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

Here, at the Mission, all things have gone well
The brother who,
throughout my absence, acted
As overseer, assures me that the crops

Never were better. I have lost one negro,
A first-rate hand, but
obstinate and sullen.
He ran away some time last spring, and hid
In
the river timber. There my Indian converts
Found him, and treed and
shot him. For the rest,
The heathens round about begin to feel
The
influence of our pious ministrations
And works of love; and some of
them already
Have purchased negroes, and are settling down
As
sober Christians! Bless the Lord for this!
I know it will rejoice you.
You, I hear,
Are on the eve of visiting Chicago,
To fight with the
wild beasts of Ephesus,
Long John, and Dutch Free-Soilers. May
your arm
Be clothed with strength, and on your tongue be found

The sweet oil of persuasion. So desires
Your brother and co-laborer.
Amen!
P.S. 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