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, 1 stands before a nation's sight, A gravestone 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!
And even this relic from thy shrine,
O holy Freedom! hath to me
A potent power, a voice and sign
To testify of thee;
And, grasping it, methinks I feel
A deeper faith, a stronger zeal.
And not unlike that mystic rod,
Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian
Which opened, in the strength of God,
A pathway for the slave,
It yet may point the bondman's way,
And turn the spoiler from his prey.
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When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,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 mane
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 or 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!
O, for 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 !"
Wrongs which freemen neverbrooked,-
Dangers grim and fierce as they,
Which, Иke couching lions, looked
On your fathers' way, -
These your instant zeal demand,
Shaking with their earthquake-call
Every rood of Pilgrim land,
Ho, to Faneuil Hall!
From your capes and sandy bars,
From your mountain-ridges cold,
Through whose pines the westering stars
Stoop their crowns of gold, -
Come, and with your footsteps wake
Echoes from that holy wall;
Once again, for Freedom's sake,
Rock your fathers' hall !
Up, and tread beneath your feet
Every cord by party spun:
Let your hearts together beat
As the heart of one.
Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade,
Let them rise or let them fall:
Freedom asks your common aid,
Up, to Faneuil Hall!
Up, and let each voice that speaks
Ring from thence to Southern plains,
Sharply as the blow which breaks
Prison-bolts and chains!
Speak as well becomes the free:
Dreaded more than steel or ball,
Shall your calmest utterance be,
Heard from Faneuil Hall!
Have they wronged us? Let us then
Render back nor threats nor prayers; Have they chained our free-born men? LET US UNCHAIN THEIRS ! Up, your banner leads the van, Blazoned, "Liberty for all !" Finish what your sires began! Up, to Faneuil Hall!
WHAT though around thee blazes No fiery rallying sign?
From all thy own high places,
Give heaven the light of thine! What though unthrilled, unmoving. The statesman stands apart, And comes no warm approving From Mammon's crowded mart?
Still, let the land be shaken
By a summons of thine own!
By all save truth forsaken,
Why, stand with that alone ! Shrink not from strife unequal ! With the best is always hope; And ever in the sequel
God holds the right side up!
But when, with thine uniting,
Come voices long and loud,
And far-off hills are writing
Thy fire-words on the cloud;
When from Penobscot's fountains
A deep response is heard,
And across the Western mountains
Rolls back thy rallying word;
Shall thy line of battle falter,
With its allies just in view?
O, by hearth and holy altar,
My fatherland, be true!
Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom!
Speed them onward far and fast!
Over hill and valley speed them,
Like the sibyl's on the blast!
Lo! the Empire State is shaking
The shackles from her hand;
With the rugged North is waking
The level sunset land!
On they come, the free battalions!
East and West and North they come,
And the heart-beat of the millions
Is the beat of Freedom's drum.
"To the tyrant's plot no favor!
No heed to place-fed knaves!
Bar and bolt the door forever
Against the land of slaves!"
Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it,
The Heavens above us spread !
The land is roused, -its spirit
Was sleeping, but not dead!
LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State's rusted shield,
Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner's tattered field.
Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board,
Answering England's royal missive with a firm, "THUS SAITH THE LORD!"
Rise again for home and freedom! - set the battle in array!-
What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.
Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltry pedler cries,
Shall the good State sink her honor that your gambling stocks may rise?
Would ye barter man for cotton? That your gains may sum up higher,
Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our children through the fire?
Is the dollar only real? - God and truth and right a dream?
Weighed against your lying ledgers must our manhood kick the beam?
O my God! -for that free spirit, which of old in Boston town
Smote the Province House with terror, struck the crest of Andros down!
For another strong-voiced Adams in the city's streets to cry,
"Up for God and Massachusetts ! — Set your feet on Mammon's lie!
Perish banks and perish traffic, -spin your cotton's latest pound,
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But in Heaven's name keep your honor, -keep the heart o' the Bay State sound !"
Where's the MAN for Massachusetts? - Where's the voice to speak her free?-
Where's the hand to light up bonfires from her mountains to the sea?
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer?- Sits she dumb in her despair?-
Has she none to break the silence?- Has she none to do and dare?
O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her rusted shield,
And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner's tattered field!
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