Shall freemen lock the indignant thought? Shall Honor bleed ?-Shall Truth succumb? No-by each spot of haunted ground, Where Freedom weeps her children's fall By their enlarging souls, which burst Within our inmost bosoms, yet,— No-guided by our country's laws, For truth, and right, and suffering man, What! shall we guard our neighbor still, Shall watch and ward be round him set, And shall we know and share with him Is't not enough that this is borne ? And asks our haughty neighbor more? Clank round the Yankee farmer's door? Must he be told his freedom stands On Slavery's dark foundations strong- Its life-its soul, from slavery drawn? Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell! Rail on, then, "brethren of the South". From our Green Mountains to the Sea, LINES, WRITTEN on reading the Message of Governor RITNER, of Pennsyl vania, 1836. THANK God for the token!-one lip is still freeOne spirit untrammelled-unbending one knee ! Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted and firm, Erect, when the multitude bends to the storm; When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, and God, Thank God, that one arm from the shackle has broken! Thank God, that one man, as a freeman has spoken ! O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has been blown ! Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the murmur has gone ! To the land of the South-of the charter and chain Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's pain; Where the cant of Democracy dwells on the lips Right onward, oh, speed it! Wherever the blood In silence and darkness, the God-given mind; There, God speed it onward!-its truth will be felt The bonds shall be loosened-the iron shall melt! And oh, will the land where the free soul of PENN Still lingers and breathes over mountain and glenWill the land where a BENEZET's spirit went forth To the peeled, and the meted, and outcast of Earth Where the words of the Charter of Liberty first From the soul of the sage and the patriot burstWhere first for the wronged and the weak of their kind, The Christian an1 statesman their efforts combined Will that land of the free and the good wear a chain ? Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be vain ? No, RITNER !—her "Friends," at thy warning shall stand Erect for the truth, like their ancestral band; And that bold-hearted yeor anry, honest and true, One brow for the brand-for the padlock one mouth? They cater to tyrants?—They rivet the chain, Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again? No, never!—one voice, like the sound in the cloud, When the roar of the storm waxes loud and more loud, Wherever the foot of the freeman hath pressed From the Delaware's marge to the Lake of the West, On the South-going breezes shall deepen and grow Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble below! The voice of a PEOPLE-uprisen—awake— Pennsylvania's watchword, with Freedom at stake, Thrilling up from each valley, flung down from each height, OUR COUNTRY AND LIBERTY!—GOD FOR THE RIGHT!" THE PASTORAL LETTER. So, this is all-the utmost reach Of priestly power the mind to fetter! When laymen think-when women preach-A war of words-a "Pastoral Letter!" Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes! Was it thus with those, your predecessors, A "Pastoral Letter," grave and dull- From him who bellows from St. Peter's! Your pastoral rights and powers from harm, Think ye, can words alone preserve them? Your wiser fathers taught the arm And sword of temporal power to serve them Oh, glorious days-when church and state Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers. |