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THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.

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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 dim-seen 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!

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THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.

SUGGESTED 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 garb 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 driver's 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.
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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 manhood twines,
And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba choked with vines.

God is Love, saith the Evangel; and our world of woe and sin
Is made light and happy only when a Love is shining in.

Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, finding, whereso'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.

"T is 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 gliste 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!"

THE CRISIS.

O 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.

"But for me, my mother, lying on her sick-bed all the day, Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming through the twilight gray. "Should I leave her sick and helpless, even freedom, shared with thee, Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, and stripes to me.

"For my heart would die within me, and my brain would soon be wild; I should hear my mother calling through the twilight for her child!"

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines the sun of morning-time,
Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and green hedges of the lime.
Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the lover and the maid;
Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, leaning forward on his spade?
Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is the Haytien's sail he sees,
Like a white cloud of the mountains, driven seaward by the breeze!
But his arm a light hand presses, and he hears a low voice call:
Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightier than all.

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THE CRISIS.

WRITTEN ON LEARNING THE TERMS OF THE TREATY WITH MEXICO.

ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's drouth and sand,
The circles of our empire touch the Western Ocean's strand;
From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and free,
Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to California's sea;
And from the mountains of the East, to Santa Rosa's shore,
The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air no more.

O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple children weep;
Close watch about their holy fire let maids of Pecos keep;
Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines,
And Algodones toll her bells amidst her corn and vines:

For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with eager eyes of gain,
Wide scattering, like the bison herds on broad Salada's plain.

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what sound the winds bring down
Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold Nevada's crown!
Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with rein of travel slack,
And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the sunrise at his back :
By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and pine,

On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires shine.

O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and plain,
Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with grain;

Of mountains white with winter, looking downward, cold, serene,
On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped in softest green;
Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er many a sunny vale,
Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's dusty trail!

Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes whose mystic shores
The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Saxon oars ;

Great herds that wander all unwatched, wild steeds that none have tamed
Strange fish in unknown streams, and birds the Saxon never named ;
Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, where Nature's chemic powers
Work out the Great Designer's will; - all these ye say are ours!

Forever ours! for good or ill, on us the burden lies;

God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across the skies.

Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn the poised and trembling scale?

Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber Wrong prevail?

Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry splendor waves,

Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread of slaves?

The day is breaking in the East of which the prophets told,

And brightens up the sky of Time the Christian Age of Gold;
Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to clerkly pen,
Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her serfs stand up as men ;
The isles rejoice together, in a day are nations born,

And the slave walks free in Tunis, and by Stamboul's Golden Horn!

Is this, O countrymen of mine! a day for us to sow

The soil of new-gained empire with slavery's seeds of woe?

To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old World's cast-off crime,

Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, from the tired lap of Time? To run anew the evil race the old löst nations ran,

And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong of man?

Great Heaven! Is this our mission? End in this the prayers and tears,
The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger, better years?
Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall ours in shadow turn,
A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through outer darkness borne ?
Where the far nations looked for light, a blackness in the air?
Where for words of hope they listened, the long wail of despair?

The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands,
With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands!

THE CRISIS.

This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin;
This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin;
Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown,
We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down!
By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame ;
By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came
By the Future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast
Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the Past;
And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died,
O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way;

To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's bay;

To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain ;
And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train :

The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea,
And mountain unto mountain call, PRAISE God, for we arE FREE!

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