May-Day | Page 9

Columbia, of the rocks
Which dip their foot in the seas,
And soar to the
air-borne flocks
Of clouds, and the boreal fleece.
I will divide my goods;
Call in the wretch and slave:
None shall rule but the humble,

And none but Toil shall have.
I will have never a noble,
No lineage counted great;
Fishers and choppers and
ploughmen
Shall constitute a state.
Go, cut down trees in the forest,
And trim the straightest boughs;
Cut down the trees
in the forest,
And build me a wooden house.
Call the people together,
The young men and the sires,
The digger in the harvest field,

Hireling, and him that hires;
And here in a pine state-house
They shall choose men to rule
In every needful faculty,

In church, and state, and school.
Lo, now! if these poor men
Can govern the land and sea,
And make just laws below
the sun,
As planets faithful be.
And ye shall succour men;
'T is nobleness to serve;
Help them who cannot help again:

Beware from right to swerve.
I break your bonds and masterships,
And I unchain the slave:
Free be his heart and
hand henceforth
As wind and wandering wave.
I cause from every creature
His proper good to flow:
As much as he is and doeth,

So much he shall bestow.
But laying hands on another
To coin his labour and sweat,
He goes in pawn to his
victim
For eternal years in debt.
To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,


Trump of their rescue, sound!
Pay ransom to the owner,
And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is
owner,
And ever was. Pay him.
O North! give him beauty for rags,
And honour, O South! for his shame;
Nevada!
coin thy golden crags
With Freedom's image and name.
Up! and the dusky race
That sat in darkness long,--
Be swift their feet as antelopes,

And as behemoth strong.
Come, East and West and North,
By races, as snow-flakes,
And carry my purpose
forth,
Which neither halts nor shakes.
My will fulfilled shall be,
For, in daylight or in dark,
My thunderbolt has eyes to see

His way home to the mark.
VOLUNTARIES.
I.
Low and mournful be the strain,
Haughty thought be far from me;
Tones of penitence
and pain,
Moanings of the tropic sea;
Low and tender in the cell
Where a captive
sits in chains,
Crooning ditties treasured well
From his Afric's torrid plains.
Sole
estate his sire bequeathed--
Hapless sire to hapless son--
Was the wailing song he
breathed,
And his chain when life was done.
What his fault, or what his crime?
Or what ill planet crossed his prime?
Heart too soft
and will too weak
To front the fate that crouches near,--
Dove beneath the vulture's
beak;--
Will song dissuade the thirsty spear?
Dragged from his mother's arms and
breast,
Displaced, disfurnished here,
His wistful toil to do his best
Chilled by a
ribald jeer.
Great men in the Senate sate,
Sage and hero, side by side,
Building for
their sons the State,
Which they shall rule with pride.

They forbore to break the chain

Which bound the dusky tribe,
Checked by the owners' fierce disdain,
Lured by
"Union" as the bribe.
Destiny sat by, and said,
'Pang for pang your seed shall pay,

Hide in false peace your coward head,
I bring round the harvest-day.'
II.
Freedom all winged expands,
Nor perches in a narrow place;
Her broad van seeks
unplanted lands;
She loves a poor and virtuous race.
Clinging to a colder zone

Whose dark sky sheds the snow-flake down,
The snow-flake is her banner's star,
Her
stripes the boreal streamers are.
Long she loved the Northman well:
Now the iron age
is done,
She will not refuse to dwell
With the offspring of the Sun;
Foundling of the

desert far,
Where palms plume, siroccos blaze,
He roves unhurt the burning ways
In
climates of the summer star.
He has avenues to God
Hid from men of Northern brain,

Far beholding, without cloud,
What these with slowest steps attain.
If once the
generous chief arrive
To lead him willing to be led,
For freedom he will strike and
strive,
And drain his heart till he be dead.
III.
In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic
boys
To hazard all in Freedom's fight,--
Break sharply off their jolly games,

Forsake their comrades gay,
And quit proud homes and youthful dames,
For famine,
toil, and fray?
Yet on the nimble air benign
Speed nimbler messages,
That waft the
breath of grace divine
To hearts in sloth and ease.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I
can.
IV.
O, well for the fortunate soul
Which Music's wings infold,
Stealing away the memory

Of sorrows new and old!
Yet happier he whose inward sight,
Stayed on his subtile
thought,
Shuts his sense on toys of time,
To vacant bosoms brought.
But best
befriended of the God
He who, in evil times,
Warned by an inward voice,
Heeds not
the darkness and the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,
Feeling only the fiery
thread
Leading over heroic ground,

Walled with mortal terror round,
To the aim
which him allures,
And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
Stainless soldier on the walls,
Knowing this,--and knows no more,--
Whoever fights,
whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore, Justice after as before,--
And he who
battles on her side,
God, though he were ten