For, as that saved of bird and beast So has the seed of these increased Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats; Of ice the northern voyager meets I offer to all bores this perch, To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyes Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys My wonder, then, was not unmixed I saw its trembling arms enclose Whose doublet plain and plainer hose Now even such men as Nature forms Who knows, thought I, but he has come, To tell me of a mighty sum Q There is a buccaneerish air Just then the ghost drew up his chair "I come from Plymouth, deadly bored "We had some toughness in our grain, "He had stiff knees, the Puritan, He thought was worth defending; “These loud ancestral boasts of yours, Mere pegs to hang an office on Such stalwart men as these are." "Good Sir," I said, "you seem much stirred The sacred compromises" "Now God confound the dastard word! My gall thereat arises: Northward it hath this sense alone, ""T is shame to see such painted sticks "We forefathers to such a rout! وو Half rose the ghost, and half drew out "No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain The hem of thy white vesture. "I feel the soul in me draw near The streaks of first forewarning, "Child of our travail and our woe, I hear great steps, that through the shade And voices call like that which bade I looked, no form mine eyes could find, And through my window-chinks the wind Thought I, My neighbor Buckingham Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham, ON THE CAPTURE OF CERTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON. Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these! I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest; And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame, 'Tis but my Bay-State dialect, our fathers spake the same! Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on stone The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day! Are we pledged to craven silence? O fling it to the wind, The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind, - That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest, While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast! Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first; The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God! We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core; Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men. He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done, To the humblest and the weakest, neath the all-behold ing sun, That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race. God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free With parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or sea. Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will, From soul to soul o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill. Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart, With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart: When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay-State's iron shore, The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more. Out from the land of bondage 't is decreed our slaves shall go, And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh; yore, If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of gore. |