Anti Slavery Poems III, vol 3, part 3 | Page 3

a prey;?Bar up the hospitable door,?Put out the fire-lights, point no more?The wanderer's way.
For Pity now is crime; the chain?Which binds our States?Is melted at her hearth in twain,?Is rusted by her tears' soft rain?Close up her gates.
Our Union, like a glacier stirred?By voice below,?Or bell of kine, or wing of bird,?A beggar's crust, a kindly word?May overthrow!
Poor, whispering tremblers! yet we boast?Our blood and name;?Bursting its century-bolted frost,?Each gray cairn on the Northman's coast?Cries out for shame!
Oh for the open firmament,?The prairie free,?The desert hillside, cavern-rent,?The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent,?The Bushman's tree!
Than web of Persian loom most rare,?Or soft divan,?Better the rough rock, bleak and bare,?Or hollow tree, which man may share?With suffering man.
I hear a voice: "Thus saith the Law,?Let Love be dumb;?Clasping her liberal hands in awe,?Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw?From hearth and home."
I hear another voice: "The poor?Are thine to feed;?Turn not the outcast from thy door,?Nor give to bonds and wrong once more?Whom God hath freed."
Dear Lord! between that law and Thee?No choice remains;?Yet not untrue to man's decree,?Though spurning its rewards, is he?Who bears its pains.
Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast?And threatening word;?I read the lesson of the Past,?That firm endurance wins at last?More than the sword.
O clear-eyed Faith, and Patience thou?So calm and strong!?Lend strength to weakness, teach us how?The sleepless eyes of God look through?This night of wrong?1850.
MOLOCH IN STATE STREET.
In a foot-note of the Report of the Senate of Massachusetts on the case of the arrest and return to bondage of the fugitive slave Thomas Sims it is stated that--"It would have been impossible for the U. S. marshal thus successfully to have resisted the law of the State, without the assistance of the municipal authorities of Boston, and the countenance and support of a numerous, wealthy, and powerful body of citizens. It was in evidence that 1500 of the most wealthy and respectable citizens-merchants, bankers, and others--volunteered their services to aid the marshal on this occasion. . . . No watch was kept upon the doings of the marshal, and while the State officers slept, after the moon had gone down, in the darkest hour before daybreak, the accused was taken out of our jurisdiction by the armed police of the city of Boston."
THE moon has set: while yet the dawn?Breaks cold and gray,?Between the midnight and the morn?Bear off your prey!
On, swift and still! the conscious street?Is panged and stirred;?Tread light! that fall of serried feet?The dead have heard!
The first drawn blood of Freedom's veins?Gushed where ye tread;?Lo! through the dusk the martyr-stains?Blush darkly red!
Beneath the slowly waning stars?And whitening day,?What stern and awful presence bars?That sacred way?
What faces frown upon ye, dark?With shame and pain??Come these from Plymouth's Pilgrim bark??Is that young Vane?
Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on?With mocking cheer??Lo! spectral Andros, Hutchinson,?And Gage are here!
For ready mart or favoring blast?Through Moloch's fire,?Flesh of his flesh, unsparing, passed?The Tyrian sire.
Ye make that ancient sacrifice?Of Mail to Gain,?Your traffic thrives, where Freedom dies,?Beneath the chain.
Ye sow to-day; your harvest, scorn?And hate, is near;?How think ye freemen, mountain-born,?The tale will hear?
Thank God! our mother State can yet?Her fame retrieve;?To you and to your children let?The scandal cleave.
Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press,?Make gods of gold;?Let honor, truth, and manliness?Like wares be sold.
Your hoards are great, your walls are strong,?But God is just;?The gilded chambers built by wrong?Invite the rust.
What! know ye not the gains of Crime?Are dust and dross;?Its ventures on the waves of time?Foredoomed to loss!
And still the Pilgrim State remains?What she hath been;?Her inland hills, her seaward plains,?Still nurture men!
Nor wholly lost the fallen mart;?Her olden blood?Through many a free and generous heart?Still pours its flood.
That brave old blood, quick-flowing yet,?Shall know no check,?Till a free people's foot is set?On Slavery's neck.
Even now, the peal of bell and gun,?And hills aflame,?Tell of the first great triumph won?In Freedom's name. [10]
The long night dies: the welcome gray?Of dawn we see;?Speed up the heavens thy perfect day,?God of the free!?1851.
OFFICIAL PIETY.
Suggested by reading a state paper, wherein the higher law is invoked to sustain the lower one.
A Pious magistrate! sound his praise throughout?The wondering churches. Who shall henceforth doubt?That the long-wished millennium draweth nigh??Sin in high places has become devout,?Tithes mint, goes painful-faced, and prays its lie?Straight up to Heaven, and calls it piety!?The pirate, watching from his bloody deck?The weltering galleon, heavy with the gold?Of Acapulco, holding death in check?While prayers are said, brows crossed, and beads are told;?The robber, kneeling where the wayside cross?On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss?From his own carbine, glancing still abroad?For some new victim, offering thanks to God!?Rome, listening at her altars to the cry?Of midnight Murder, while her hounds of hell?Scour France, from baptized cannon and holy bell?And thousand-throated priesthood, loud and high,?Pealing Te Deums to the shuddering sky,?"Thanks to the Lord,