His harshest words of proud rebuke,
His bitterest taunt and scorning,
Fell fire-like on the Northern brow
That bent to him in fawning.
He held his slaves: yet kept the while
His reverence for the Human;
In the dark vassals of his will
He saw but Man and Woman!
No hunter of God's outraged poor
His Roanoke valley entered;
No trader in the souls of men
Across his threshhold ventured.
And when the old and wearied man
Laid down for his last sleeping,
And at his side, a slave no more,
His brother man stood weeping,
His latest thought, his latest breath,
To Freedom's duty giving,
With failing tongue and trembling hand
The dying blest the living.
Oh! never bore his ancient State
A truer son or braver!
None trampling with a calmer scorn
On foreign hate or favor.
He knew her faults, yet never stooped
His proud and manly feeling
To poor excuses of the wrong
Or meanness of concealing.
But none beheld with clearer eye
The plague-spot o'er her spreading, None heard more sure the steps of Doom Along her future treading.
For her as for himself he spake,
When, his gaunt frame upbracing, He traced with dying hand" REMORSE!" And perished in the tracing.
As from the grave where Henry sleeps,
From Vernon's weeping willow,
And from the grassy pall which hides
The Sage of Monticello,
So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone
Of Randolph's lowly dwelling,
Virginia! o'er thy land of slaves
A warning voice is swelling!
And hark! from thy deserted fields
Are sadder warnings spoken,
From quenched hearths, where thy exiled sons
Their household gods have broken.
The curse is on thee-wolves for men,
And briars for corn-sheaves giving!
Oh! more than all thy dead renown
Were now one hero living!
ALL things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you ye even so to them.-Matthew vii. 12.
BEARER of Freedom's holy light,
Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod,
The foe of all which pains the sight,
Or wounds the generous ear of God!
Beautiful yet thy temples rise,
Though there profaning gifts are thrown; And fires unkindled of the skies
Are glaring round thy altar-stone.
Still sacred-though thy name be breathed
By those whose hearts thy truth deride; ·
And garlands, plucked from thee, are wreathed
Around the haughty brows of Pride.
O, ideal of my boyhood's time!
The faith in which my father stood,
Even when the sons of Lust and Crime
Had stained thy peaceful courts with blood!
Still to those courts my footsteps turn,
For through the mists which darken there,
I see the flame of Freedom burn-
The Kebla of the patriot's prayer!
The generous feeling, pure and warm,
Which owns the rights of all divine-
The pitying heart-the helping arm-
The prompt self-sacrifice-are thine.
Beneath thy broad, impartial eye,
How fade the lines of caste and birth
How equal in their suffering lie
The groaning multitudes of earth!
Still to a stricken brother true,
Whatever clime hath nurtured him;
As stooped to heal the wounded Jew
The worshipper of Gerizim.
By misery unrepelled, unawed
By pomp or power, thou see'st a MAN
In prince or peasant-slave or lord—
Pale priest, or swarthy artisan.
Through all disguise, form, place, or name,
Beneath the flaunting robes of sin,
Through poverty and squalid shame,
Thou lookest on the man within.
On man, as man, retaining yet,
Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim,
The crown upon his forehead set
The immortal gift of God to him.
And there is reverence in thy look;
For that frail form which mortals wear The Spirit of the Holiest took,
And veiled his perfect brightness there.
Not from the shallow babbling fount
Of vain philosophy thou art;
He who of old on Syria's mount
Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the listener's heart,
In holy words which cannot die,
In thoughts which angels leaned to know, Proclaimed thy message from on highThy mission to a world of woe.
That voice's echo hath not died!
From the blue lake of Galilee,
And Tabor's lonely mountain side,
It calls a struggling world to thee.
Thy name and watchword o'er this land
I hear in every breeze that stirs
And round a thousand altars stand
Thy banded party worshippers.
Not to these altars of a day,
At party's call, my gift I bring; But on thy olden shrine I lay
A freeman's dearest offering:
The voiceless utterance of his will
His pledge to Freedom and to Truth, That manhood's heart remembers still The homage of his generous youth. Election Day, 1843.
STRIKE home, strong-hearted man! Down to the
Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel.
Thy work is to hew down. In God's name then
Put nerve into thy task. Let other men
Plant, as they may, that better tree, whose fruit
The wounded bosom of the Church shall heal.
Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy blows
Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand,
On crown or crosier, which shall interpose
Between thee and the weal of Father-land.
Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of all,
Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall
Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk
Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart monk.
Fight not with ghosts and shadows. Let us hear
The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened ear
Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the light
Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell of night.
Be faithful to both worlds; nor think to feed
Earth's starving millions with the husks of creed.
Servant of Him whose mission high and holy
Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and the lowly,
Thrust not his Eden promise from our sphere,
Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's span;
Like him of Patmos, see it, now and here,-
The New Jerusalem comes down to man !
Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like him,
When the roused Teuton dashes from his limb
The rusted chain of ages, help to bind
His hands, for whom thou claim'st the freedom of the mind!
|