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

oaken.
Shut out from him the bitter word
And serpent hiss of scorning;
Nor
let the storms of yesterday
Disturb his quiet morning.
Breathe over
him forgetfulness
Of all save deeds of kindness,
And, save to
smiles of grateful eyes,
Press down his lids in blindness.
There, where with living ear and eye
He heard Potomac's flowing,

And, through his tall ancestral trees,
Saw autumn's sunset glowing,

He sleeps, still looking to the west,
Beneath the dark wood shadow,

As if he still would see the sun
Sink down on wave and meadow.
Bard, Sage, and Tribune! in himself
All moods of mind contrasting,--

The tenderest wail of human woe,
The scorn like lightning blasting;

The pathos which from rival eyes
Unwilling tears could summon,

The stinging taunt, the fiery burst
Of hatred scarcely human!
Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower,

From lips of life-long
sadness;
Clear picturings of majestic thought
Upon a ground of
madness;
And over all Romance and Song
A classic beauty

throwing,
And laurelled Clio at his side
Her storied pages showing.
All parties feared him: each in turn
Beheld its schemes disjointed,

As right or left his fatal glance
And spectral finger pointed.
Sworn
foe of Cant, he smote it down
With 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