Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform Part 18

O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple children weep; Close watch about their holy fire let maids of Pecos keep; Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines, And Santa Barbara toll her bells amidst her corn and vines; For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with eager eyes of gain, Wide scattering, like the bison herds on broad Salada's plain.

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what sound the winds bring down Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold Nevada's crown!

Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with rein of travel slack, And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the sunrise at his back; By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and pine, On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires shine.

O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and plain, Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with grain; Of mountains white with winter, looking downward, cold, serene, On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped in softest green; Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er many a sunny vale, Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's dusty trail!

Great s.p.a.ces yet untravelled, great lakes whose mystic sh.o.r.es The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Saxon oars; Great herds that wander all unwatched, wild steeds that none have tamed, Strange fish in unknown streams, and birds the Saxon never named; Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, where Nature's chemic powers Work out the Great Designer's will; all these ye say are ours!

Forever ours! for good or ill, on us the burden lies; G.o.d's balance, watched by angels, is hung across the skies.

Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn the poised and trembling scale?

Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber Wrong prevail?

Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry splendor waves, Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread of slaves?

The day is breaking in the East of which the prophets told, And brightens up the sky of Time the Christian Age of Gold; Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to clerkly pen, Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her serfs stand up as men;

The isles rejoice together, in a day are nations born, And the slave walks free in Tunis, and by Stamboul's Golden Horn!

Is this, O countrymen of mine! a day for us to sow The soil of new-gained empire with slavery's seeds of woe?

To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old World's cast-off crime, Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, from the tired lap of Time?

To run anew the evil race the old lost nations ran, And die like them of unbelief of G.o.d, and wrong of man?

Great Heaven! Is this our mission? End in this the prayers and tears, The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger, better years?

Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall ours in shadow turn, A beamless Chaos, cursed of G.o.d, through outer darkness borne?

Where the far nations looked for light, a black- ness in the air?

Where for words of hope they listened, the long wail of despair?

The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands, With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands!

This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin; This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin; Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown, We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down!

By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame; By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came; By the Future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast Their faint and trembling beams across the black- ness of the Past; And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died, O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way; To wed Pen.o.bseot's waters to San Francisco's bay; To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain; And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea, And mountain unto mountain call, Praise G.o.d, for we are free

1845.

LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER.

A pleasant print to peddle out In lands of rice and cotton; The model of that face in dough Would make the artist's fortune.

For Fame to thee has come unsought, While others vainly woo her, In proof how mean a thing can make A great man of its doer.

To whom shall men thyself compare, Since common models fail 'em, Save cla.s.sic goose of ancient Rome, Or sacred a.s.s of Balaam?

The gabble of that wakeful goose Saved Rome from sack of Brennus; The braying of the prophet's a.s.s Betrayed the angel's menace!

So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats, And azure-tinted hose oil, Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets The slow-match of explosion-- An earthquake blast that would have tossed The Union as a feather, Thy instinct saved a perilled land And perilled purse together.

Just think of Carolina's sage Sent whirling like a Dervis, Of Quattleb.u.m in middle air Performing strange drill-service!

Doomed like a.s.syria's lord of old, Who fell before the Jewess, Or sad Abimelech, to sigh, "Alas! a woman slew us!"

Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise The danger darkly lurking, And maiden bodice dreaded more Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkin.

How keen to scent the hidden plot!

How prompt wert thou to balk it, With patriot zeal and pedler thrift, For country and for pocket!

Thy likeness here is doubtless well, But higher honor's due it; On auction-block and negro-jail Admiring eyes should view it.

Or, hung aloft, it well might grace The nation's senate-chamber-- A greedy Northern bottle-fly Preserved in Slavery's amber!

1850.

DERNE.

The storming of the city of Derne, in 1805, by General Eaton, at the head of nine Americans, forty Greeks, and a motley array of Turks and Arabs, was one of those feats of hardihood and daring which have in all ages attracted the admiration of the mult.i.tude. The higher and holier heroism of Christian self-denial and sacrifice, in the humble walks of private duty, is seldom so well appreciated.

NIGHT on the city of the Moor!

On mosque and tomb, and white-walled sh.o.r.e, On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock The narrow harbor-gates unlock, On corsair's galley, carack tall, And plundered Christian caraval!

The sounds of Moslem life are still; No mule-bell tinkles down the hill; Stretched in the broad court of the khan, The dusty Bornou caravan Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man; The Sheik is dreaming in his tent, His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent; The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone, The merchant with his wares withdrawn; Rough pillowed on some pirate breast, The dancing-girl has sunk to rest; And, save where measured footsteps fall Along the Bashaw's guarded wall, Or where, like some bad dream, the Jew Creeps stealthily his quarter through, Or counts with fear his golden heaps, The City of the Corsair sleeps.

But where yon prison long and low Stands black against the pale star-glow, Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves, There watch and pine the Christian slaves; Rough-bearded men, whose far-off wives Wear out with grief their lonely lives; And youth, still flashing from his eyes The clear blue of New England skies, A treasured lock of whose soft hair Now wakes some sorrowing mother's prayer; Or, worn upon some maiden breast, Stirs with the loving heart's unrest.

A bitter cup each life must drain, The groaning earth is cursed with pain, And, like the scroll the angel bore The shuddering Hebrew seer before, O'erwrit alike, without, within, With all the woes which follow sin; But, bitterest of the ills beneath Whose load man totters down to death, Is that which plucks the regal crown Of Freedom from his forehead down, And s.n.a.t.c.hes from his powerless hand The sceptred sign of self-command, Effacing with the chain and rod The image and the seal of G.o.d; Till from his nature, day by day, The manly virtues fall away, And leave him naked, blind and mute, The G.o.dlike merging in the brute!

Why mourn the quiet ones who die Beneath affection's tender eye, Unto their household and their kin Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered in?

O weeper, from that tranquil sod, That holy harvest-home of G.o.d, Turn to the quick and suffering, shed Thy tears upon the living dead Thank G.o.d above thy dear ones' graves, They sleep with Him, they are not slaves.

What dark ma.s.s, down the mountain-sides Swift-pouring, like a stream divides?

A long, loose, straggling caravan, Camel and horse and armed man.

The moon's low crescent, glimmering o'er Its grave of waters to the sh.o.r.e, Lights tip that mountain cavalcade, And gleams from gun and spear and blade Near and more near! now o'er them falls The shadow of the city walls.

Hark to the sentry's challenge, drowned In the fierce trumpet's charging sound!

The rush of men, the musket's peal, The short, sharp clang of meeting steel!

Vain, Moslem, vain thy lifeblood poured So freely on thy foeman's sword!

Not to the swift nor to the strong The battles of the right belong; For he who strikes for Freedom wears The armor of the captive's prayers, And Nature proffers to his cause The strength of her eternal laws; While he whose arm essays to bind And herd with common brutes his kind Strives evermore at fearful odds With Nature and the jealous G.o.ds, And dares the dread recoil which late Or soon their right shall vindicate.

'T is done, the horned crescent falls The star-flag flouts the broken walls Joy to the captive husband! joy To thy sick heart, O brown-locked boy!

In sullen wrath the conquered Moor Wide open flings your dungeon-door, And leaves ye free from cell and chain, The owners of yourselves again.

Dark as his allies desert-born, Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn With the long marches of his band Through hottest wastes of rock and sand, Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath Of the red desert's wind of death, With welcome words and grasping hands, The victor and deliverer stands!

The tale is one of distant skies; The dust of half a century lies Upon it; yet its hero's name Still lingers on the lips of Fame.

Men speak the praise of him who gave Deliverance to the Moorman's slave, Yet dare to brand with shame and crime The heroes of our land and time,-- The self-forgetful ones, who stake Home, name, and life for Freedom's sake.

G.o.d mend his heart who cannot feel The impulse of a holy zeal, And sees not, with his sordid eyes, The beauty of self-sacrifice Though in the sacred place he stands, Uplifting consecrated hands, Unworthy are his lips to tell Of Jesus' martyr-miracle, Or name aright that dread embrace Of suffering for a fallen race!

1850.