Along the bright horizon's verge, O'er which the curse of servile war

-

For all the wrongs his race have borne,
Though for each drop of Negro blood
The white man's veins shall pour a flood;
Not all alone the sense of ill
Around his heart is lingering still,
Nor deeper can the white man feel
The generous warmth of grateful zeal.
Friends of the Negro ! fly with me,
The path is open to the sea:
Away, for life!"-He spoke, and pressed
The young child to his manly breast,
As, headlong, through the cracking cane,
Down swept the dark insurgent train,
Drunken and grim, with shout and yell
Howled through the dark, like sounds
from hell.

Far out, in peace, the white man's sail Swayed free before the sunrise gale.

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Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge; And he the Negro champion-where In the fierce tumult struggled he? Go trace him by the fiery glare Of dwellings in the midnight air, The yells of triumph and despair,

The streams that crimson to the sea!

Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb,
Beneath Besançon's alien sky,
Dark Haytien!-for the time shall come,
Yea, even now is nigh,

When, everywhere, thy name shall be
Redeemed from color's infamy;
And men shall learn to speak of thee,
As one of earth's great spirits, born
In servitude, and nursed in scorn,
Casting aside the weary weight
And fetters of its low estate,
In that strong majesty of soul ·

Which knows no color, tongue, or clime,

Which still hath spurned the base control

Of tyrants through all time!

:

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Far other hands than mine may wreathe
The laurel round thy brow of death,
And speak thy praise, as one whose word
A thousand fiery spirits stirred,
Who crushed his foeman as a worm,
Whose step on human hearts fell firm:-
Be mine the better task to find
A tribute for thy lofty mind,
Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shone
Some milder virtues all thine own,
Some gleams of feeling pure and warm,
Like sunshine on a sky of storm,
Proofs that the Negro's heart retains
Some nobleness amidst its chains,
That kindness to the wronged is never
Without its excellent reward, -
Holy to human-kind and ever
Acceptable to God.

Gloomily stood the captain,

With his arms upon his breast, With his cold brow sternly knotted, And his iron lip compressed. "Are all the dead dogs over?"

Growled through that matted lip, "The blind ones are no better, Let's lighten the good ship."

Hark! from the ship's dark bosom,
The very sounds of hell!
The ringing clank of iron,

The maniac's short, sharp yell!
The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled,
The starving infant's moan,
The horror of a breaking heart
Poured through a mother's groan.

Up from that loathsome prison

The stricken blind ones came : Below, had all been darkness,

Above, was still the same. Yet the holy breath of heaven Was sweetly breathing there, And the heated brow of fever Cooled in the soft sea air.

"Overboard with them, shipmates!"
Cutlass and dirk were plied;
Fettered and blind, one after one,
Plunged down the vessel's side.
The sabre smote above,

Beneath, the lean shark lay,
Waiting with wide and bloody jaw
His quick and human prey.

God of the earth! what cries
Rang upward unto thee?
Voices of agony and blood,

From ship-deck and from sea.
The last dull plunge was heard,
The last wave caught its stain,
And the unsated shark looked up
For human hearts in vain.

Night settled on the waters,
And on a stormy heaven,
While fiercely on that lone ship's track
The thunder-gust was driven.
"A sail! thank God, a sail !"
And as the helmsman spoke,
Up through the stormy murmur
A shout of gladness broke.

Down came the stranger vessel,
Unheeding on her way,

So near that on the slaver's deck
Fell off her driven spray.
"Ho! for the love of mercy,
We're perishing and blind!"
A wail of utter agony

Came back upon the wind:

"Help us for we are stricken
With blindness every one;
Ten days we 've floated fearfully,
Unnoting star or sun.

Our ship's the slaver Leon,

We've but a score on board, Our slaves are all gone over, Help, - for the love of God!"

With a crew who noted never

The nightfall or the day. The blossom of the orange

Was white by every stream, And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird Were in the warm sunbeam.

And the sky was bright as ever,

And the moonlight slept as well, On the palm-trees by the hillside,

And the streamlet of the dell :
And the glances of the Creole
Were still as archly deep,
And her smiles as full as ever
Of passion and of sleep.

But vain were bird and blossom, The green earth and the sky, And the smile of human faces,

To the slaver's darkened eye; At the breaking of the morning, At the star-lit evening time, O'er a world of light and beauty Fell the blackness of his crime.

STANZAS.

[“The despotism which our fathers could not

bear in their native country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her reformed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the United States - the free United States,

which could not bear the bonds of a kingcradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?" - Dr. Follen's Address. "Genius of America! - Spirit of our free in

stitutions! - where art thou? - How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! son of the_morning, how art thou fallen from Heaven! Hell from beneath

is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming! -The kings of the earth cry out to thee, Aha! Aha! ART THOU BECOME LIKE UNTO US?"Speech of Samuel J. May.]

OUR fellow-countrymen in chains!

Slaves in a land of light and law ! Slaves crouching on the very plains Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!

A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood, A wail where Camden's martyrs fell, By every shrine of patriot blood,

From Moultrie's wall and Jaspar's well!

By storied hill and hallowed grot,
By mossy wood and marshy glen,
Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,

And hurrying shout of Marion's men!

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air, Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank!

What, ho! -our countrymen in chains! The whip on WOMAN'S shrinking flesh! Our soil yet reddening with the stains Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh!

What mothers from their children riven !

What! God's own image bought and sold!

AMERICANS to market driven,

And bartered as the brute for gold!

Speak! shall their agony of prayer
Come thrilling to our hearts in vain ?
To us whose fathers scorned to bear
The paltry menace of a chain;
To us, whose boast is loud and long
Of holy Liberty and Light,
Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong
Plead vainly for their plundered Right?

What! shall we send, with lavish breath,
Our sympathies across the wave,
Where Manhood, on the field of death,
Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung
Strikes for his freedom or a grave?
For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning,
And millions hail with pen and tongue
Our light on all her altars burning?

Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France, By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's wall,

And Poland, gasping on her lance,

The impulse of our cheering call? And shall the SLAVE, beneath our eye, Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain? And toss his fettered arms on high,

And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain?

O, say, shall Prussia's banner be
A refuge for the stricken slave?
And shall the Russian serf go free

By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave?
And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane

Relax the iron hand of pride,
And bid his bondmen cast the chain,

From fettered soul and limb, aside?

Shall every flap of England's flag

Proclaim that all around are free,

year long,

Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,

And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!

In the steadfast strength of truth, In manhood sealing well the vow And promise of thy youth.

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The cloud of human ill. My heart hath leaped to answer thine, And echo back thy words, As leaps the warrior's at the shine

And flash of kindred swords!

They tell me thou art rash and vain,
A searcher after farne ;

That thou art striving but to gain
A long-enduring name;

That thou hast nerved the Afric's hand
And steeled the Afric's heart,
To shake aloft his vengeful brand,
And rend his chain apart.

Have I not known thee well, and read
Thy mighty purpose long?

And watched the trials which have made Thy human spirit strong?

And shall the slanderer's demon breath
Avail with one like me,

To dim the sunshine of my faith
And earnest trust in thee?