Holding still his spirit's birthright, to | In the veins of whose affections kindred 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 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? Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the Love of Home, and Love of Woman! 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. 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, To dear to all, but doubly dear 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. Folding arms and knitting forehead,'T is the fervid tropic noontime; faint stands he silent evermore. and low the sea-waves beat; God be praised for every instinct which Hazy rise the inland mountains through 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, find ing, wheresoe'er ye roam, Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, making all the world like home; the glimmer of the heat, Where, through mingled leaves and blossoms, arrowy sunbeams flash and glisten, 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!" 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, THE CRISIS. Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and WRITTEN ON LEARNING THE TERMS OF 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 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. 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 footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold Nevada's crown! Of 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 | Great Heaven! The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Great herds that wander all unwatched, 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 A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through Where for words of hope they listened, The Crisis presses on us; face to face With solemn lips of question, like the This This Even day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin; day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin; 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 By all the warning words of truth with O my people! O my brothers! let us 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 die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong of man? And mountain unto mountain call, PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE | The eyes of memory will not sleep,- And still the loves and joys of old I see the flow of locks of gold, Ah me! upon another's breast For since the day when Warkworth wood I see upon another rest Closed o'er my steed and I, An alien from my name and blood, A weed cast out to die, When, looking back in sunset light, I saw her turret gleam, And from its casement, far and white, Like one who, from some desert shore, So from the desert of my fate I gaze across the past; Forever on life's dial-plate The shade is backward cast! I've wandered wide from shore to shore, And by the Holy Sepulchre I've pledged my knightly sword To Christ, his blessed Church, and her, The Mother of our Lord. O, vain the vow, and vain the strife! In vain the penance strange and long, And hard for flesh to bear; The prayer, the fasting, and the thong And sackcloth shirt of hair, The glance that once was mine. "O faithless priest! O perjured knight!” I hear the Master cry; "Shut out the vision from thy sight, Let Earth and Nature die. The Church of God is now thy spouse, And thou the bridegroom art; Then let the burden of thy vows Crush down thy human heart!" In vain! This heart its grief must know, Till life itself hath ceased, O pitying Mother! souls of light, Then let the Paynim work his will, THE HOLY LAND. FROM LAMARTINE. I HAVE not felt, o'er seas of sand, Nor pitched my tent at even-fall, One vast world-page remains unread; How shine the stars in Chaldea's sky, How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread, How round gray arch and column lone In thy tall cedars, Lebanon, I have not heard the nations' cries, Where buried Tyre in ruin lies. The waste where Memnon's empire lay. Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide, O Jordan! heard the low lament, Felt hands of fire direct his own, And sweep for God the conscious strings. I have not climbed to Olivet, PALESTINE. BLEST land of Judæa! thrice hallowed of song, Where the holiest of memories pilgrimlike throng; In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea, On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee. With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore, Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered before; With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod Made bright by the steps of the angels of God. Blue sea of the hills!-in my spirit I hear Thy waters, Genesaret, chime on my ear; Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down, And thy spray on the dust of his sandals was thrown. Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green, And the desolate hills of the wild Gad arene; And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see The gleam of thy waters, O dark Galilee ! Hark, a sound in the valley! where, swollen and strong, Thy river, O Kishon, is sweeping along; Where the Canaanite strove with Jehovah in vain, Nor laid me where my Saviour lay, And left his trace of tears as yet By angel eyes unwept away; Nor watched, at midnight's solemn time, The garden where his prayer and And thy torrent grew dark with the blood of the slain. |