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

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, 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