Tell mę not that this must be:
God's true priest is always free;
Free, the needed truth to speak,
Right the wronged, and raise the weak.

Not to fawn on wealth and state,
Leaving Lazarus at the gate-
Not to peddle creeds like wares-
Not to mutter hireling prayers—

Nor to paint the new life's bliss
On the sable ground of this-
Golden streets for idle knave,
Sabbath rest for weary slave!

Not for words and works like these,
Priest of God, thy mission is;
But to make earth's desert glad,
In its Eden greenness clad;

And to level manhood bring
Lord and peasant, serf and king;
And the Christ of God to find
In the humblest of thy kind!

Thine to work as well as pray
Clearing thorny wrongs away;
Plucking up the weeds of sin,
Letting heaven's warm sunshine in-

Watching on the hills of Faith;
Listening what the spirit saith,
Of the dimseen light afar,
Growing like a nearing star.

God's interpreter art thou,
To the waiting ones below;
"Twixt them and its light midway
Heralding the better day-

Catching gleams of temple spires,
Hearing notes of angel choirs,
Where, as yet unseen of them,
Comes the New Jerusalem!

Like the seer of Patmos gazing,
On the glory downward blazing;
Till upon Earth's grateful sod
Rests the City of our God!

THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.

SUGGASTED BY A DAGUERREOTYPE FROM A FRENCH ENGRAVING.

BEAMS of noon, like burning lances, through the tree-tops flash and glisten,

As she stands before her lover, with raised face to look and listen.

Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the ancient Jewish song:

Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her graceful beauty wrong.

He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal's rarb and hue,

Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his higher nature true;

Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a freeman in his heart,

As the greegree holds his Fetich from the white man's gaze apart.

Ever foremost of his comrades, when the drivers morning horn

Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the fields of

cane and corn:

Fall the keen and burning lashes, never on his back

or limb;

Scarce with look or word of censure, turns the driver unto him.

Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his eye is hard and stern;

Slavery's last and humblest lesson, he has never deigned to learn.

And, at evening, when his comrades dance before their master's door,

Folding arms and knitting forehead, stands he silent evermore.

God be praised for every instinct which rebels against a lot,

Where the brute survives the human, and man's upright form is not!

As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral fold on fold,

Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers in his hold;

Slow decays the forest monarch, closer girds the fell embrace,

Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is in its place

So a base and bestial nature, round the vassal's manhoo twines,

And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba choked with vines.

God is Love, saith he Evangel; and our world of woe and sin

Is made light and appy only, when a Love is shining in.

Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, finding where soe'er ye roam,

Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, making all the world like home;

In the veins of whose affections, kindred blood is but a part,

Of one kindly current throbbing from the universal heart;

Can ye know the deeper meaning of a love in Slavery nursed,

Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in that Soil accursed?

Love of Home, and Love of Woman !-dear to all, but doubly dear

To the heart whose pulses elsewhere measure only hate and fear.

All around the desert circles, underneath a brazen

sky,

Only one green spot remaining where the dew is never dry!

From the horror of that desert, from its atmosphere of hell,

Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the diver seeks his bell.

"Tis the fervid tropic noontime; faint and low the sea-waves beat;

Hazy rise the inland mountains through the glimmer of the heat,—

Where, through mingled leaves and blossoms arrowy sunbeams flash and glisten,

Speaks her lover to the slave girl, and she lifts her head to listen :—

"We shall live as slaves no longer! Freedom's hour is close at hand!

Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the boat upon the strand !

"I have seen the Haytien Captain; I have seen his swarthy crew,

Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and color

true.

"They have sworn to wait our coming till the night has passed its noon,

And the gray and darkening waters roll above the sunken moon!"

Oh! the blessed hope of freedom! how with joy and glad surprise,

For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant beam her eyes!

But she looks across the valley, where her mother's hut is seen,

Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and the lemon leaves so green.

And she answers, sad and earnest: "It were wrong for thee to stay;

God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and his finger points the way.

"Well I know with what endurance, for the sake of me and mine,

Thou hast borne too long a burden, never meant for souls like thine.

"Go; and at the hour of midnight, when our last farewell is o'er,

Kneeling on our place of parting, I will bless thee from the shore.