Anti Slavery Poems III, vol 3, part 3 | Page 6

All's lost. Even while I write these lines,?The Yankee abolitionists are coming?Upon us like a flood--grim, stalwart men,?Each face set like a flint of Plymouth Rock?Against our institutions--staking out?Their farm lots on the wooded Wakarusa,?Or squatting by the mellow-bottomed Kansas;?The pioneers of mightier multitudes,?The small rain-patter, ere the thunder shower?Drowns the dry prairies. Hope from man is not.?Oh, for a quiet berth at Washington,?Snug naval chaplaincy, or clerkship, where?These rumors of free labor and free soil?Might never meet me more. Better to be?Door-keeper in the White House, than to dwell?Amidst these Yankee tents, that, whitening, show?On the green prairie like a fleet becalmed.?Methinks I hear a voice come up the river?From those far bayous, where the alligators?Mount guard around the camping filibusters?"Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn to Cuba--?(That golden orange just about to fall,?O'er-ripe, into the Democratic lap;)?Keep pace with Providence, or, as we say,?Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow?The message of our gospel, thither borne?Upon the point of Quitman's bowie-knife,?And the persuasive lips of Colt's revolvers.?There may'st thou, underneath thy vine and figtree,?Watch thy increase of sugar cane and negroes,?Calm as a patriarch in his eastern tent!"?Amen: So mote it be. So prays your friend.
BURIAL OF BARBER.
Thomas Barber was shot December 6, 1855, near Lawrence, Kansas.
BEAR him, comrades, to his grave;?Never over one more brave?Shall the prairie grasses weep,?In the ages yet to come,?When the millions in our room,?What we sow in tears, shall reap.
Bear him up the icy hill,?With the Kansas, frozen still?As his noble heart, below,?And the land he came to till?With a freeman's thews and will,?And his poor hut roofed with snow.
One more look of that dead face,?Of his murder's ghastly trace!?One more kiss, O widowed one?Lay your left hands on his brow,?Lift your right hands up, and vow?That his work shall yet be done.
Patience, friends! The eye of God?Every path by Murder trod?Watches, lidless, day and night;?And the dead man in his shroud,?And his widow weeping loud,?And our hearts, are in His sight.
Every deadly threat that swells?With the roar of gambling hells,?Every brutal jest and jeer,?Every wicked thought and plan?Of the cruel heart of man,?Though but whispered, He can hear!
We in suffering, they in crime,?Wait the just award of time,?Wait the vengeance that is due;?Not in vain a heart shall break,?Not a tear for Freedom's sake?Fall unheeded: God is true.
While the flag with stars bedecked?Threatens where it should protect,?And the Law shakes Hands with Crime,?What is left us but to wait,?Match our patience to our fate,?And abide the better time?
Patience, friends! The human heart?Everywhere shall take our part,?Everywhere for us shall pray;?On our side are nature's laws,?And God's life is in the cause?That we suffer for to-day.
Well to suffer is divine;?Pass the watchword down the line,?Pass the countersign: "Endure."?Not to him who rashly dares,?But to him who nobly bears,?Is the victor's garland sure.
Frozen earth to frozen breast,?Lay our slain one down to rest;?Lay him down in hope and faith,?And above the broken sod,?Once again, to Freedom's God,?Pledge ourselves for life or death,
That the State whose walls we lay,?In our blood and tears, to-day,?Shall be free from bonds of shame,?And our goodly land untrod?By the feet of Slavery, shod?With cursing as with flame!
Plant the Buckeye on his grave,?For the hunter of the slave?In its shadow cannot rest; I?And let martyr mound and tree?Be our pledge and guaranty?Of the freedom of the West!?1856.
TO PENNSYLVANIA.?O STATE prayer-founded! never hung?Such choice upon a people's tongue,?Such power to bless or ban,?As that which makes thy whisper Fate,?For which on thee the centuries wait,?And destinies of man!
Across thy Alleghanian chain,?With groanings from a land in pain,?The west-wind finds its way:?Wild-wailing from Missouri's flood?The crying of thy children's blood?Is in thy ears to-day!
And unto thee in Freedom's hour?Of sorest need God gives the power?To ruin or to save;?To wound or heal, to blight or bless?With fertile field or wilderness,?A free home or a grave!
Then let thy virtue match the crime,?Rise to a level with the time;?And, if a son of thine?Betray or tempt thee, Brutus-like?For Fatherland and Freedom strike?As Justice gives the sign.
Wake, sleeper, from thy dream of ease,?The great occasion's forelock seize;?And let the north-wind strong,?And golden leaves of autumn, be?Thy coronal of Victory?And thy triumphal song.?10th me., 1856.
LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.
The massacre of unarmed and unoffending men, in Southern Kansas, in May, 1858, took place near the Marais du Cygne of the French voyageurs.
A BLUSH as of roses?Where rose never grew!?Great drops on the bunch-grass,?But not of the dew!?A taint in the sweet air?For wild bees to shun!?A stain that shall never?Bleach out in the sun.
Back, steed of the prairies?Sweet song-bird, fly back!?Wheel hither, bald vulture!?Gray wolf, call thy pack!?The foul human vultures?Have feasted and fled;?The wolves of the Border?Have crept from the dead.
From the hearths of their cabins,?The fields of their corn,?Unwarned and unweaponed,?The victims were torn,--?By