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

Massachusetts! Where's
the voice to
speak her free?
Where's the hand to light up bonfires from her

mountains to the sea?
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she
dumb
in her despair?
Has she none to break the silence? Has she
none
to do and dare?

O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her

rusted shield,
And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner's

tattered field
1840.
TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN.

John C. Calhoun, who had strongly urged the extension of slave
territory by the annexation of Texas, even if it should involve a war
with England, was unwilling to promote the acquisition of Oregon,
which would enlarge the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded as
an excuse the peril of foreign complications which he had defied when
the interests of slavery were involved.
Is this thy voice whose treble notes of fear
Wail in the wind? And
dost thou shake to hear,
Actieon-like, the bay of thine own hounds,

Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their bounds?
Sore-baffled
statesman! when thy eager hand,
With game afoot, unslipped the
hungry pack,
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land,
Hadst
thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling back,
These dogs of thine might
snuff on Slavery's track?
Where's now the boast, which even thy
guarded tongue,
Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' the Senate
flung,
O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan,
Like Satan's triumph at the fall
of man?
How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting,
And
pointing to the lurid heaven afar,
Whence all could see, through the
south windows slanting,
Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone
Star!
The Fates are just; they give us but our own;
Nemesis ripens
what our hands have sown.
There is an Eastern story, not unknown,

Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skill
Called demons up his
water-jars to fill;
Deftly and silently, they did his will,
But, when
the task was done, kept pouring still.
In vain with spell and charm the
wizard wrought,
Faster and faster were the buckets brought,
Higher
and higher rose the flood around,
Till the fiends clapped their hands
above their master drowned So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee,

For God still overrules man's schemes, and takes
Craftiness in its
self-set snare, and makes
The wrath of man to praise Him. It may be,

That the roused spirits of Democracy
May leave to freer States the
same wide door
Through which thy slave-cursed Texas entered in,

From out the blood and fire, the wrong and sin,
Of the stormed-city

and the ghastly plain,
Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain,

The myriad-handed pioneer may pour,
And the wild West with the
roused North combine
And heave the engineer of evil with his mine.

1846.
AT WASHINGTON.
Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington,
in the 12th month of 1845.
WITH a cold and wintry noon-light
On its roofs and steeples shed,

Shadows weaving with the sunlight
From the gray sky overhead,

Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built
town outspread.
Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,

Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;

Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick
current glide.
Underneath yon dome, whose coping
Springs above them, vast and
tall,
Grave men in the dust are groping
For the largess, base and
small,
Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs
which from
its table fall.
Base of heart! They vilely barter
Honor's wealth for party's place;

Step by step on Freedom's charter
Leaving footprints of disgrace;

For to-day's poor pittance turning from the great
hope of their race.
Yet, where festal lamps are throwing
Glory round the dancer's hair,

Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowing
Backward on the sunset air;

And the low quick pulse of music beats its measure
sweet and rare.
There to-night shall woman's glances,
Star-like, welcome give to
them;
Fawning fools with shy advances
Seek to touch their
garments' hem,
With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds which

God and Truth condemn.
From this glittering lie my vision
Takes a broader, sadder range,


Full before me have arisen
Other pictures dark and strange;
From
the parlor to the prison must the scene and
witness change.
Hark! the heavy gate is swinging
On its hinges, harsh and slow;

One pale prison lamp is flinging
On a fearful group below
Such a
light as leaves to terror whatsoe'er it does
not show.
Pitying God! Is that a woman
On whose wrist the shackles clash?
Is
that shriek she utters human,
Underneath the stinging lash?
Are
they men whose eyes of madness from that sad
procession flash?
Still the dance goes gayly onward
What is it to Wealth and Pride

That without the stars are looking
On a scene which earth should hide?

That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rocking
on Potomac's tide!
Vainly to that mean Ambition
Which, upon a rival's fall,
Winds
above its old condition,
With a reptile's slimy crawl,
Shall the
pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slave
in anguish call.
Vainly to the child of Fashion,
Giving to ideal woe
Graceful luxury
of compassion,
Shall the stricken mourner go;
Hateful seems the
earnest sorrow, beautiful the
hollow show!
Nay, my words are all too sweeping:
In this crowded human mart,

Feeling is not dead, but sleeping;
Man's strong will and woman's
heart,
In the coming