Anti Slavery Poems II, vol 3, part 2 | Page 4

strife for Freedom, yet shall bear
their
generous part.
And from yonder sunny valleys,
Southward in the distance lost,

Freedom yet shall summon allies
Worthier than the North can boast,

With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling at
severer cost.
Now, the soul alone is willing
Faint the heart and weak the knee;

And as yet no lip is thrilling
With the mighty words, "Be Free!"


Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel, but his
advent is to be!

Meanwhile, turning from the revel
To the prison-cell my sight,
For
intenser hate of evil,
For a keener sense of right,
Shaking off thy
dust, I thank thee, City of the
Slaves, to-night!
"To thy duty now and ever!
Dream no more of rest or stay
Give to
Freedom's great endeavor
All thou art and hast to-day:"
Thus,
above the city's murmur, saith a Voice, or
seems to say.
Ye with heart and vision gifted
To discern and love the right,
Whose worn faces have been lifted
To the slowly-growing light,

Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted slowly
back the murk of night
Ye who through long years of trial
Still have held your purpose fast,

While a lengthening shade the dial
from the westering sunshine
cast,
And of hope each hour's denial seemed an echo of
the last!
O my brothers! O my sisters
Would to God that ye were near,

Gazing with me down the vistas
Of a sorrow strange and drear;

Would to God that ye were listeners to the Voice
I seem to hear!
With the storm above us driving,
With the false earth mined below,

Who shall marvel if thus striving
We have counted friend as foe;

Unto one another giving in the darkness blow for
blow.
Well it may be that our natures
Have grown sterner and more hard,

And the freshness of their features
Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred,

And their harmonies of feeling overtasked and
rudely jarred.
Be it so. It should not swerve us
From a purpose true and brave;

Dearer Freedom's rugged service
Than the pastime of the slave;

Better is the storm above it than the quiet of
the grave.
Let us then, uniting, bury
All our idle feuds in dust,
And to future
conflicts carry
Mutual faith and common trust;

Always he who

most forgiveth in his brother is
most just.
From the eternal shadow rounding
All our sun and starlight here,

Voices of our lost ones sounding
Bid us be of heart and cheer,

Through the silence, down the spaces, falling on
the inward ear.
Know we not our dead are looking
Downward with a sad surprise,

All our strife of words rebuking
With their mild and loving eyes?

Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloud
their blessed skies?
Let us draw their mantles o'er us
Which have fallen in our way;
Let
us do the work before us,
Cheerly, bravely, while we may,
Ere the
long night-silence cometh, and with us it is
not day!
THE BRANDED HAND.
Captain Jonathan Walker, of Harwich, Mass., was solicited by several
fugitive slaves at Pensacola, Florida, to carry them in his vessel to the
British West Indies. Although well aware of the great hazard of the
enterprise he attempted to comply with the request, but was seized at
sea by an American vessel, consigned to the authorities at Key West,
and thence sent back to Pensacola, where, after a long and rigorous
confinement in prison, he was tried and sentenced to be branded on his
right hand with the letters "S.S." (slave-stealer) and amerced in a heavy
fine.
WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy
thoughtful brow
and gray,
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day;
With
that front of calm endurance, on whose
steady nerve in vain
Pressed
the iron of the prison, smote the fiery
shafts of pain.
Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal
cravens aim
To make
God's truth thy falsehood, His holiest
work thy shame?
When, all
blood-quenched, from the torture the
iron was withdrawn,
How
laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to
scorn!

They change to wrong the duty which God hath
written out
On the
great heart of humanity, too legible for
doubt!
They, the loathsome
moral lepers, blotched from
footsole up to crown,
Give to shame
what God hath given unto honor
and renown!
Why, that brand is highest honor! than its traces
never yet
Upon old
armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon
set;
And thy unborn
generations, as they tread our
rocky strand,
Shall tell with pride the
story of their father's
branded hand!
As the Templar home was welcome, bearing backfrom
Syrian wars

The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimitars,
The pallor of the
prison, and the shackle's crimson span,
So we meet thee, so we greet
thee, truest friend of
God and man.
He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave,
Thou for
His living presence in the bound and
bleeding slave;
He for a soil
no longer by the feet of angels trod,
Thou for the true Shechinah, the
present home of God.
For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip
o'er him swung,

From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of
slavery wrung,
And
the solemn priest to Moloch, on each Goddeserted
shrine,
Broke the
bondman's heart for bread, poured the
bondman's blood for wine;
While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour
knelt,
And
spurned, the while, the temple where a present
Saviour dwelt;
Thou