Men who their hands with prayer and Llessing lay On Israel's Ark of light! What! preach and kidnap men? Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor? Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then What! servants of thy own Merciful Son, who came to seek and save The homeless and the outcast, -lettering down The tasked and plundered slave! Pilate and Herod, friends! Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine! Just God and holy! is that church, which lends Strength to the spoiler, thine? Paid hypocrites, who turn Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book Of those high words of truth which search and burn In warning and rebuke; Feed fat, ye locusts, feed! And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord That, from the toiling bondman's utter need, Ye pile your own full board. How long, O Lord! how long Shall such a priesthood barter truth away, And in thy name, for robbery and wrong At thy own altars pray? 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! 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. O, 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 Shail priestly robbers at thine altar stand, Lifting in prayer to thee, the bloody hand And haughty brow of wrong? O, 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 coffie's weary chain, - Hoarse, horrible, and strong, Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry, Filling the arches of the holiow sky, HOW LONG, O GOD, HOW LONG? STANZAS FOR THE TIMES. 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? Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause, As Christians may, as freemen can! Still pouring on unwilling ears 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 flame? And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn, A world's reproach around us burn? Is't not enough that this is borne? Must he be told, beside his plough, What he must speak, and when, and how? Must he be told his freedom stands strong, On breaking hearts and fettered hands, On robbery, and crime, and wrong? That all his fathers taught is vain, That Freedom's emblem is the chain? Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn? False, foul, profane! Go,- teach as well Of holy Truth from Falsehood born! Of Virtue in the arms of Vice! Rail on, then, "brethren of the Ye shall not hear the truth the less;~ No seal is on the Yankee's mouth, No fetter on the Yankee's press! From our Green Mountains to the sea, One voice shall thunder, WE ARE FREE! LINES, -- LINES. When the recreant North has forgotten her trust, And the lip of her honor is low in the dust, 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 Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders of whips! Where "chivalric " honor means really 69 No, RITNER!-- her "Friends at thy warning shall stand Erect for the truth, like their ancestral band; Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past time, Counting coldness injustice, and silence 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!" |