Anti Slavery Poems III, vol 3, part 3 | Page 7

the whirlwind of murder?Swooped up and swept on?To the low, reedy fen-lands,?The Marsh of the Swan.
With a vain plea for mercy?No stout knee was crooked;?In the mouths of the rifles?Right manly they looked.?How paled the May sunshine,?O Marais du Cygne!?On death for the strong life,?On red grass for green!
In the homes of their rearing,?Yet warm with their lives,?Ye wait the dead only,?Poor children and wives!?Put out the red forge-fire,?The smith shall not come;?Unyoke the brown oxen,?The ploughman lies dumb.
Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh,?O dreary death-train,?With pressed lips as bloodless?As lips of the slain!?Kiss down the young eyelids,?Smooth down the gray hairs;?Let tears quench the curses?That burn through your prayers.
Strong man of the prairies,?Mourn bitter and wild!?Wail, desolate woman!?Weep, fatherless child!?But the grain of God springs up?From ashes beneath,?And the crown of his harvest?Is life out of death.
Not in vain on the dial?The shade moves along,?To point the great contrasts?Of right and of wrong:?Free homes and free altars,?Free prairie and flood,--?The reeds of the Swan's Marsh,?Whose bloom is of blood!
On the lintels of Kansas?That blood shall not dry;?Henceforth the Bad Angel?Shall harmless go by;?Henceforth to the sunset,?Unchecked on her way,?Shall Liberty follow?The march of the day.
THE PASS OF THE SIERRA.
ALL night above their rocky bed?They saw the stars march slow;?The wild Sierra overhead,?The desert's death below.
The Indian from his lodge of bark,?The gray bear from his den,?Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark,?Glared on the mountain men.
Still upward turned, with anxious strain,?Their leader's sleepless eye,?Where splinters of the mountain chain?Stood black against the sky.
The night waned slow: at last, a glow,?A gleam of sudden fire,?Shot up behind the walls of snow,?And tipped each icy spire.
"Up, men!" he cried, "yon rocky cone,?To-day, please God, we'll pass,?And look from Winter's frozen throne?On Summer's flowers and grass!"
They set their faces to the blast,?They trod the eternal snow,?And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last?The promised land below.
Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed?By many an icy horn;?Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed,?And green with vines and corn.
They left the Winter at their backs?To flap his baffled wing,?And downward, with the cataracts,?Leaped to the lap of Spring.
Strong leader of that mountain band,?Another task remains,?To break from Slavery's desert land?A path to Freedom's plains.
The winds are wild, the way is drear,?Yet, flashing through the night,?Lo! icy ridge and rocky spear?Blaze out in morning light!
Rise up, Fremont! and go before;?The hour must have its Man;?Put on the hunting-shirt once more,?And lead in Freedom's van!?8th mo., 1856.
A SONG FOR THE TIME.
Written in the summer of 1856, during the political campaign of the Free Soil party under the candidacy of John C. Fremont.
Up, laggards of Freedom!--our free flag is cast?To the blaze of the sun and the wings of the blast;?Will ye turn from a struggle so bravely begun,?From a foe that is breaking, a field that's half won?
Whoso loves not his kind, and who fears not the Lord,?Let him join that foe's service, accursed and abhorred?Let him do his base will, as the slave only can,--?Let him put on the bloodhound, and put off the Man!
Let him go where the cold blood that creeps in his veins?Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on his chains;?Where the black slave shall laugh in his bonds, to behold?The White Slave beside him, self-fettered and sold!
But ye, who still boast of hearts beating and warm,?Rise, from lake shore and ocean's, like waves in a storm,?Come, throng round our banner in Liberty's name,?Like winds from your mountains, like prairies aflame!
Our foe, hidden long in his ambush of night,?Now, forced from his covert, stands black in the light.?Oh, the cruel to Man, and the hateful to God,?Smite him down to the earth, that is cursed where he trod!
For deeper than thunder of summer's loud shower,?On the dome of the sky God is striking the hour!?Shall we falter before what we've prayed for so long,?When the Wrong is so weak, and the Right is so strong?
Come forth all together! come old and come young,?Freedom's vote in each hand, and her song on each tongue;?Truth naked is stronger than Falsehood in mail;?The Wrong cannot prosper, the Right cannot fail.
Like leaves of the summer once numbered the foe,?But the hoar-frost is falling, the northern winds blow;?Like leaves of November erelong shall they fall,?For earth wearies of them, and God's over all!
WHAT OF THE DAY?
Written during the stirring weeks when the great political battle for Freedom under Fremont's leadership was permitting strong hope of success,--a hope overshadowed and solemnized by a sense of the magnitude of the barbaric evil, and a forecast of the unscrupulous and desperate use of all its powers in the last and decisive struggle.
A SOUND of tumult troubles all the air,?Like the low thunders of a sultry sky?Far-rolling ere the downright lightnings glare;?The hills blaze red with warnings; foes draw nigh,?Treading the dark with challenge and reply.?Behold the