Anti Slavery Poems III, vol 3, part 3 | Page 9

west a thousand waters run
From winter lingering
under summer's sun.
And, still beyond, long lines of foam and sand

Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a-land,
From many a wide-lapped
port and land-locked bay,
Opening with thunderous pomp the world's
highway
To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far Cathay.
"Such," said the Showman, as the curtain fell,
"Is the new Canaan of
our Israel;
The land of promise to the swarming North,
Which,
hive-like, sends its annual surplus forth,
To the poor Southron on his
worn-out soil,
Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil;
To Europe's
exiles seeking home and rest,
And the lank nomads of the wandering
West,
Who, asking neither, in their love of change

And the free
bison's amplitude of range,
Rear the log-hut, for present shelter meant,

Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent."

Then spake a shrewd on-looker, "Sir," said he,
"I like your picture,
but I fain would see
A sketch of what your promised land will be

When, with electric nerve, and fiery-brained,
With Nature's forces to
its chariot chained,
The future grasping, by the past obeyed,
The
twentieth century rounds a new decade."
Then said the Showman, sadly: "He who grieves
Over the scattering
of the sibyl's leaves
Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we know

What needs must ripen from the seed we sow;
That present time is
but the mould wherein
We cast the shapes of holiness and sin.
A
painful watcher of the passing hour,
Its lust of gold, its strife for place
and power;
Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, truth,

Wise-thoughted age, and generous-hearted youth;
Nor yet unmindful
of each better sign,
The low, far lights, which on th' horizon shine,

Like those which sometimes tremble on the rim
Of clouded skies
when day is closing dim,
Flashing athwart the purple spears of rain

The hope of sunshine on the hills again
I need no prophet's word, nor
shapes that pass
Like clouding shadows o'er a magic glass;
For now,
as ever, passionless and cold,
Doth the dread angel of the future hold

Evil and good before us, with no voice
Or warning look to guide us
in our choice;
With spectral hands outreaching through the gloom

The shadowy contrasts of the coming doom.
Transferred from these,
it now remains to give
The sun and shade of Fate's alternative."
Then, with a burst of music, touching all
The keys of thrifty life,--the
mill-stream's fall,
The engine's pant along its quivering rails,
The
anvil's ring, the measured beat of flails,
The sweep of scythes, the
reaper's whistled tune,
Answering the summons of the bells of noon,

The woodman's hail along the river shores,
The steamboat's signal,
and the dip of oars
Slowly the curtain rose from off a land
Fair as
God's garden. Broad on either hand
The golden wheat-fields
glimmered in the sun,
And the tall maize its yellow tassels spun.

Smooth highways set with hedge-rows living green,
With steepled

towns through shaded vistas seen,
The school-house murmuring with
its hive-like swarm,
The brook-bank whitening in the grist-mill's
storm,
The painted farm-house shining through the leaves
Of
fruited orchards bending at its eaves,
Where live again, around the
Western hearth,
The homely old-time virtues of the North;
Where
the blithe housewife rises with the day,
And well-paid labor counts
his task a play.
And, grateful tokens of a Bible free,
And the free
Gospel of Humanity,
Of diverse-sects and differing names the shrines,

One in their faith, whate'er their outward signs,
Like varying
strophes of the same sweet hymn
From many a prairie's swell and
river's brim,
A thousand church-spires sanctify the air
Of the calm
Sabbath, with their sign of prayer.
Like sudden nightfall over bloom and green
The curtain dropped: and,
momently, between
The clank of fetter and the crack of thong,
Half
sob, half laughter, music swept along;
A strange refrain, whose idle
words and low,
Like drunken mourners, kept the time of woe;
As if
the revellers at a masquerade
Heard in the distance funeral marches
played.
Such music, dashing all his smiles with tears,
The
thoughtful voyager on Ponchartrain hears,
Where, through the
noonday dusk of wooded shores
The negro boatman, singing to his
oars,
With a wild pathos borrowed of his wrong
Redeems the
jargon of his senseless song.
"Look," said the Showman, sternly, as
he rolled
His curtain upward. "Fate's reverse behold!"
A village straggling in loose disarray
Of vulgar newness, premature
decay;
A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls,
With "Slaves at
Auction!" garnishing its walls;
Without, surrounded by a motley
crowd,
The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous and loud,
A squire or
colonel in his pride of place,

Known at free fights, the caucus, and the
race,
Prompt to proclaim his honor without blot,
And silence
doubters with a ten-pace shot,
Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant

With pious phrase and democratic cant,
Yet never scrupling, with a

filthy jest,
To sell the infant from its mother's breast,
Break through
all ties of wedlock, home, and kin,
Yield shrinking girlhood up to
graybeard sin;
Sell all the virtues with his human stock,
The
Christian graces on his auction-block,
And coolly count on shrewdest
bargains driven
In hearts regenerate, and in souls forgiven!
Look once again! The moving canvas shows
A slave plantation's
slovenly repose,
Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds,

The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds;
And, held a brute, in
practice, as in law,
Becomes in fact the thing he's taken for.
There,
early