Anti Slavery, Labor and Reform, Complete
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John Greenleaf Whittier >> Anti Slavery, Labor and Reform, Complete
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16 This eBook was produced by David Widger
VOLUME III.
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS
SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS:
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS:
TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE
THE SLAVE-SHIPS
EXPOSTULATION
HYMN: "THOU, WHOSE PRESENCE WENT BEFORE"
THE YANKEE GIRL
THE HUNTERS OF MEN
STANZAS FOR THE TIMES
CLERICAL OPPRESSORS
A SUMMONS
TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS
THE MORAL WARFARE
RITNER
THE PASTORAL LETTER
HYMN: "O HOLY FATHER! JUST AND TRUE"
THE FAREWELL OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER
PENNSYLVANIA HALL
THE NEW YEAR
THE RELIC
THE WORLD'S CONVENTION
MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA
THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE
THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN
TEXAS
VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND
TO FANEUIL HALL
TO MASSACHUSETTS
NEW HAMPSHIRE
THE PINE-TREE
TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN
AT WASHINGTON
THE BRANDED HAND
THE FREED ISLANDS
A LETTER
LINES FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND
DANIEL NEALL
SONG OF SLAVES IN THE DESERT
To DELAWARE
YORKTOWN
RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE
THE LOST STATESMAN
THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE
THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS
PAEAN
THE CRISIS
LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER
DERNE
A SABBATH SCENE
IN THE EVIL DAY
MOLOCH IN STATE STREET
OFFICIAL PIETY
THE RENDITION
ARISEN AT LAST
THE HASCHISH
FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE
THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS
LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST
EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH, IN KANSAS, TO A
DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN
BURIAL OF BARBER
TO PENNSYLVANIA
LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.
THE PASS OF THE SIERRA
A SONG FOR THE TIME
WHAT OF THE DAY?
A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS
THE PANORAMA
ON A PRAYER-BOOK
THE SUMMONS
TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD
IN WAR TIME.
TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND HARRIET W. SEWALL
THY WILL BE DONE
A WORD FOR THE HOUR
"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT"
TO JOHN C. FREMONT
THE WATCHERS
TO ENGLISHMEN
MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS
AT PORT ROYAL
ASTRAEA AT THE CAPITOL
THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862
OF ST. HELENA'S ISLAND, S. C.
THE PROCLAMATION
ANNIVERSARY POEM
BARBARA FRIETCHIE
HAT THE BIRDS SAID
THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATRA
LADS DEO!
HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPATION
AT NEWBURYPORT
AFTER THE WAR.
THE PEACE AUTUMN
TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS
THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG
HOWARD AT ATLANTA
THE EMANCIPATION GROUP
THE JUBILEE SINGERS
GARRISON
SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM:
THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME
DEMOCRACY
THE GALLOWS
SEED-TIME AND HARVEST
TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND
THE HUMAN SACRIFICE
SONGS OF LABOR
DEDICATION
THE SHOEMAKERS
THE FISHERMEN
THE LUMBERMEN
THE SHIP-BUILDERS
THE DROVERS
THE HUSKERS
THE REFORMER
THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS
THE PRISONER FOR DEBT
THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS
THE MEN OF OLD
TO PIUS IX.
CALEF IN BOSTON
OUR STATE
THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES
THE PEACE OF EUROPE
ASTRAEA
THE DISENTHRALLED
THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY
THE DREAM OF PIO NONO
THE VOICES
THE NEW EXODUS
THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND
THE EVE OF ELECTION
FROM PERUGIA
ITALY
FREEDOM IN BRAZIL
AFTER ELECTION
DISARMAMENT
THE PROBLEM
OUR COUNTRY
ON THE BIG HORN
NOTES
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS
..........
TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
CHAMPION of those who groan beneath
Oppression's iron hand
In view of penury, hate, and death,
I see thee fearless stand.
Still bearing up thy lofty brow,
In the steadfast strength of truth,
In manhood sealing well the vow
And promise of thy youth.
Go on, for thou hast chosen well;
On in the strength of God!
Long as one human heart shall swell
Beneath the tyrant's rod.
Speak in a slumbering nation's ear,
As thou hast ever spoken,
Until the dead in sin shall hear,
The fetter's link be broken!
I love thee with a brother's love,
I feel my pulses thrill,
To mark thy spirit soar above
The cloud of human ill.
My heart hath leaped to answer thine,
And echo back thy words,
As leaps the warrior's at the shine
And flash of kindred swords!
They tell me thou art rash and vain,
A searcher after fame;
That thou art striving but to gain
A long-enduring name;
That thou hast nerved the Afric's hand
And steeled the Afric's heart,
To shake aloft his vengeful brand,
And rend his chain apart.
Have I not known thee well, and read
Thy mighty purpose long?
And watched the trials which have made
Thy human spirit strong?
And shall the slanderer's demon breath
Avail with one like me,
To dim the sunshine of my faith
And earnest trust in thee?
Go on, the dagger's point may glare
Amid thy pathway's gloom;
The fate which sternly threatens there
Is glorious martyrdom
Then onward with a martyr's zeal;
And wait thy sure reward
When man to man no more shall kneel,
And God alone be Lord!
1832.
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.
Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the
plantation "de Libertas," belonging to M. Bayou. When the rising of the
negroes took place, in 1791, Toussaint refused to join them until he had
aided M. Bayou and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man had
discovered in Toussaint many noble qualities, and had instructed him in
some of the first branches of education; and the preservation of his
life was owing to the negro's gratitude for this kindness. In 1797,
Toussaint L'Ouverture was appointed, by the French government,
General-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, and, as such, signed the
Convention with General Maitland for the evacuation of the island by the
British. From this period, until 1801, the island, under the government
of Toussaint, was happy, tranquil, and prosperous. The miserable
attempt of Napoleon to re-establish slavery in St. Domingo, although it
failed of its intended object, proved fatal to the negro chieftain.
Treacherously seized by Leclerc, he was hurried on board a vessel by
night, and conveyed to France, where he was confined in a cold
subterranean dungeon, at Besancon, where, in April, 1803, he died. The
treatment of Toussaint finds a parallel only in the murder of the Duke
D'Enghien. It was the remark of Godwin, in his Lectures, that the West
India Islands, since their first discovery by Columbus, could not boast
of a single name which deserves comparison with that of Toussaint
L'Ouverture.
'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight smile
With which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed down
Its beauty on the Indian isle,--
On broad green field and white-walled town;
And inland waste of rock and wood,
In searching sunshine, wild and rude,
Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam,
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!
How 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,
Or bough by restless plumage shook,
Or murmuring voice of mountain brook.
Brief was the silence. Once again
Pealed to the skies that frantic yell,
Glowed on the heavens a fiery stain,
And flashes rose and fell;
And painted on the blood-red sky,
Dark, naked arms were tossed on high;
And, round the white man's lordly hall,
Trod, fierce and free, the brute he made;
And those who crept along the wall,
And answered to his lightest call
With more than spaniel dread,
The creatures of his lawless beck,
Were trampling on his very neck
And on the night-air, wild and clear,
Rose woman's shriek of more than fear;
For bloodied arms were round her thrown,
And dark cheeks pressed against her own!
Where then was he whose fiery zeal
Had taught the trampled heart to feel,
Until despair itself grew strong,
And vengeance fed its torch from wrong?
Now, when the thunderbolt is speeding;
Now, when oppression's heart is bleeding;
Now, when the latent curse of Time
Is raining down in fire and blood,
That curse which, through long years of crime,
Has gathered, drop by drop, its flood,--
Why strikes he not, the foremost one,
Where murder's sternest deeds are done?
He stood the aged palms beneath,
That shadowed o'er his humble door,
Listening, with half-suspended breath,
To the wild sounds of fear and death,
Toussaint L'Ouverture!
What marvel that his heart beat high!
The blow for freedom had been given,
And blood had answered to the cry
Which Earth sent up to Heaven!
What marvel that a fierce delight
Smiled grimly o'er his brow of night,
As groan and shout and bursting flame
Told where the midnight tempest came,
With blood and fire along its van,
And death behind! he was a Man!
Yes, dark-souled chieftain! if the light
Of mild Religion's heavenly ray
Unveiled not to thy mental sight
The lowlier and the purer way,
In which the Holy Sufferer trod,
Meekly amidst the sons of crime;
That calm reliance upon God
For justice in His own good time;
That gentleness to which belongs
Forgiveness for its many wrongs,
Even as the primal martyr, kneeling
For mercy on the evil-dealing;
Let not the favored white man name
Thy stern appeal, with words of blame.
Then, injured Afric! for the shame
Of thy own daughters, vengeance came
Full on the scornful hearts of those,
Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes,
And to thy hapless children gave
One choice,--pollution or the grave!
Has he not, with the light of heaven
Broadly around him, made the same?
Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven,
And gloried in his ghastly shame?
Kneeling amidst his brother's blood,
To offer mockery unto God,
As if the High and Holy One
Could smile on deeds of murder done!
As if a human sacrifice
Were purer in His holy eyes,
Though offered up by Christian hands,
Than the foul rites of Pagan lands!
. . . . . . . . . . .
Sternly, amidst his household band,
His carbine grasped within his hand,
The white man stood, prepared and still,
Waiting the shock of maddened men,
Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when
The horn winds through their caverned hill.
And one was weeping in his sight,
The sweetest flower of all the isle,
The bride who seemed but yesternight
Love's fair embodied smile.
And, clinging to her trembling knee,
Looked up the form of infancy,
With tearful glance in either face
The secret of its fear to trace.
"Ha! stand or die!" The white man's eye
His steady musket gleamed along,
As a tall Negro hastened nigh,
With fearless step and strong.
"What, ho, Toussaint!" A moment more,
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 bills 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!" He spoke, 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.
Far out, in peace, the white man's sail
Swayed free before the sunrise gale.
Cloud-like that island hung afar,
Along the bright horizon's verge,
O'er which the curse of servile war
Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge;
And he, the Negro champion, where
In the fierce tumult struggled he?
Go trace him by the fiery glare
Of dwellings in the midnight air,
The yells of triumph and despair,
The streams that crimson to the sea!
Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb,
Beneath Besancon's alien sky,
Dark Haytien! for the time shall come,
Yea, even now is nigh,
When, everywhere, thy name shall be
Redeemed from color's infamy;
And men shall learn to speak of thee
As one of earth's great spirits, born
In servitude, and nursed in scorn,
Casting aside the weary weight
And fetters of its low estate,
In that strong majesty of soul
Which knows no color, tongue, or clime,
Which still hath spurned the base control
Of tyrants through all time!
Far other hands than mine may wreathe
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:
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 amid its chains,--
That kindness to the wronged is never
Without its excellent reward,
Holy to human-kind and ever
Acceptable to God.
1833.
THE SLAVE-SHIPS.
"That fatal, that perfidious bark,
Built I' the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."
MILTON'S Lycidas.
"The French ship Le Rodeur, with a crew of twenty-two men, and with one
hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from Bonny, in Africa, April,
1819. On approaching the line, a terrible malady broke out,--an
obstinate disease of the eyes,--contagious, and altogether beyond the
resources of medicine. It was aggravated by the scarcity of water among
the slaves (only half a wine-glass per day being allowed to an
individual), and by the extreme impurity of the air in which they
breathed. By the advice of the physician, they were brought upon deck
occasionally; but some of the poor wretches, locking themselves in each
other's arms, leaped overboard, in the hope, which so universally
prevails among them, of being swiftly transported to their own homes in
Africa. To check this, the captain ordered several who were stopped in
the attempt to be shot, or hanged, before their companions. The disease
extended to the crew; and one after another were smitten with it, until
only one remained unaffected. Yet even this dreadful condition did not
preclude calculation: to save the expense of supporting slaves rendered
unsalable, and to obtain grounds for a claim against the underwriters,
thirty-six of the negroes, having become blind, were thrown into the sea
and drowned!" Speech of M. Benjamin Constant, in the French Chamber of
Deputies, June 17, 1820.
In the midst of their dreadful fears lest the solitary individual, whose
sight remained unaffected, should also be seized with the malady, a sail
was discovered. It was the Spanish slaver, Leon. The same disease had
been there; and, horrible to tell, all the crew had become blind! Unable
to assist each other, the vessels parted. The Spanish ship has never
since been heard of. The Rodeur reached Guadaloupe on the 21st of June;
the only man who had escaped the disease, and had thus been enabled to
steer the slaver into port, caught it in three days after its arrival.--
Bibliotheque Ophthalmologique for November, 1819.
"ALL ready?" cried the captain;
"Ay, ay!" the seamen said;
"Heave up the worthless lubbers,--
The dying and the dead."
Up from the slave-ship's prison
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust:
"Now let the sharks look to it,--
Toss up the dead ones first!"
Corpse after corpse came up,
Death had been busy there;
Where every blow is mercy,
Why should the spoiler spare?
Corpse after corpse they cast
Sullenly from the ship,
Yet bloody with the traces
Of fetter-link and whip.
Gloomily stood the captain,
With his arms upon his breast,
With his cold brow sternly knotted,
And his iron lip compressed.
"Are all the dead dogs over?"
Growled through that matted lip;
"The blind ones are no better,
Let's lighten the good ship."
Hark! from the ship's dark bosom,
The very sounds of hell!
The ringing clank of iron,
The maniac's short, sharp yell!
The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled;
The starving infant's moan,
The horror of a breaking heart
Poured through a mother's groan.
Up from that loathsome prison
The stricken blind ones cane
Below, had all been darkness,
Above, was still the same.
Yet the holy breath of heaven
Was sweetly breathing there,
And the heated brow of fever
Cooled in the soft sea air.
"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.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Red glowed the western waters,
The setting sun was there,
Scattering alike on wave and cloud
His fiery mesh of hair.
Amidst a group in blindness,
A solitary eye
Gazed, from the burdened slaver's deck,
Into that burning sky.
"A storm," spoke out the gazer,
"Is gathering and at hand;
Curse on 't, I'd give my other eye
For one firm rood of land."
And then he laughed, but only
His echoed laugh replied,
For the blinded and the suffering
Alone were at his side.
Night settled on the waters,
And on a stormy heaven,
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
Was white by every stream,
And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird
Were in the warns 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.
1834.
EXPOSTULATION.
Dr. Charles Follen, a German patriot, who had come to America for the
freedom which was denied him in his native land, allied himself with the
abolitionists, and at a convention of delegates from all the anti-
slavery organizations in New England, held at Boston in May, 1834, was
chairman of a committee to prepare an address to the people of New
England. Toward the close of the address occurred the passage which
suggested these lines. "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!
Slaves, crouching on the very plains
Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!
A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood,
A. wail where Camden's martyrs fell,
By every shrine of patriot blood,
From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well!
By storied hill and hallowed grot,
By mossy wood and marshy glen,
Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,
And hurrying shout of Marion's men!
The groan of breaking hearts is there,
The falling lash, the fetter's clank!
Slaves, slaves are breathing in that air
Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank!
What, ho! our countrymen in chains!
The whip on woman's shrinking flesh!
Our soil yet reddening with the stains
Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh!
What! mothers from their children riven!
What! God's own image bought and sold!
Americans to market driven,
And bartered as the brute for gold!
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 spurning,
And millions hail with pen and tongue
Our light on all her altars burning?
Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France,
By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's wall,
And Poland, gasping on her lance,
The impulse of our cheering call?
And shall the slave, beneath our eye,
Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain?
And toss his fettered arms on high,
And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain?
Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be
A refuge for the stricken slave?
And shall the Russian serf go free
By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave?
And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane
Relax the iron hand of pride,
And bid his bondmen cast the chain
From fettered soul and limb aside?
Shall every flap of England's flag
Proclaim that all around are free,
From farthest Ind to each blue crag
That beetles o'er the Western Sea?
And shall we scoff at Europe's kings,
When Freedom's fire is dim with us,
And round our country's altar clings
The damning shade of Slavery's curse?
Go, let us ask of Constantine
To loose his grasp on Poland's throat;
And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line
To spare the struggling Suliote;
Will not the scorching answer come
From turbaned Turk, and scornful Russ
"Go, loose your fettered slaves at home,
Then turn, and ask the like of us!"
Just God! and shall we calmly rest,
The Christian's scorn, the heathen's mirth,
Content to live the lingering jest
And by-word of a mocking Earth?
Shall our own glorious land retain
That curse which Europe scorns to bear?
Shall our own brethren drag the chain
Which not even Russia's menials wear?
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