Anti Slavery Poems III, vol 3, part 3

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Title: Anti-Slavery Poems III.
From Volume III., The Works of Whittier: Anti-Slavery Poems and
Songs of Labor and Reform
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9577]
[Yes, we are more
than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on
October 15, 2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK,
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS III. ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected]
]
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS
SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS:
DERNE
A SABBATH SCENE
IN THE EVIL DAY

MOLOCH IN STATE STREET
OFFICIAL PIETY
THE
RENDITION
ARISEN AT LAST
THE HASCHISH
FOR
RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE
THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS

LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST
EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH, IN KANSAS, TO A

DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN
BURIAL OF BARBER
TO
PENNSYLVANIA
LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.
THE PASS OF
THE SIERRA
A SONG FOR THE TIME
WHAT OF THE
DAY?
A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS

THE PANORAMA
ON A PRAYER-BOOK
THE SUMMONS

TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD
DERNE.
The storming of the city of Derne, in 1805, by General Eaton, at the
head of nine Americans, forty Greeks, and a motley array of Turks and
Arabs, was one of those feats of hardihood and daring which have in all

ages attracted the admiration of the multitude. The higher and holier
heroism of Christian self-denial and sacrifice, in the humble walks of
private duty, is seldom so well appreciated.
NIGHT on the city of the Moor!
On mosque and tomb, and
white-walled shore,
On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock
The
narrow harbor-gates unlock,
On corsair's galley, carack tall,
And
plundered Christian caraval!
The sounds of Moslem life are still;

No mule-bell tinkles down the hill;
Stretched in the broad court of the
khan,
The dusty Bornou caravan
Lies heaped in slumber, beast and
man;
The Sheik is dreaming in his tent,
His noisy Arab tongue
o'erspent;
The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone,
The merchant
with his wares withdrawn;
Rough pillowed on some pirate breast,

The dancing-girl has sunk to rest;
And, save where measured
footsteps fall
Along the Bashaw's guarded wall,
Or where, like
some bad dream, the Jew
Creeps stealthily his quarter through,
Or
counts with fear his golden heaps,
The City of the Corsair sleeps.
But where yon prison long and low
Stands black against the pale
star-glow,
Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves,
There watch and
pine the Christian slaves;
Rough-bearded men, whose far-off wives

Wear out with grief their lonely lives;
And youth, still flashing from
his eyes
The clear blue of New England skies,
A treasured lock of
whose soft hair
Now wakes some sorrowing mother's prayer;
Or,
worn upon some maiden breast,
Stirs with the loving heart's unrest.
A bitter cup each life must drain,
The groaning earth is cursed with
pain,
And, like the scroll the angel bore
The shuddering Hebrew
seer before,
O'erwrit alike, without, within,
With all the woes which
follow sin;

But, bitterest of the ills beneath
Whose load man totters
down to death,
Is that which plucks the regal crown
Of Freedom
from his forehead down,
And snatches from his powerless hand
The
sceptred sign of self-command,
Effacing with the chain and rod
The
image and the seal of God;
Till from his nature, day by day,
The

manly virtues fall away,
And leave him naked, blind and mute,
The
godlike merging in the brute!
Why mourn the quiet ones who die
Beneath affection's tender eye,

Unto their household and their kin
Like ripened corn-sheaves
gathered in?
O weeper, from that tranquil sod,
That holy
harvest-home of God,
Turn to the quick and suffering, shed
Thy
tears upon the living dead
Thank God above thy dear ones' graves,

They sleep with Him, they are not slaves.
What dark mass, down the mountain-sides
Swift-pouring, like a
stream divides?
A long, loose, straggling caravan,
Camel and horse
and armed man.
The moon's low crescent, glimmering o'er
Its grave
of waters to the shore,
Lights tip that mountain cavalcade,
And
gleams from gun and spear and blade
Near and more near! now o'er
them falls
The shadow of the city walls.
Hark to the sentry's
challenge, drowned
In the fierce trumpet's charging sound!
The
rush of men, the musket's peal,
The short, sharp clang of meeting
steel!
Vain, Moslem, vain thy lifeblood poured
So freely on thy foeman's
sword!
Not