Anti Slavery Poems II, vol 3, part 2 | Page 8

our morrow's pathway knowing
Through the strange world
round us growing,
Hear us, tell us where are we going,
Where are
we going, Rubee?
1847.
TO DELAWARE.
Written during the discussion in the Legislature of that State, in the
winter of 1846-47, of a bill for the abolition of slavery.
THRICE welcome to thy sisters of the East,
To the strong tillers of a
rugged home,
With spray-wet locks to Northern winds released,

And hardy feet o'erswept by ocean's foam;
And to the young nymphs
of the golden West,
Whose harvest mantles, fringed with prairie
bloom,
Trail in the sunset,--O redeemed and blest,
To the warm
welcome of thy sisters come!
Broad Pennsylvania, down her
sail-white bay
Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from her plains,
And
the great lakes, where echo, free alway,
Moaned never shoreward
with the clank of chains,
Shall weave new sun-bows in their tossing
spray,
And all their waves keep grateful holiday.
And, smiling on
thee through her mountain rains,
Vermont shall bless thee; and the
granite peaks,
And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, shall wear

Their

snow-crowns brighter in the cold, keen air;
And Massachusetts, with
her rugged cheeks
O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn to thee,

When, at thy bidding, the electric wire
Shall tremble northward with
its words of fire;
Glory and praise to God! another State is free!

1847.
YORKTOWN.
Dr. Thacher, surgeon in Scammel's regiment, in his description of the
siege of Yorktown, says: "The labor on the Virginia plantations is
performed altogether by a species of the human race cruelly wrested
from their native country, and doomed to perpetual bondage, while
their masters are manfully contending for freedom and the natural
rights of man. Such is the inconsistency of human nature." Eighteen
hundred slaves were found at Yorktown, after its surrender, and
restored to their masters. Well was it said by Dr. Barnes, in his late
work on Slavery: "No slave was any nearer his freedom after the
surrender of Yorktown than when Patrick Henry first taught the notes
of liberty to echo among the hills and vales of Virginia."
FROM Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still,
Two lines stretch far o'er
vale and hill
Who curbs his steed at head of one?
Hark! the low
murmur: Washington!
Who bends his keen, approving glance,

Where down the gorgeous line of France
Shine knightly star and
plume of snow?
Thou too art victor, Rochambeau!
The earth which
bears this calm array
Shook with the war-charge yesterday,
Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel,
Shot-sown and bladed
thick with steel;
October's clear and noonday sun
Paled in the
breath-smoke of the gun,
And down night's double blackness fell,

Like a dropped star, the blazing shell.
Now all is hushed: the gleaming lines
Stand moveless as the
neighboring pines;
While through them, sullen, grim, and slow,
The
conquered hosts of England go
O'Hara's brow belies his dress,
Gay
Tarleton's troop rides bannerless:
Shout, from thy fired and wasted

homes,
Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes!
Nor thou alone; with one glad voice
Let all thy sister States rejoice;

Let Freedom, in whatever clime
She waits with sleepless eye her time,

Shouting from cave and mountain wood
Make glad her desert
solitude,
While they who hunt her quail with fear;
The New World's
chain lies broken here!
But who are they, who, cowering, wait
Within the shattered fortress
gate?
Dark tillers of Virginia's soil,
Classed with the battle's
common spoil,
With household stuffs, and fowl, and swine,
With
Indian weed and planters' wine,
With stolen beeves, and foraged
corn,--
Are they not men, Virginian born?
Oh, veil your faces, young and brave!
Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier
grave
Sons of the Northland, ye who set
Stout hearts against the
bayonet,
And pressed with steady footfall near
The moated battery's
blazing tier,
Turn your scarred faces from the sight,
Let shame do
homage to the right!
Lo! fourscore years have passed; and where
The Gallic bugles stirred
the air,
And, through breached batteries, side by side,
To victory
stormed the hosts allied,
And brave foes grounded, pale with pain,

The arms they might not lift again,
As abject as in that old day
The
slave still toils his life away.
Oh, fields still green and fresh in story,
Old days of pride, old names
of glory,
Old marvels of the tongue and pen,
Old thoughts which
stirred the hearts of men,
Ye spared the wrong; and over all
Behold
the avenging shadow fall!
Your world-wide honor stained with
shame,--
Your freedom's self a hollow name!
Where's now the flag of that old war?
Where flows its stripe? Where
burns its star?
Bear witness, Palo Alto's day,

Dark Vale of Palms,

red Monterey,
Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak,
Fleshes the
Northern eagle's beak;
Symbol of terror and despair,
Of chains and
slaves, go seek it there!
Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks
Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva's
banks!
Brave sport to see the fledgling born
Of Freedom by its
parent torn!
Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell,
Safe drear
Siberia's frozen hell
With Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled,
What of
the New World fears the Old?
1847.
RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.
O MOTHER EARTH! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And
o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
Fold softly
in thy long embrace
That heart so worn and broken,
And cool its
pulse of fire beneath
Thy shadows old and