Anti Slavery Poems III, vol 3, part 3 | Page 4

who giveth victory!"?What prove these, but that crime was ne'er so black?As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to lack??Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he lays?His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural phrase?And saintly posture, gives to God the praise?And honor of the monstrous progeny.?What marvel, then, in our own time to see?His old devices, smoothly acted o'er,--?Official piety, locking fast the door?Of Hope against three million soups of men,--?Brothers, God's children, Christ's redeemed,--and then,?With uprolled eyeballs and on bended knee,?Whining a prayer for help to hide the key!?1853.
THE RENDITION.?On the 2d of June, 1854, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia, after being under arrest for ten days in the Boston Court House, was remanded to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act, and taken down State Street to a steamer chartered by the United States Government, under guard of United States troops and artillery, Massachusetts militia and Boston police. Public excitement ran high, a futile attempt to rescue Burns having been made during his confinement, and the streets were crowded with tens of thousands of people, of whom many came from other towns and cities of the State to witness the humiliating spectacle.
I HEARD the train's shrill whistle call,?I saw an earnest look beseech,?And rather by that look than speech?My neighbor told me all.
And, as I thought of Liberty?Marched handcuffed down that sworded street,?The solid earth beneath my feet?Reeled fluid as the sea.
I felt a sense of bitter loss,--?Shame, tearless grief, and stifling wrath,?And loathing fear, as if my path?A serpent stretched across.
All love of home, all pride of place,?All generous confidence and trust,?Sank smothering in that deep disgust?And anguish of disgrace.
Down on my native hills of June,?And home's green quiet, hiding all,?Fell sudden darkness like the fall?Of midnight upon noon.
And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong,?Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod,?Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God?The blasphemy of wrong.
"O Mother, from thy memories proud,?Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth,?Lend this dead air a breeze of health,?And smite with stars this cloud.
"Mother of Freedom, wise and brave,?Rise awful in thy strength," I said;?Ah me! I spake but to the dead;?I stood upon her grave!?6th mo., 1854.
ARISEN AT LAST.
On the passage of the bill to protect the rights and liberties of the people of the State against the Fugitive Slave Act.
I SAID I stood upon thy grave,?My Mother State, when last the moon?Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.
And, scattering ashes on my head,?I wore, undreaming of relief,?The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.
Again that moon of blossoms shines?On leaf and flower and folded wing,?And thou hast risen with the spring!
Once more thy strong maternal arms?Are round about thy children flung,--?A lioness that guards her young!
No threat is on thy closed lips,?But in thine eye a power to smite?The mad wolf backward from its light.
Southward the baffled robber's track?Henceforth runs only; hereaway,?The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.
Henceforth, within thy sacred gates,?His first low howl shall downward draw?The thunder of thy righteous law.
Not mindless of thy trade and gain,?But, acting on the wiser plan,?Thou'rt grown conservative of man.
So shalt thou clothe with life the hope,?Dream-painted on the sightless eyes?Of him who sang of Paradise,--
The vision of a Christian man,?In virtue, as in stature great?Embodied in a Christian State.
And thou, amidst thy sisterhood?Forbearing long, yet standing fast,?Shalt win their grateful thanks at last;
When North and South shall strive no more,?And all their feuds and fears be lost?In Freedom's holy Pentecost.?6th mo., 1855.
THE HASCHISH.
OF all that Orient lands can vaunt?Of marvels with our own competing,?The strangest is the Haschish plant,?And what will follow on its eating.
What pictures to the taster rise,?Of Dervish or of Almeh dances!?Of Eblis, or of Paradise,?Set all aglow with Houri glances!
The poppy visions of Cathay,?The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian;?The wizard lights and demon play?Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!
The Mollah and the Christian dog?Change place in mad metempsychosis;?The Muezzin climbs the synagogue,?The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses!
The Arab by his desert well?Sits choosing from some Caliph's daughters,?And hears his single camel's bell?Sound welcome to his regal quarters.
The Koran's reader makes complaint?Of Shitan dancing on and off it;?The robber offers alms, the saint?Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet.
Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes;?But we have one ordained to beat it,?The Haschish of the West, which makes?Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.
The preacher eats, and straight appears?His Bible in a new translation;?Its angels negro overseers,?And Heaven itself a snug plantation!
The man of peace, about whose dreams?The sweet millennial angels cluster,?Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes,?A raving Cuban filibuster!
The noisiest Democrat, with ease,?It turns to Slavery's parish beadle;?The shrewdest statesman eats and sees?Due southward point the polar needle.
The Judge partakes, and sits erelong?Upon his bench a railing blackguard;?Decides off-hand that right is wrong,?And reads the ten commandments backward.
O potent plant! so rare a taste?Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten;?The hempen