Stories in Verse | Page 9

War!?Ten thousand boroughs, dreaming peace, awake.?War in the South, with the South! War! War!?The shame we nourished stings us to the death.
O, fair, false wife, South! lo, thy lord, the North,?Loveth thee still, though thou hast gone astray.?In truth's great court, vain has thy trial been,?For no divorce could there be granted thee.?The child you bore was bitter curse and shame,?And not the child of thy husband, the North.?It has led thee to miry paths, and raised?The gall of despair to thy famished lips;?It were better that such a child should die.
I.
The first year of the war had passed away?When Richard Wain, the planter, sprang to arms.?The day for his departure had been set;?To-morrow it would be, and as the night?Fell on the misty hills, and on the vales,?He sat alone in his accustomed room;?Thinking, he drowsed; his chin couched on his breast;?A dim light wrought at shadows on the walls.?Slowly the sash was raised behind him there.?Perhaps he slept; he did not heed the noise,?And Karagwe sprang in, and faced his foe.?He held a long knife up and brandished it,?And said, "As surely as you call or move,?Tour life will not be worth a blade of grass;?But if you do not call, and sign the words,?That I have written on a paper here,?No harm will come, and I shall go away."?He drew the paper forth; the planter read:?_I promise if the deed is ever found?Of Dalton Earl's estate, I in no way?Shall lay a claim to it to make it mine.?I here surrender all my right to it._
"Why, this I shall not sign, of course," he said.?"You might have asked me to give back your Ruth,?And I would not have minded; but your game?Lies deeper than a check upon the queen."
"Sign!" cried the negro; and at Ruth's name,?A sudden madness leaped along his nerves,?Like flame among the dry prairie grass.?"Sign! for unless you sign this writing now,?You shall not live; now promise me to sign!"?He caught the planter fiercely by the throat,?Starting his quailing eyes, "Now will you sign or not??You have ten seconds more to make your choice."
"Give me the paper then, and I will sign."?The name was written, and the negro went;?But not an hour had passed, before the hounds?Of Richard Wain and Dalton Earl were slipped,?And scenting on his track through stream and field.
II.
The slave first ran toward the hollow tree;?There left the paper signed by Richard Wain,?Disturbing not the deed; but took the Book,?And up the tireless road, tied on and on,?Until he gained the borders of a marsh.
The night was dark, but darker still the clouds?That loomed along the rim where day had gone.?The wind blew cold, and hastened quickly past,?Escaping, like a slave, the hound-like clouds?Whose thunder-barkings sounded in its ears.
And Karagwe had only reached the marsh,?When on his track he heard the savage dogs.?He knew the paths and windings many miles,?And even in the darkness found his way,?And gained a covert island, where a hut,?Built by some poor and friendless fugitive,?Afforded shelter and secure abode.?He tarried here until along the hills?The red-lipped whisper of the morning ran.?Then, when he would have ventured from the door,?A large black hound arose, and licked his hand.?The dog was Dalton Earl's; he started back.
The dream of freedom nourished many years?Seemed withering, and for the moment lost.?For long the slave had thought of liberty,?And worshipped her, as in that elder time?A tyrant's subjects worshipped, praying her?That she would not delay, but hasten forth,?And bridge the hated gulf 'twixt rich and poor,?By freeing all the mass from ignorance,?By lifting up the worthy of the earth,?And making knowledge paramount to wealth.
III.
O strange, that in our age, and in a land?Where liberty was laid the corner-stone,?A slave, perforce, should be obliged to dream,?And dote on freedom, like the poor oppressed?Who lived and hoped two thousand years ago!
And slavery to this slave was like a fruit--?A bitter and a hateful fruit to taste--?The fruit of error and of ignorance,?Made rank with superstition and with crime.
Yet though the fruit was bitter to the core,?Many there were who died for love of it.?O, many they who listen through long nights?To hear a footstep that will never come.?There is not a flower along the border blown,?From Lookout Mountain to the Chesapeake,?But has in it the blood of North and South.
IV.
Karagwe went back, and on a paper wrote,--?"Your dog has harmed me not, and why should you,?That I have never wronged, plot harm to me??You made me slave, you sold away my bride,?And now you set your hounds upon my track,?Because I seek the freedom that is mine.?Though you have wronged me, still I do you good,?For in an oak, the largest of the grove,?Upon the cotton-field of Richard Wain,?Hid in a hollow near the second limb,?Is the lost deed that holds your house and