For vengeance on an erring brother;
But in their stead the God-like plan
To teach the brotherhood of man
To love and reverence one another,
As sharers of a common blood-
The children of a common God!-
Yet, even at its lightest word,
Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred:
Spain watching from her Moro's keep
Her slave-ships traversing the deep,
And Rio, in her strength and pride,
Lifting, along her mountain side,
Her snowy battlements and towers-
Her lemon groves and tropic bowers,
With bitter hate and sullen fear
Its freedom-giving voice shall hear;
And where my country's flag is flowing,
On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing
Above the Nation's council halls,
Where Freedom's praise is loud and long,
While, close beneath the outward walls
The driver plies his reeking thong-
The hammer of the man-thief falls,
O'er hypocritic cheek and brow
The crimson flush of shame shall glow:
And all who for their native land
Are pledging life and heart and hand—
Worn watchers o'er her changing weal,
Who for her tarnished honor feel-
Through cottage-door and council-hall
Shall thunder an awakening call.
The pen along its page shall burn
With all intolerable scorn-
An eloquent rebuke shall go
On all the winds that Southward blow
From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb,
Warning and dread appeal shall come,
Like those which Israel heard from him,
The Prophet of the Cherubim—
Or those which sad Esaias hurled
Against a sin-accursed world!
Its wizard-leaves the Press shall fling
Unceasing from its iron wing,
With characters inscribed thereon,
As fearful in the despot's hall
As to the pomp of Babylon
The fire-sign on the palace wall!
And, from her dark iniquities,
Methinks I see my country rise:
Not challenging the nations round
To note her tardy justice done-
Her captives from their chains unbound,
Her prisons opening to the sun :—
But tearfully her arms extending
Over the poor and unoffending;
Her regal emblem now no longer
A bird of prey, with talons reeking,
Above the dying captive shrieking,
But, spreading out her ample wing-
A broad, impartial covering-
The weaker sheltered by the stronger
Oh! then to Faith's anointed eyes
The promised token shall be given;
And on a nation's sacrifice,
Atoning for the sin of years,
And wet with penitential tears-The fire shall fall from Heaven! 1839.
GOD bless New Hampshire!-from her granite peaks
Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.
The long bound vassal of the exulting South
For very shame her self-forged chain has broken—
Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth,
And in the clear tones of her old time spoken!
Oh, all undreamed of, all unhoped for changes !—
The tyrant's ally proves his sternest foe;
To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges,
New Hampshire thunders an indignant No!
Who is it now despairs? Oh, faint of heart,
Look upward to those Northern mountains cold,
Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag unrolled,
And gather strength to bear a manlier part!
All is not lost. The angel of God's blessing
Encamps with Freedom on the field of fight;
Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing,
Unlooked for allies, striking for the right!
Courage, then, Northern hearts!-Be firm, be true :
What one brave State hath done, can ye not also
do?
ADDRESSED TO THE PATRONS OF THE PENNSYLVANIA FREEMAN.
THE wave is breaking on the shore—
The echo fading from the chime-
Again the shadow moveth o'er
The dial-plate of time!
Oh, seer-seen Angel! waiting now
With weary feet on sea and shore,
Impatient for the last dread vow
That time shall be no more!
Once more across thy sleepless eye
The semblance of a smile has passed;
The year departing leaves more nigh
Time's fearfullest and last.
Oh! in that dying year hath been
The sum of all since time began—
The birth and death, the joy and pain,
Of Nature and of Man.
Spring, with her change of sun and shower,
And streams released from winter's chain,
And bursting bud, and opening flower,
And greenly growing grain;
And Summer's shade, and sunshine warm,
And rainbows o'er her hill-tops bowed,
And voices in her rising storm-
God speaking from his cloud!—
And Autumn's fruits and clustering sheaves,
And soft, warm days of golden light,
The glory of her forest leaves,
And harvest-moon at night;
And winter with her leafless grove,
And prisoned stream, and drifting snow,
The brilliance of her heaven above
And of her earth below:
And man-in whom an angel's mind
With earth's low instincts finds abode
The highest of the links which bind
Brute nature to her God;
His infant eye hath seen the light,
His childhood's merriest laughter rung, And active sports to manlier might
The nerves of boyhood strung!
And quiet love, and passion's fires,
Have soothed or burned in manhood's breast,
And lofty aims and low desires
By turns disturbed his rest.
The wailing of the newly-born
Has mingled with the funeral knell;
And o'er the dying's ear has gone
The merry marriage-bell.
And Wealth has filled his halls with mirth,
While Want, in many a humble shed,
Toiled, shivering by her cheerless hearth,
The live-long night for bread.
And worse than all-the human slave-
The sport of lust, and pride, and scorn!
Plucked off the crown his Maker gave-
His regal manhood gone!
Oh! still my country! o'er thy plains,
Blackened with slavery's blight and ban,
That human chattel drags his chains—
An uncreated man!
And still, where'er to sun and breeze,
My country, is thy flag unrolled,
With scorn, the gazing stranger sees
A stain on every fold.
Oh, tear the gorgeous emblem down
It gathers scorn from every eye,
And despots smile, and good men frown,
Whene'er it passes by.
Shame! shame! its starry splendors glow
Above the slaver's loathsome jail-
Its folds are ruffling even now
His crimson flag of sale.
Still round our country's proudest hall
The trade in human flesh is driven,
And at each careless hammer-fall
A human heart is riven.
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