Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): Ecclesiastes"

Anna Katharine Green - "A Strange Disappearance"

Franklin Pierce - "State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce"

Thornton W. Burgess - "The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack"

The Complete Works of Whittier

J >> John Greenleaf Whittier >> The Complete Works of Whittier




"My reverend friend and kind McGregore,
Although thou ne'er was ca'd a bragger,
Thy muse I'm sure nave e'er was glegger
Thy Scottish lays
Might gar Socinians fa' or stagger,
E'en in their ways.

"When Unitarian champions dare thee,
Goliah like, and think to scare thee,
Dear Davie, fear not, they'll ne'er waur thee;
But draw thy sling,
Weel loaded frae the Gospel quarry,
An' gie 't a fling."

The last time I saw him, he was chaffering in the market-place of my
native village, swapping potatoes and onions and pumpkins for tea,
coffee, molasses, and, if the truth be told, New England rum. Threescore
years and ten, to use his own words,

"Hung o'er his back,
And bent him like a muckle pack,"

yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his thick shoes of cowhide,
like one accustomed to tread independently the soil of his own acres,--
his broad, honest face seamed by care and darkened by exposure to "all
the airts that blow," and his white hair flowing in patriarchal glory
beneath his felt hat. A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man, simple as
a child, and betraying, neither in look nor manner, that he was
accustomed to

"Feed on thoughts which voluntary move
Harmonious numbers."

Peace to him! A score of modern dandies and sentimentalists could ill
supply the place of this one honest man. In the ancient burial-ground of
Windham, by the side of his "beloved Molly," and in view of the old
meeting-house, there is a mound of earth, where, every spring, green
grasses tremble in the wind and the warm sunshine calls out the flowers.
There, gathered like one of his own ripe sheaves, the farmer poet sleeps
with his fathers.






PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET.

[1845.]

I have been greatly interested in the fate of Juan Placido, the black
revolutionist of Cuba, who was executed in Havana, as the alleged
instigator and leader of an attempted revolt on the part of the slaves in
that city and its neighborhood.

Juan Placido was born a slave on the estate of Don Terribio de Castro.
His father was an African, his mother a mulatto. His mistress treated
him with great kindness, and taught him to read. When he was twelve
years of age she died, and he fell into other and less compassionate
hands. At the age of eighteen, on seeing his mother struck with a heavy
whip, he for the first time turned upon his tormentors. To use his own
words, "I felt the blow in my heart. To utter a loud cry, and from a
downcast boy, with the timidity of one weak as a lamb, to become all at
office like a raging lion, was a thing of a moment." He was, however,
subdued, and the next morning, together with his mother, a tenderly
nurtured and delicate woman, severely scourged. On seeing his mother
rudely stripped and thrown down upon the ground, he at first with tears
implored the overseer to spare her; but at the sound of the first blow,
as it cut into her naked flesh, he sprang once more upon the ruffian,
who, having superior strength, beat him until he was nearer dead than
alive.

After suffering all the vicissitudes of slavery,--hunger, nakedness,
stripes; after bravely and nobly bearing up against that slow, dreadful
process which reduces the man to a thing, the image of God to a piece of
merchandise, until he had reached his thirty-eighth year, he was
unexpectedly released from his bonds. Some literary gentlemen in Havana,
into whose hands two or three pieces of his composition had fallen,
struck with the vigor, spirit, and natural grace which they manifested,
sought out the author, and raised a subscription to purchase his freedom.
He came to Havana, and maintained himself by house-painting, and such
other employments as his ingenuity and talents placed within his reach.
He wrote several poems, which have been published in Spanish at Havana,
and translated by Dr. Madden, under the title of _Poems by a Slave_.

It is not too much to say of these poems that they will bear a comparison
with most of the productions of modern Spanish literature. The style is
bold, free, energetic. Some of the pieces are sportive and graceful;
such is the address to _The Cucuya_, or Cuban firefly. This beautiful
insect is sometimes fastened in tiny nets to the light dresses of the
Cuban ladies, a custom to which the writer gallantly alludes in the
following lines:--

"Ah!--still as one looks on such brightness and bloom,
On such beauty as hers, one might envy the doom
Of a captive Cucuya that's destined, like this,
To be touched by her hand and revived by her kiss!
In the cage which her delicate hand has prepared,
The beautiful prisoner nestles unscared,
O'er her fair forehead shining serenely and bright,
In beauty's own bondage revealing its light!
And when the light dance and the revel are done,
She bears it away to her alcove alone,
Where, fed by her hand from the cane that's most choice,
In secret it gleans at the sound of her voice!
O beautiful maiden! may Heaven accord
Thy care of the captive a fitting reward,
And never may fortune the fetters remove
Of a heart that is thine in the bondage of love!"

In his Dream, a fragment of some length, Placido dwells in a touching
manner upon the scenes of his early years. It is addressed to his
brother Florence, who was a slave near Matanzas, while the author was in
the same condition at Havana. There is a plaintive and melancholy
sweetness in these lines, a natural pathos, which finds its way to the
heart:--

"Thou knowest, dear Florence, my sufferings of old,
The struggles maintained with oppression for years;
We shared them together, and each was consoled
With the love which was nurtured by sorrow and tears.

"But now far apart, the sad pleasure is gone,
We mingle our sighs and our sorrows no more;
The course is a new one which each has to run,
And dreary for each is the pathway before.

"But in slumber our spirits at least shall commune,
We will meet as of old in the visions of sleep,
In dreams which call back early days, when at noon
We stole to the shade of the palm-tree to weep!

"For solitude pining, in anguish of late
The heights of Quintana I sought for repose;
And there, in the cool and the silence, the weight
Of my cares was forgotten, I felt not any woes.

"Exhausted and weary, the spell of the place
Sank down on my eyelids, and soft slumber stole
So sweetly upon me, it left not a trace
Of sorrow o'ercasting the light of the soul."


The writer then imagines himself borne lightly through the air to the
place of his birth. The valley of Matanzas lies beneath him, hallowed by
the graves of his parents. He proceeds:--

"I gazed on that spot where together we played,
Our innocent pastimes came fresh to my mind,
Our mother's caress, and the fondness displayed
In each word and each look of a parent so kind.

"I looked on the mountain, whose fastnesses wild
The fugitives seek from the rifle and hound;
Below were the fields where they suffered and toiled,
And there the low graves of their comrades are found.

"The mill-house was there, and the turmoil of old;
But sick of these scenes, for too well were they known,
I looked for the stream where in childhood I strolled
When a moment of quiet and peace was my own.

"With mingled emotions of pleasure and pain,
Dear Florence, I sighed to behold thee once more;
I sought thee, my brother, embraced thee again,
But I found thee a slave as I left thee before!"

Some of his devotional pieces evince the fervor and true feeling of the
Christian poet. His _Ode to Religion_ contains many admirable lines.
Speaking of the martyrs of the early days of Christianity, he says
finely:--

"Still in that cradle, purpled with their blood,
The infant Faith waxed stronger day by day."

I cannot forbear quoting the last stanza of this poem:--

"O God of mercy, throned in glory high,
On earth and all its misery look down:
Behold the wretched, hear the captive's cry,
And call Thy exiled children round Thy throne!
There would I fain in contemplation gaze
On Thy eternal beauty, and would make
Of love one lasting canticle of praise,
And every theme but Thee henceforth forsake!"

His best and noblest production is an ode _To Cuba_, written on the
occasion of Dr. Madden's departure from the island, and presented to that
gentleman. It was never published in Cuba, as its sentiments would have
subjected the author to persecution. It breathes a lofty spirit of
patriotism, and an indignant sense of the wrongs inflicted upon his race.
Withal, it has something of the grandeur and stateliness of the old
Spanish muse.

"Cuba!--of what avail that thou art fair,
Pearl of the Seas, the pride of the Antilles,
If thy poor sons have still to see thee share
The pangs of bondage and its thousand ills?
Of what avail the verdure of thy hills,
The purple bloom thy coffee-plain displays;
The cane's luxuriant growth, whose culture fills
More graves than famine, or the sword finds ways
To glut with victims calmly as it slays?

"Of what avail that thy clear streams abound
With precious ore, if wealth there's, none to buy
Thy children's rights, and not one grain is found
For Learning's shrine, or for the altar nigh
Of poor, forsaken, downcast Liberty?
Of what avail the riches of thy port,
Forests of masts and ships from every sea,
If Trade alone is free, and man, the sport
And spoil of Trade, bears wrongs of every sort?

"Cuba! O Cuba!---when men call thee fair,
And rich, and beautiful, the Queen of Isles,
Star of the West, and Ocean's gem most rare,
Oh, say to those who mock thee with such wiles:
Take off these flowers; and view the lifeless spoils
Which wait the worm; behold their hues beneath
The pale, cold cheek; and seek for living smiles
Where Beauty lies not in the arms of Death,
And Bondage taints not with its poison breath!"

The disastrous result of the last rising of the slaves--in Cuba is well
known. Betrayed, and driven into premature collision with their
oppressors, the insurrectionists were speedily crushed into subjection.
Placido was arrested, and after a long hearing was condemned to be
executed, and consigned to the Chapel of the Condemned.

How far he was implicated in the insurrectionary movement it is now
perhaps impossible to ascertain. The popular voice at Havana pronounced
him its leader and projector, and as such he was condemned. His own
bitter wrongs; the terrible recollections of his life of servitude; the
sad condition of his relatives and race, exposed to scorn, contumely, and
the heavy hand of violence; the impunity with which the most dreadful
outrages upon the persons of slaves were inflicted,--acting upon a mind
fully capable of appreciating the beauty and dignity of freedom,--
furnished abundant incentives to an effort for the redemption of his race
and the humiliation of his oppressors. The Heraldo, of Madrid speaks of
him as "the celebrated poet, a man of great natural genius, and beloved
and appreciated by the most respectable young men of Havana." It accuses
him of wild and ambitious projects, and states that he was intended to be
the chief of the black race after they had thrown off the yoke of
bondage.

He was executed at Havana in the seventh month, 1844. According to the
custom in Cuba with condemned criminals, he was conducted from prison to
the Chapel of the Doomed. He passed thither with singular composure,
amidst a great concourse of people, gracefully saluting his numerous
acquaintances. The chapel was hung with black cloth, and dimly lighted.
He was seated beside his coffin. Priests in long black robes stood
around him, chanting in sepulchral voices the service of the dead. It is
an ordeal under which the stoutest-hearted and most resolute have been
found to sink. After enduring it for twenty-four hours he was led out to
execution. He came forth calm and undismayed; holding a crucifix in his
hand, he recited in a loud, clear voice a solemn prayer in verse, which
he had composed amidst the horrors of the Chapel. The following is an
imperfect rendering of a poem which thrilled the hearts of all who heard
it:--

"God of unbounded love and power eternal,
To Thee I turn in darkness and despair!
Stretch forth Thine arm, and from the brow infernal
Of Calumny the veil of Justice tear;
And from the forehead of my honest fame
Pluck the world's brand of infamy and shame!

"O King of kings!--my fathers' God!--who only
Art strong to save, by whom is all controlled,
Who givest the sea its waves, the dark and lonely
Abyss of heaven its light, the North its cold,
The air its currents, the warm sun its beams,
Life to the flowers, and motion to the streams!

"All things obey Thee, dying or reviving
As thou commandest; all, apart from Thee,
From Thee alone their life and power deriving,
Sink and are lost in vast eternity!
Yet doth the void obey Thee; since from naught
This marvellous being by Thy hand was wrought.

"O merciful God! I cannot shun Thy presence,
For through its veil of flesh Thy piercing eye
Looketh upon my spirit's unsoiled essence,
As through the pure transparence of the sky;
Let not the oppressor clap his bloody hands,
As o'er my prostrate innocence he stands!

"But if, alas, it seemeth good to Thee
That I should perish as the guilty dies,
And that in death my foes should gaze on me
With hateful malice and exulting eyes,
Speak Thou the word, and bid them shed my blood,
Fully in me Thy will be done, O God!"

On arriving at the fatal spot, he sat down as ordered, on a bench, with
his back to the soldiers. The multitude recollected that in some
affecting lines, written by the conspirator in prison, he had said that
it would be useless to seek to kill him by shooting his body,--that his
heart must be pierced ere it would cease its throbbings. At the last
moment, just as the soldiers were about to fire, he rose up and gazed for
an instant around and above him on the beautiful capital of his native
land and its sail-flecked bay, on the dense crowds about him, the blue
mountains in the distance, and the sky glorious with summer sunshine.
"Adios, mundo!" (Farewell, world!) he said calmly, and sat down. The
word was given, and five balls entered his body. Then it was that,
amidst the groans and murmurs of the horror-stricken spectators, he rose
up once more, and turned his head to the shuddering soldiers, his face
wearing an expression of superhuman courage. "Will no one pity me?" he
said, laying his hand over his heart. "Here, fire here!" While he yet
spake, two balls entered his heart, and he fell dead.

Thus perished the hero poet of Cuba. He has not fallen in vain. His
genius and his heroic death will doubtless be regarded by his race as
precious legacies. To the great names of L'Ouverture and Petion the
colored man can now add that of Juan Placido.







PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES


THE FUNERAL OF TORREY.

Charles T. Torrey, an able young Congregational clergyman, died May
9, 1846, in the state's prison of Maryland, for the offence of
aiding slaves to escape from bondage. His funeral in Boston,
attended by thousands, was a most impressive occasion. The
following is an extract from an article written for the _Essex
Transcript_:--

Some seven years ago, we saw Charles T. Torrey for the first time. His
wife was leaning on his arm,--young, loving, and beautiful; the heart
that saw them blessed them. Since that time, we have known him as a most
energetic and zealous advocate of the anti-slavery cause. He had fine
talents, improved by learning and observation, a clear, intensely active
intellect, and a heart full of sympathy and genial humanity. It was with
strange and bitter feelings that we bent over his coffin and looked upon
his still face. The pity which we had felt for him in his long
sufferings gave place to indignation against his murderers. Hateful
beyond the power of expression seemed the tyranny which had murdered him
with the slow torture of the dungeon. May God forgive us, if for the
moment we felt like grasping His dread prerogative of vengeance. As we
passed out of the hall, a friend grasped our hand hard, his eye flashing
through its tears, with a stern reflection of our own emotions, while he
whispered through his pressed lips: "It is enough to turn every anti-
slavery heart into steel." Our blood boiled; we longed to see the wicked
apologists of slavery--the blasphemous defenders of it in Church and
State--led up to the coffin of our murdered brother, and there made to
feel that their hands had aided in riveting the chain upon those still
limbs, and in shutting out from those cold lips the free breath of
heaven.

A long procession followed his remains to their resting-place at Mount
Auburn. A monument to his memory will be raised in that cemetery, in the
midst of the green beauty of the scenery which he loved in life, and side
by side with the honored dead of Massachusetts. Thither let the friends
of humanity go to gather fresh strength from the memory of the martyr.
There let the slaveholder stand, and as he reads the record of the
enduring marble commune with his own heart, and feel that sorrow which
worketh repentance.

The young, the beautiful, the brave!--he is safe now from the malice of
his enemies. Nothing can harm him more. His work for the poor and
helpless was well and nobly done. In the wild woods of Canada, around
many a happy fireside and holy family altar, his name is on the lips of
God's poor. He put his soul in their souls' stead; he gave his life for
those who had no claim on his love save that of human brotherhood. How
poor, how pitiful and paltry, seem our labors! How small and mean our
trials and sacrifices! May the spirit of the dead be with us, and infuse
into our hearts something of his own deep sympathy, his hatred of
injustice, his strong faith and heroic endurance. May that spirit be
gladdened in its present sphere by the increased zeal and faithfulness of
the friends he has left behind.




EDWARD EVERETT.

A letter to Robert C. Waterston.

Amesbury, 27th 1st Month, 1865.

I acknowledge through thee the invitation of the standing committee of
the Massachusetts Historical Society to be present at a special meeting
of the Society for the purpose of paying a tribute to the memory of our
late illustrious associate, Edward Everett.

It is a matter of deep regret to me that the state of my health will not
permit me to be with you on an occasion of so much interest.

It is most fitting that the members of the Historical Society of
Massachusetts should add their tribute to those which have been already
offered by all sects, parties, and associations to the name and fame of
their late associate. He was himself a maker of history, and part and
parcel of all the noble charities and humanizing influences of his State
and time.

When the grave closed over him who added new lustre to the old and
honored name of Quincy, all eyes instinctively turned to Edward Everett
as the last of that venerated class of patriotic civilians who, outliving
all dissent and jealousy and party prejudice, held their reputation by
the secure tenure of the universal appreciation of its worth as a common
treasure of the republic. It is not for me to pronounce his eulogy.
Others, better qualified by their intimate acquaintance with him, have
done and will do justice to his learning, eloquence, varied culture, and
social virtues. My secluded country life has afforded me few
opportunities of personal intercourse with him, while my pronounced
radicalism on the great question which has divided popular feeling
rendered our political paths widely divergent. Both of us early saw the
danger which threatened the country. In the language of the prophet, we
"saw the sword coming upon the land," but while he believed in the
possibility of averting it by concession and compromise, I, on the
contrary, as firmly believed that such a course could only strengthen and
confirm what I regarded as a gigantic conspiracy against the rights and
liberties, the union and the life, of the nation.

Recent events have certainly not tended to change this belief on my part;
but in looking over the past, while I see little or nothing to retract in
the matter of opinion, I am saddened by the reflection that through the
very intensity of my convictions I may have done injustice to the motives
of those with whom I differed. As respects Edward Everett, it seems to
me that only within the last four years I have truly known him.

In that brief period, crowded as it is with a whole life-work of
consecration to the union, freedom, and glory of his country, he not only
commanded respect and reverence, but concentrated upon himself in a most
remarkable degree the love of all loyal and generous hearts. We have
seen, in these years of trial, very great sacrifices offered upon the
altar of patriotism,--wealth, ease, home, love, life itself. But Edward
Everett did more than this: he laid on that altar not only his time,
talents, and culture, but his pride of opinion, his long-cherished views
of policy, his personal and political predilections and prejudices, his
constitutional fastidiousness of conservatism, and the carefully
elaborated symmetry of his public reputation. With a rare and noble
magnanimity, he met, without hesitation, the demand of the great
occasion. Breaking away from all the besetments of custom and
association, he forgot the things that are behind, and, with an eye
single to present duty, pressed forward towards the mark of the high
calling of Divine Providence in the events of our time. All honor to
him! If we mourn that he is now beyond the reach of our poor human
praise, let us reverently trust that he has received that higher plaudit:
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant!"

When I last met him, as my colleague in the Electoral College of
Massachusetts, his look of health and vigor seemed to promise us many
years of his wisdom and usefulness. On greeting him I felt impelled to
express my admiration and grateful appreciation of his patriotic labors;
and I shall never forget how readily and gracefully he turned attention
from himself to the great cause in which we had a common interest, and
expressed his thankfulness that he had still a country to serve.

To keep green the memory of such a man is at once a privilege and a duty.
That stainless life of seventy years is a priceless legacy. His hands
were pure. The shadow of suspicion never fell on him. If he erred in
his opinions (and that he did so he had the Christian grace and courage
to own), no selfish interest weighed in the scale of his judgment against
truth.

As our thoughts follow him to his last resting-place, we are sadly
reminded of his own touching lines, written many years ago at Florence.
The name he has left behind is none the less "pure" that instead of being
"humble," as he then anticipated, it is on the lips of grateful millions,
and written ineffaceable on the record of his country's trial and
triumph:--

"Yet not for me when I shall fall asleep
Shall Santa Croce's lamps their vigils keep.
Beyond the main in Auburn's quiet shade,
With those I loved and love my couch be made;
Spring's pendant branches o'er the hillock wave,
And morning's dewdrops glisten on my grave,
While Heaven's great arch shall rise above my bed,
When Santa Croce's crumbles on her dead,--
Unknown to erring or to suffering fame,
So may I leave a pure though humble name."

Congratulating the Society on the prospect of the speedy consummation of
the great objects of our associate's labors,--the peace and permanent
union of our country,--

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.