Anti Slavery Poems I, vol 3, part 1 | Page 8

Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell!?Of Virtue in the arms of Vice!?Of Demons planting Paradise!
Rail on, then, brethren of the South,?Ye shall not hear the truth the less;?No seal is on the Yankee's mouth,?No fetter on the Yankee's press!?From our Green Mountains to the sea,?One voice shall thunder, We are free!
CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.
In the report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in Charleston, S.C., on the 4th of the ninth month, 1835, published in the Courier of that city, it is stated: "The clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene!"
JUST God! and these are they?Who minister at thine altar, God of Right!?Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay?On Israel's Ark of light!
What! preach, and kidnap men??Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor??Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then?Bolt hard the captive's door?
What! servants of thy own?Merciful Son, who came to seek and save?The homeless and the outcast, fettering down?The tasked and plundered slave!
Pilate and Herod, friends!?Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!?Just God and holy! is that church, which lends?Strength to the spoiler, thine?
Paid hypocrites, who turn?Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book?Of those high words of truth which search and burn?In warning and rebuke;
Feed fat, ye locusts, feed!?And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord?That, from the toiling bondman's utter need,?Ye pile your own full board.
How long, O Lord! how long?Shall such a priesthood barter truth away,?And in Thy name, for robbery and wrong?At Thy own altars pray?
Is not Thy hand stretched forth?Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite??Shall not the living God of all the earth,?And heaven above, do right?
Woe, then, to all who grind?Their brethren of a common Father down!?To all who plunder from the immortal mind?Its bright and glorious crown!
Woe to the priesthood! woe?To those whose hire is with the price of blood;?Perverting, darkening, changing, as they go,?The searching truths of God!
Their glory and their might?Shall perish; and their very names shall be?Vile before all the people, in the light?Of a world's liberty.
Oh, speed the moment on?When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and Love?And Truth and Right throughout the earth be known?As in their home above.?1836.
A SUMMONS
Written on the adoption of Pinckney's Resolutions in the House of Representatives, and the passage of Calhoun's "Bill for excluding Papers written or printed, touching the subject of Slavery, from the U. S. Post-office," in the Senate of the United States. Mr. Pinckney's resolutions were in brief that Congress had no authority to interfere in any way with slavery in the States; that it ought not to interfere with it in the District of Columbia, and that all resolutions to that end should be laid on the table without printing. Mr. Calhoun's bill made it a penal offence for post-masters in any State, District, or Territory "knowingly to deliver, to any person whatever, any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or other printed paper or pictorial representation, touching the subject of slavery, where, by the laws of the said State, District, or Territory, their circulation was prohibited."
MEN of the North-land! where's the manly spirit?Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone??Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit?Their names alone?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us,?Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low,?That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us?To silence now?
Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,?In God's name, let us speak while there is time!?Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,?Silence is crime!
What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors?Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter,?For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us,?God and our charter?
Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters,?Here the false jurist human rights deny,?And in the church, their proud and skilled abettors?Make truth a lie?
Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,?To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood??And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel?Both man and God?
Shall our New England stand erect no longer,?But stoop in chains upon her downward way,?Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger?Day after day?
Oh no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains;?From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie;?From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,?And clear, cold sky;
From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean?Gnaws with his surges; from the fisher's skiff,?With white sail swaying to the billows' motion?Round rock and cliff;
From the free fireside of her untought farmer;?From her free laborer at his loom and wheel;?From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer,?Rings the red steel;
From each and all, if God hath not forsaken?Our land, and left us to an evil choice,?Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken?A People's voice.
Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it?Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;?And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it?Within