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
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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
0. 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,