Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne, In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn; You've spurned our kindest counsels, - you've hunted for our lives, - And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves!
We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin; We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can, With the strong upward tendencies and godlike soul of man!
But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given For freedom and humanity is registered in Heaven; No slave-hunt in our borders, - no pirate on our strand! No fetters in the Bay State, -no slave upon our land!
[PENNSYLVANIA HALL, dedicated to Free Discussion and the cause of human liberty, was destroyed by a mob in 1838. The following was written on receiving a cane wrought from a fragment of the wood-work which the fire had spared.]
Wreck of a temple, unprofaned, Of courts where Peace with Freedom trod, Lifting on high, with hands unstained, Thanksgiving unto God;
Where Mercy's voice of love was plead- ing
For human hearts in 'bondage bleeding!
Where, midst the sound of rushing feet
And curses on the night-air flung, That pleading voice rose calm and sweet From woman's earnest tongue; And Riot turned his scowling glance, Awed, from her tranquil countenance !
3hat temple now in ruin lies!
The fire-stain on its shattered wall, And open to the changing skies Its black and roofless hall, 1s stands before a nation's sight, Agravestone over buried Right!
But from that ruin, as of old,
The fire-scorched stones themselves are crying,
And from their ashes white and cold Its timbers are replying!
A voice which slavery cannot kill Speaks from the crumbling arches still!
WELCOME home again, brave seaman ! with thy thoughtful brow and gray, And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day, -
With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain !
Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal cravens aim
To make God's truth thy falsehood, his holiest work thy shame? When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn, How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!
They change to wrong the duty which God hath written out On the great heart of humanity, too legible for doubt!
They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown, Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!
Why, that brand is highest honor! - than its traces never yet Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set; And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand, Shall tell with pride the story of their father's BRANDED HAND!
As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back from Syrian war The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scymitars,
The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's crimson span,
So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of God and man.
He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave, Thou for his living presence in the bound and bleeding slave; He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod, Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God!
For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip o'er him swung, From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery wrung, And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine, Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured the bondman's blood for wine, -
While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour knelt,
And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt; Thou beheld'st him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim, And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto him!
In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below, Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know; God's stars and silence taught thee, as his angels only can,
That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man!
That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law and creed, In the depth of God's great goodness may find mercy in his need; But woe to him who crushes the SOUL with chain and rod, And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!
Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of the wave! Its branded palm shall prophesy, "SALVATION TO THE SLAVE!" Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads may feel His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.
Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air, - Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there! Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce's heart of yore, In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before!
And the tyrants of the slave-land shall tremble at that sign, When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan line: Woe to the State-gorged leeches and the Church's locust band, When they look from slavery's ramparts on the coming of that hand!
Up the hillside, down the glen, Rouse the sleeping citizen; Summon out the might of men!
Like a lion growling low, Like a night-storm rising slow, Like the tread of unseen foe,
It is coming, it is nigh! Stand your homes and altars by; On your own free thresholds die. Clang the bells in all your spires; On the gray hills of your sires Fling to heaven your signal-fires.
From Wachuset, lone and bleak, Unto Berkshire's tallest peak, Let the flame-tongued heralds speak,
O, ror God and duty stand, Heart to heart and hand to hand, Round the old graves of the land. Whoso shrinks or falters now, Whoso to the yoke would bow, Brand the craven on his brow!
Freedom's soil hath only place For a free and fearless race, None for traitors false and base.
Perish party, perish clan ; Strike together while ye can, Like the arm of one strong man.
Like that angel's voice sublime, Heard above a world of crime. Crying of the end of time, -
With one heart and with one mouth, Let the North unto the South Speak the word befitting both:
"What though Issachar be strong! Ye may load his back with wrong Overmuch and over long :
"Patience with her cup o'errun, With her weary thread outspun, Murmurs that her work is done.
"Make our Union-bond a chain, Weak as tow in Freedom's strain Link by link shall snap in twain. "Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope Bind the starry cluster up, Shattered over heaven's blue cope!
"Give us bright though broken rays, Rather than eternal haze, Clouding o'er the full-orbed blaze.
"Take your land of sun and bloom; Only leave to Freedom room For her plough, and forge, and loom; "Take your slavery-blackened vales; Leave us but our own free gales, Blowing on our thousand sails. "Boldly, or with treacherous art, Strike the blood-wrought chain apart; Break the Union's mighty heart;
"Work the ruin, if ye will; Pluck upon your heads an ill Which shall grow and deepen still.
"With your bondman's right arm bare, With his heart of black despair, Stand alone, if stand ye dare!
"Onward with your fell design; Dig the gulf and draw the line: Fire beneath your feet the mine:
"Deeply, when the wide abyss Yawns between your land and this, Shall ye feel your helplessness.
"By the hearth, and in the bed, Shaken by a look or tread, Ye shall own a guilty dread.
"And the curse of unpaid toil, Downward through your generous soil Like a fire shall burn and spoil.
"Our bleak hills shall bud and blow, Vines our rocks shall overgrow, Plenty in our valleys flow; - "And when vengeance clouds your skies,
Hither shall ye turn your eyes, As the lost on Paradise!
"We but ask our rocky strand, Freedom's true and brother band, Freedom's strong and honest hand, -
"Valleys by the slave untrod, And the Pilgrim's mountain sod, Blessed of our fathers' God!"
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