Anti Slavery Poems II, vol 3, part 2

Project Gutenberg EBook, Anti-Slavery Poems II. by Whittier Volume III., The Works of Whittier: Anti-Slavery, Labor and Reform #21 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Title: Anti-Slavery Poems II.
From Volume III., The Works of Whittier: Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9576]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on October 15, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS II. ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected] ]
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS
SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS:
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
TEXAS
VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND.
The five poems immediately following indicate the intense feeling of the friends of freedom in view of the annexation of Texas, with its vast territory sufficient, as was boasted, for six new slave States.
Up the hillside, down the glen,?Rouse the sleeping citizen;?Summon out the might of men!
Like a lion growling low,?Like a night-storm rising slow,?Like the tread of unseen foe;
It is coming, it is nigh!?Stand your homes and altars by;?On your own free thresholds die.
Clang the bells in all your spires;?On the gray hills of your sires?Fling to heaven your signal-fires.
From Wachuset, lone and bleak,?Unto Berkshire's tallest peak,?Let the flame-tongued heralds speak.
Oh, 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!"?1844.
TO FANEUIL HALL.
Written in 1844, on reading a call by "a Massachusetts Freeman" for a meeting in Faneuil Hall of the citizens of Massachusetts, without distinction of party, opposed to the annexation of Texas, and the aggressions of South Carolina, and in favor of decisive action against slavery.
MEN! if manhood still ye claim,?If the Northern pulse can thrill,?Roused by wrong or stung by shame,?Freely, strongly still;?Let the sounds of traffic die?Shut the mill-gate, leave the stall,?Fling the