THE FAREWELL. 73 And Freedom'strumpet sounding clear: Joy to the people !-woe and fear To new-world tyrants, old-world kings!" THE FAREWELL OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HEL DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE. GONE, gone, sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone. Gone, gone, sold and gone, Gone, gone, sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone. Gone, gone, sold and gone, Gone, gone, sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, O, when weary, sad, and slow, From the fields at night they go, Faint with toil, and racked with pain, To their cheerless homes again, There no brother's voice shall greer them, There no father's welcome meet them. To the rice-swamp dank and lone, Gone, gone, sold and gone, YES, let them gather!-Summon forth The pledged philanthropy of Earth, From every land, whose hills have heard The bugle blast of Freedom waking; Or shrieking of her symbol-bird From out his cloudy eyrie breaking: Where'er a single heart is keeping And know in each a friend and brother! THE WORLD'S CONVENTION. 75 With dews from hallowed Hermon | Or morning gun-fire's smoke is curling; wet, From Indian Bengal's groves of palm And rosy fields and gales of balm, Where Eastern pomp and power are rolled Through regal Ava's gates of gold; And from the lakes and ancient woods And dim Canadian solitudes, Whence, sternly from her rocky throne, Queen of the North, Quebec looks down; And from those bright and ransomed Isles Where all unwonted Freedom smiles, From the hoar Alps, which sentinel On Jura's rocky wall is thrown, And from the olive bowers of France And vine groves garlanding the Rhone, "Friends of the Blacks," as true and tried As those who stood by Oge's side, Still let them come, from Quito's walls, And from the Orinoco's tide, From Lima's Inca-haunted halls, From Santa Fe and Yucatan, Men who by swart Guerrero's side Proclaimed the deathless RIGHTS OF And thou whose glory and whose crime The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn! O, who could dream that saw thee then, And watched thy rising from afar, That vapors from oppression's fen Would cloud the upward tending star? Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which heard, Awe-struck, the shout which hailed thy dawning, Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and king, Tu mock thee with their welcoming, Like Hades when her thrones were stirred To greet the down-cast Star of "Aha! and art thou fallen thus? Land of my fathers!- there will stand, A holy gathering!-peaceful all: For vengeance on an erring brother' 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 bestirred: 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 flowing, 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 NEW YEAR. The pen along its page shall burn On all the winds that Southward blow,- The Prophet of the Cherubim, Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling The fire-sign on the palace wall! To note her tardy justice done, Her captives from their chains unbound, Her prisons opening to the sun :?sut 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 fire shall fall from Heaven! NEW HAMPSHIRE. 1845. God bless New Hampshire ! - from her granite peaks Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks. The long-bound vassal of the exulting South For very shame her self-forged chain has broken, 71 Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth, And in the clear tones of her old time spoken! O, all undreamed-of, all unhoped-for changes! The tyrant's ally proves his sternest foe; To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges, New Hampshire thunders an indignant No! Whois it now despairs? O, faint of heart, Look upward to those Northern mountains cold, Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag un, rolled, And gather strength to bear a manlie part ! All is not lost. The angel of God's blessing Encamps with Freedom on the field of fight: Still to her banner, day by day, arę pressing, Unlooked-for allies, striking for the right! Courage, then, Northern hearts! - Be firm, be true: What one brave State hath done, can ye not also do? THE NEW YEAR: ADDRESSED TO THE PATRONS OF THI PENNSYLVANIA FREEMAN. THE wave is breaking on the shore,~ O, seer-seen Angel! waiting now Once more across thy sleepless eye The semblance of a smile has passed The year departing leaves more nigh Time's fearfullest and last. |