine?

Paid hypocrites, who turn

Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book

Of those high words of truth which search and burn In warning and rebuke;

Feed fat, ye locusts, feed!

And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord
That, from the toiling bondman's utter need,
Ye pile your own full board.

How long, O Lord! how long

Shall such a priesthood barter truth away,
And, in thy name, for robbery and wrong
At thy own altars pray?

Is not thy hand stretched forth
Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite?
Shall not the living God of all the earth,
And heaven above, do right?

Woe, then, to all who grind

Their brethren of a common Father down!
To all who plunder from the immortal mind
Its bright and glorious crown!

Woe to the priesthood! woe

To those whose hire is with the price of blood-
Perverting, darkening, changing as they go,
The searching truths of God!

Their glory and their might

Shall perish; and their very names shall be
Vile before all the people, in the light
Of a world's liberty.

Oh! speed the moment on

When Wrong shall cease-and Liberty, and Love, And Truth, and Right, throughout the earth be known

As in their home above.

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.

[IN a late publication of L. F. TASISTRO," Random Shots and Bouthern Breezes," is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as "A GOOD CHRISTIAN!"]

A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!

Who bids for God's own image ?-for his grace
Which that poor victim of the market-place
Hath in her suffering won?

My God! can such things be?

Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done
Unto thy weakest and thy humblest one,
Is even done to Thee?

In that sad victim, then,
Child of thy pitying love, I see Thee stand-
Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,
Bound, sold, and scourged again!

A Christian up for sale!

Wet with her blood your whips-o'ertask her frame,

Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame,

Her patience shall not fail!

A heathen hand might deal

Back on your heads the gathered wrong of years,
But her low, broken prayer and nightly tears,
Ye neither heed nor feel.

Con well thy lesson o'er,

Thou prudent teacher-tell the toiling slave
No dangerous tale of Him who came to save
The outcast and the poor.

But wisely shut the ray

Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart,
And to her darkened mind alone impart
One stern command-OBEY!

So shalt thou deftly raise

The market price of human flesh; and while
On thee, their pampered guest, the planters smile,
Thy. church shall praise.

Grave, reverend men shall tell

From Northern pulpits how thy work was blest,
While in that vile South Sodom, first and best,
Thy poor disciples sell.

Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall,
Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels,
While turning to the sacred Kebla feels
His fetters break and fall.

Cheers for the turbaned Bey
Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath torn
The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne
Their inmates into day:

But our poor slave in vain

Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes-
Its rites will only swell his market price.
And rivet on his chain.

God of all right! how long
Shall priestly robbers at thine altar stand,
Lifting in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand
And haughty brow of wrong?

Oh, from the fields of cane,

From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cellFrom the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell, And coffle's weary chain,—

Hoarse, horrible, and strong,

Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,

HOW LONG, O GOD, HOW LONG?

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

Is this the land our fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the soil whereon they moved?

Are these the graves they slumber in ?
Are we the sons by whom are borne
The mantles which the dead have worn?

And shall we crouch above these graves,
With craven soul and fettered lip?
Yoke in with marked and branded slaves,
And tremble at the driver's whip?
Bend to the earth our pliant knees,
And speak—but as our masters please?

Shall outraged Nature cease to feel?
Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow?
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel-
The dungeon's gloom-the assassin's blow,
Turn back the spirit roused to save
The Truth, our Country, and the Slave?

Of human skulls that shrine was made,
Round which the priests of Mexico
Before their loathsome idol prayed-

Is Freedom's altar fashioned so

And must we yield to Freedom's God,
As offering meet, the negro's blood?

Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrougnt Which well might shame extremest hell?

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