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VOICES OF FREEDOM.

FROM 1833 TO 1848.

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And inland waste of rock and wood,
In searching sunshine, wild and rude,
Rose, mellowed through the silvergleam,
Soft as the landscape of a dream,
All motionless and dewy wet,
Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met:
The myrtle with its snowy bloom,
Crossing the nightshade's solemn
gloom, -

The white cecropia's silver rind
Relieved by deeper green behind,
The orange with its fruit of gold,
The lithe paullinia's verdant fold,
The passion-flower, with symbol holy,
Twining its tendrils long and lowly,
The rhexias dark, and cassia tall,
And proudly rising over all,
The kingly palm's imperial stem,
Crowned with its leafy diadem,
Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade,
The fiery-winged cucullo played !
Yes, lovely was thine aspect, then,
Fair island of the Western Sea!
Lavish of beauty, even when
Thy brutes were happier than thy men,
For they, at least, were free!
Regardless of thy glorious clime,
Unmindful of thy soil of flowers,
The toiling negro sighed, that Time
No faster sped his hours.
For, by the dewy moonlight still,
He fed the weary-turning mill,

Or bent him in the chill morass,
To pluck the long and tangled grass,
And hear above his scar-worn back
The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack;
While in his heart one evil thought
In solitary madness wrought,
One baleful fire surviving still

The quenching of the immortal mind,
One sterner passion of his kind,
Which even fetters could not kill,-
The savage hope, to deal, erelong,
A vengeance bitterer than his wrong!

Hark to that cry!-long, loud, and shrill, From field and forest, rock and hill, Thrilling and horrible it rang,

Around, beneath, above; The wild beast from his cavern sprang, The wild bird from her grove! Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony Were mingled in that midnight cry; But like the lion's growl of wrath, When falls that hunter in his path Whose barbed arrow, deeply set, Is rankling in his bosom yet,

It told of hate, full, deep, and strong,
Of vengeance kindling out of wrong;
It was as if the crimes of years-
The unrequited toil, the tears,
The shame and hate, which liken well
Earth's garden to the nether hell
Had found in nature's self a tongue,
On which the gathered horror hung;
As if from cliff, and stream, and glen
Burst on the startled ears of men
That voice which rises unto God,
Solemn and stern, - the cry of blood!
It ceased, and all was still once more,
Save ocean chafing on his shore,
The sighing of the wind between
The broad banana's leaves of green,

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THE SLAVE-SHIPS.

"Ha! stand or dre!" The white man's eye

His steady musker gleamed along,
As a tall Negro hastened nigh,
With fearless step and strong.
"What, ho, Toussaint!"

more,

A moment

His shadow crossed the lighted floor. "Away!" he shouted; "fly with me, — The white man's bark is on the sea; Her sails must catch the seaward wind, For sudden vengeance sweeps behind. Our brethren from their graves have spoken,

The yoke is spurned, -the chain is broken;

On all the hills our fires are glowing, Through all the vales red blood is flowing!

No more the mocking White shall rest
His foot upon the Negro's breast;
No more, at morn or eve, shall drip
The warm blood from the driver's whip:
Yet, though Toussaint has vengeance

sworn

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!"-Hespoke, 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.

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Which still hath spurned the base control

Of tyrants through all time!

Far other hands than mine may wreath
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: - 33

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.

THE SLAVE-SHIPS.34

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"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.

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Night settled on the waters,

And on a stormy heaven,

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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!"

On livid brows of agony

The broad red lightning shone, But the roar of wind and thunder Stifled the answering groan Wailed from the broken waters A last despairing cry, As, kindling in the stormy light, The stranger ship went by.

In the sunny Guadaloupe
A dark-hulled vessel lay,
With a crew who noted never
The nightfall or the day.
The blossom of the orange

STANZAS.

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 king- cradle 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 institutions!- 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 ! laves crouching on the very plains Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!

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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, Strikes for his freedom or a grave? Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung

For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurn

ing, And millions hail with pen and tongue Our light on all her altars burning?

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