Anti Slavery Poems II, vol 3, part 2 | Page 9

trenchant wit unsparing,?And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand?The robe Pretence was wearing.
Too honest or too proud to feign?A love he never cherished,?Beyond Virginia's border line?His patriotism perished.?While others hailed in distant skies?Our eagle's dusky pinion,?He only saw the mountain bird?Stoop o'er his Old Dominion!
Still through each change of fortune strange,?Racked nerve, and brain all burning,?His loving faith in Mother-land?Knew never shade of turning;?By Britain's lakes, by Neva's tide,?Whatever sky was o'er him,?He heard her rivers' rushing sound,?Her blue peaks rose before him.
He held his slaves, yet made withal?No false and vain pretences,?Nor paid a lying priest to seek?For Scriptural defences.?His harshest words of proud rebuke,?His bitterest taunt and scorning,?Fell fire-like on the Northern brow?That bent to him in fawning.
He held his slaves; yet kept the while?His reverence for the Human;?In the dark vassals of his will?He saw but Man and Woman!?No hunter of God's outraged poor?His Roanoke valley entered;?No trader in the souls of men?Across his threshold ventured.
And when the old and wearied man?Lay down for his last sleeping,?And at his side, a slave no more,?His brother-man stood weeping,?His latest thought, his latest breath,?To Freedom's duty giving,?With failing tengue and trembling hand?The dying blest the living.
Oh, never bore his ancient State?A truer son or braver?None trampling with a calmer scorn?On foreign hate or favor.?He knew her faults, yet never stooped?His proud and manly feeling?To poor excuses of the wrong?Or meanness of concealing.
But none beheld with clearer eye?The plague-spot o'er her spreading,?None heard more sure the steps of Doom?Along her future treading.?For her as for himself he spake,?When, his gaunt frame upbracing,?He traced with dying hand "Remorse!"?And perished in the tracing.
As from the grave where Henry sleeps,?From Vernon's weeping willow,?And from the grassy pall which hides?The Sage of Monticello,?So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone?Of Randolph's lowly dwelling,?Virginia! o'er thy land of slaves?A warning voice is swelling!
And hark! from thy deserted fields?Are sadder warnings spoken,?From quenched hearths, where thy exiled sons?Their household gods have broken.?The curse is on thee,--wolves for men,?And briers for corn-sheaves giving?Oh, more than all thy dead renown?Were now one hero living?1847.
THE LOST STATESMAN.
Written on hearing of the death of Silas Wright of New York.
As they who, tossing midst the storm at night,?While turning shoreward, where a beacon shone,?Meet the walled blackness of the heaven alone,?So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed,?In gloom and tempest, men have seen thy light?Quenched in the darkness. At thy hour of noon,?While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight,?And, day by day, within thy spirit grew?A holier hope than young Ambition knew,?As through thy rural quiet, not in vain,?Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry of pain,?Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon?Portents at which the bravest stand aghast,--?The birth-throes of a Future, strange and vast,?Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise and strong,?Suddenly summoned to the burial bed,?Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long,?Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead.?Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering host??Who wear the mantle of the leader lost??Who stay the march of slavery? He whose voice?Hath called thee from thy task-field shall not lack?Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely back?The wrong which, through his poor ones, reaches Him:?Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torchlights trim,?And wave them high across the abysmal black,?Till bound, dumb millions there shall see them and rejoice. 10th mo., 1847.
THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.
Suggested by a daguerreotype taken from a small French engraving of two negro figures, sent to the writer by Oliver Johnson.
BEAMS of noon, like burning lances, through the?tree-tops flash and glisten,?As she stands before her lover, with raised face to?look and listen.
Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the ancient?Jewish song?Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her graceful?beauty wrong.
He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal's?garb and hue,?Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his higher?nature true;
Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a freeman?in his heart,?As the gregree holds his Fetich from the white?man's gaze apart.
Ever foremost of his comrades, when the driver's?morning horn?Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the fields of?cane and corn.
Fall the keen and burning lashes never on his back?or limb;?Scarce with look or word of censure, turns the?driver unto him.
Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his eye is?hard and stern;?Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has never?deigned to learn.
And, at evening, when his comrades dance before?their master's door,?Folding arms and knitting forehead, stands he?silent evermore.
God be praised for every instinct which rebels?against a lot?Where the brute survives the human, and man's?upright form is not!
As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral fold?on fold?Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers in?his hold;
Slow decays the forest monarch, closer girds the?fell embrace,?Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is in?its place;
So a base and bestial nature round the vassal's?manhood twines,?And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba?choked with vines.
God is Love,