Anti Slavery Poems II, vol 3, part 2 | Page 6

off their sheets,?Are hoarse with our disgraces.?In vain we turn, for gibing wit?And shoutings follow after,?As if old Kearsarge had split?His granite sides with laughter.
What boots it that we pelted out?The anti-slavery women, [9]?And bravely strewed their hall about?With tattered lace and trimming??Was it for such a sad reverse?Our mobs became peacemakers,?And kept their tar and wooden horse?For Englishmen and Quakers?
For this did shifty Atherton?Make gag rules for the Great House??Wiped we for this our feet upon?Petitions in our State House??Plied we for this our axe of doom,?No stubborn traitor sparing,?Who scoffed at our opinion loom,?And took to homespun wearing?
Ah, Moses! hard it is to scan?These crooked providences,?Deducing from the wisest plan?The saddest consequences!?Strange that, in trampling as was meet?The nigger-men's petition,?We sprang a mine beneath our feet?Which opened up perdition.
How goodly, Moses, was the game?In which we've long been actors,?Supplying freedom with the name?And slavery with the practice?Our smooth words fed the people's mouth,?Their ears our party rattle;?We kept them headed to the South,?As drovers do their cattle.
But now our game of politics?The world at large is learning;?And men grown gray in all our tricks?State's evidence are turning.?Votes and preambles subtly spun?They cram with meanings louder,?And load the Democratic gun?With abolition powder.
The ides of June! Woe worth the day?When, turning all things over,?The traitor Hale shall make his hay?From Democratic clover!?Who then shall take him in the law,?Who punish crime so flagrant??Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall draw,?A writ against that "vagrant"?
Alas! no hope is left us here,?And one can only pine for?The envied place of overseer?Of slaves in Carolina!?Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink,?And see what pay he's giving!?We've practised long enough, we think,?To know the art of driving.
And for the faithful rank and file,?Who know their proper stations,?Perhaps it may be worth their while?To try the rice plantations.?Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,?To see us southward scamper;?The slaves, we know, are "better off?Than laborers in New Hampshire!"
LINES?FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND.
A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire,?A faith which doubt can never dim,?A heart of love, a lip of fire,?O Freedom's God! be Thou to him!
Speak through him words of power and fear,?As through Thy prophet bards of old,?And let a scornful people hear?Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled.
For lying lips Thy blessing seek,?And hands of blood are raised to Thee,?And On Thy children, crushed and weak,?The oppressor plants his kneeling knee.
Let then, O God! Thy servant dare?Thy truth in all its power to tell,?Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear?The Bible from the grasp of hell!
From hollow rite and narrow span?Of law and sect by Thee released,?Oh, teach him that the Christian man?Is holier than the Jewish priest.
Chase back the shadows, gray and old,?Of the dead ages, from his way,?And let his hopeful eyes behold?The dawn of Thy millennial day;
That day when fettered limb and mind?Shall know the truth which maketh free,?And he alone who loves his kind?Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee!
DANIEL NEALL.?Dr. Neall, a worthy disciple of that venerated philanthropist, Warner Mifflin, whom the Girondist statesman, Jean Pierre Brissot, pronounced "an angel of mercy, the best man he ever knew," was one of the noble band of Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose bravery was equalled only by their gentleness and tenderness. He presided at the great anti-slavery meeting in Pennsylvania Hall, May 17, 1838, when the Hall was surrounded by a furious mob. I was standing near him while the glass of the windows broken by missiles showered over him, and a deputation from the rioters forced its way to the platform, and demanded that the meeting should be closed at once. Dr. Neall drew up his tall form to its utmost height. "I am here," he said, "the president of this meeting, and I will be torn in pieces before I leave my place at your dictation. Go back to those who sent you. I shall do my duty." Some years after, while visiting his relatives in his native State of Delaware, he was dragged from the house of his friends by a mob of slave-holders and brutally maltreated. He bore it like a martyr of the old times; and when released, told his persecutors that he forgave them, for it was not they but Slavery which had done the wrong. If they should ever be in Philadelphia and needed hospitality or aid, let them call on him.
I.?FRIEND of the Slave, and yet the friend of all;?Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when?The need of battling Freedom called for men?To plant the banner on the outer wall;?Gentle and kindly, ever at distress?Melted to more than woman's tenderness,?Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post?Fronting the violence of a maddened host,?Like some gray rock from which the waves are?tossed!?Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not?The faith of one whose walk and word were?right;?Who