Anti Slavery Poems III, vol 3, part 3 | Page 5

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 Haschish of the East
Is powerless to our Western Cotton!

1854.
FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE.
Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason against the slave power.
THE age is dull and mean. Men creep,
Not walk; with blood too pale
and tame
To pay the debt they owe to shame;
Buy cheap, sell dear;
eat, drink, and sleep
Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want;
Pay
tithes for soul-insurance; keep
Six days to Mammon, one to Cant.
In such a time, give thanks to God,
That somewhat of the holy rage

With which the prophets in their age
On all its decent seemings trod,

Has set your feet upon the lie,
That man and ox and soul and clod

Are market stock to sell and buy!

The hot words from your lips, my own,
To caution trained, might not
repeat;
But if some tares among the wheat
Of generous thought and
deed were sown,
No common wrong provoked your zeal;
The
silken gauntlet that is thrown
In such a quarrel rings like steel.
The brave old strife the fathers saw
For Freedom calls for men again

Like those who battled not in vain
For England's Charter, Alfred's
law;
And right of speech and trial just
Wage in your name their
ancient war
With venal courts and perjured trust.
God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills
of day;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to
wait.
Give ermined knaves their hour of crime;
Ye have the future
grand and great,
The safe appeal of Truth to Time!
1855.
THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS.
This poem and the three following were called out by the popular
movement of Free State men to occupy the territory of Kansas, and by
the use of the great democratic weapon--an over-powering majority--to
settle the conflict on that ground between Freedom and Slavery. The
opponents of the movement used another kind of weapon.
WE cross the prairie as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To
make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom's southern line,
And plant
beside the cotton-tree
The rugged Northern pine!
We're flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow;
The
blessing of our Mother-land
Is on us as we go.
We go to plant her common schools,
On distant prairie swells,
And
give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.
Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test

the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.
No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,

Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun.
We'll tread the prairie as of old
Our fathers sailed the sea,
And
make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
1854.
LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST
EPISCOPAL
CHURCH SOUTH, IN KANSAS, TO A
DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN.
DOUGLAS MISSION, August, 1854,
LAST week--the Lord be praised for all His mercies
To His unworthy
servant!--I arrived
Safe at the Mission, via Westport; where
I tarried
over night, to aid in forming
A Vigilance Committee, to send back,

In shirts of tar, and feather-doublets quilted
With forty stripes save
one, all Yankee comers,
Uncircumcised and Gentile, aliens from

The Commonwealth of Israel, who despise
The prize of the high
calling of the saints,
Who plant amidst this heathen wilderness
Pure
gospel institutions, sanctified
By patriarchal use. The meeting opened

With prayer, as was most fitting. Half an hour,
Or thereaway, I
groaned, and strove, and wrestled,
As Jacob did at Penuel, till the
power
Fell on the people, and they cried 'Amen!'
"Glory to God!"
and stamped and clapped their hands;
And the rough river boatmen
wiped their eyes;
"Go it, old hoss!" they cried, and cursed the
niggers--
Fulfilling thus the word of prophecy,
"Cursed be Cannan."
After prayer, the meeting
Chose a committee--good and pious men--

A Presbyterian Elder, Baptist deacon,
A local preacher, three or
four class-leaders,
Anxious inquirers, and renewed backsliders,
A
score in all--to watch the river ferry,
(As they of old did watch the
fords of Jordan,)
And cut off all whose Yankee tongues refuse
The
Shibboleth of the Nebraska bill.

And then, in answer to repeated calls,


I gave a brief account of what I saw
In Washington; and truly
many hearts
Rejoiced to know the President, and you
And all the
Cabinet regularly hear
The gospel message of a Sunday morning,

Drinking with thirsty souls of the sincere
Milk of the Word. Glory!
Amen, and Selah!