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.

13

A

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.

CHRISTIAN! going, gone!

Who bids for God's own image?

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!

for his grace

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 cell From 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.

15

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

S this the land our fathers loved,

Is

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 wrought
Which well might shame extremest hell?
Shall freemen lock the indignant thought?

Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell?

Shall Honor bleed? Shall Truth succumb?
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?

No- by each spot of haunted ground,

Where Freedom weeps her children's fall
By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's mound
By Griswold's stained and shattered wall
By Warren's ghost by Langdon's shade
By all the memories of our dead!

By their enlarging souls, which burst
The bands and fetters round them set
By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed
Within our inmost bosoms, yet
By all above around below -
Be ours the indignant answer — NO!

No

guided by our country's laws,

For truth, and right, and suffering man, Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause,

As Christians may

as freemen can!

Still pouring on unwilling ears

That truth oppression only fears.

What! shall we guard our neighbor still,
While woman shrieks beneath his rod,
And while he tramples down at will
The image of a common God!

Shall watch and ward be round him set,
Of Northern nerve and bayonet?

And shall we know and share with him

The danger and the growing shame? And see our Freedom's light grow dim,

Which should have filled the world with fame? And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn, A world's reproach around us burn?

Is 't not enough that this is borne ?

And asks our haughty neighbor more?
Must fetters which his slaves have worn,

Clank round the Yankee farmer's door?
Must he be told, beside his plough,
What he must speak, and when, and how?