A holy gathering! peaceful all:
No threat of war, -no savage call
For vengeance on an erring brother !
But in their stead the godlike plan
To teach the brotherhood of man

To love and reverence one another,
As sharers of a common blood,
The children of a common God!
Yet, even at its lightest word,
Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred :
Spain, watching from her Moro's keep
Her slave-ships traversing the deep,
And Rio, in her strength and pride,
Lifting, along her mountain-side,
Her snowy battlements and towers, -
Her lemon-groves and tropic bowers,
With bitter hate and sullen fear
Its freedom-giving voice shall hear;
And where my country's flag is flow-
ing,

On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing Above the Nation's council halls, Where Freedom's praise is loud and long, While close beneath the outward walls The driver plies his reeking thong,

The hammer of the man-thief falls, O'er hypocritic cheek and brow The crimson flush of shame shall glow: And all who for their native land Are pledging life and heart and hand, Worn watchers o'er her changing weal, Who for her tarnished honor feel, Through cottage door and council-hall Shall thunder an awakening call. The pen along its page shall burn With all intolerable scorn, An eloquent rebuke shall go

On all the winds that Southward blow, From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb, Warning and dread appeal shall come,

59

Like those which Israel heard from him,
The Prophet of the Cherubim,
Or those which sad Esaias hurled
Against a sin-accursed world!
Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling
Unceasing from its iron wing,
With characters inscribed thereon,
As fearful in the despot's hall
As to the pomp of Babylon

The fire-sign on the palace wall!
And, from her dark iniquities,
Methinks I see my country rise:
Not challenging the nations round
To note her tardy justice done,
Her captives from their chains unbound,
Her prisons opening to the sun :-
But tearfully her arms extending
Over the poor and unoffending;

Her regal emblem now no longer A bird of prey, with talons reeking, Above the dying captive shrieking, But, spreading out her ample wing, A broad, impartial covering,

The weaker sheltered by the stronger!

O, then to Faith's anointed eyes

The promised token shall be given; And on a nation's sacrifice, Atoning for the sin of years, And wet with penitential tears, The fire shall fall from Heaven! 1839.

tains cold,

sheaves,

And soft, warm days of golden light,
The glory of her forest leaves,
And harvest-moon at night;

And Winter with her leafless grove,
And prisoned stream, and drifting

From Slavery's night of moral death

To light and life shall spring.

Broken the bondman's chain, and gone
The master's guilt, and hate, and fear,
And unto both alike shall dawn
A New and Happy Year.

1839.

MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.

[Written on reading an account of the proceedings of the citizens of Norfolk, Va., in reference to GEORGE LATIMER, the alleged fugitive slave, the result of whose case in Massachusetts will probably be similar to that of the negro SOMERSET in England, in 1772.]

THE blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way, Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay:

No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,

Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel.

Wild are the waves which lash the reefs

along St. George's bank,

Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and dank;

Through storm, and wave, and blinding

Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam, They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.

What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day

When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?

How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men

Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then?

Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the call

Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from Faneuil Hall?

When, echoing back her Henry's cry, came pulsing on each breath Of Northern winds, the thrilling sounds of "LIBERTY OR DEATH!"

What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved - false

False to their fathers' memory, to the faith they loved, If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn,

Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?

We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell,

Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound's yell,

We gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves,

From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves !

Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow ;

The spirit of her early time is with her

The cold north light and wintry sun

glare on their icy forms, Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms;

a free State may,

Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day;

But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone, reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!

And