Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform Part 8

But not alone because it tells Of generous hand and heart sincere; Around that gift of friendship dwells A memory doubly dear; Earth's n.o.blest aim, man's holiest thought, With that memorial frail in wrought!

Pure thoughts and sweet like flowers unfold, And precious memories round it cling, Even as the Prophet's rod of old In beauty blossoming: And buds of feeling, pure and good, Spring from its cold unconscious wood.

Relic of Freedom's shrine! a brand Plucked from its burning! let it be Dear as a jewel from the hand Of a lost friend to me!

Flower of a perished garland left, Of life and beauty unbereft!

Oh, if the young enthusiast bears, O'er weary waste and sea, the stone Which crumbled from the Forum's stairs, Or round the Parthenon; Or olive-bough from some wild tree Hung over old Thermopylae:

If leaflets from some hero's tomb, Or moss-wreath torn from ruins h.o.a.ry; Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom On fields renowned in story; Or fragment from the Alhambra's crest, Or the gray rock by Druids blessed;

Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growing Where Freedom led her stalwart kern, Or Scotia's "rough bur thistle" blowing On Bruce's Bannockburn; Or Runnymede's wild English rose, Or lichen plucked from Sempach's snows!

If it be true that things like these To heart and eye bright visions bring, Shall not far holier memories To this memorial cling Which needs no mellowing mist of time To hide the crimson stains of crime!

Wreck of a temple, unprofaned; Of courts where Peace with Freedom trod, Lifting on high, with hands unstained, Thanksgiving unto G.o.d; Where Mercy's voice of love was pleading For human hearts in bondage bleeding;

Where, midst the sound of rushing feet And curses on the night-air flung, That pleading voice rose calm and sweet From woman's earnest tongue; And Riot turned his scowling glance, Awed, from her tranquil countenance!

That temple now in ruin lies!

The fire-stain on its shattered wall, And open to the changing skies Its black and roofless hall, It stands before a nation's sight, A gravestone over buried Right!

But from that ruin, as of old, The fire-scorched stones themselves are crying, And from their ashes white and cold Its timbers are replying!

A voice which slavery cannot kill Speaks from the crumbling arches still!

And even this relic from thy shrine, O holy Freedom! Hath to me A potent power, a voice and sign To testify of thee; And, grasping it, methinks I feel A deeper faith, a stronger zeal.

And not unlike that mystic rod, Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian wave, Which opened, in the strength of G.o.d, A pathway for the slave, It yet may point the bondman's way, And turn the spoiler from his prey.

1839.

THE WORLD'S CONVENTION OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANc.i.p.aTION,

HELD IN LONDON IN 1840.

Joseph Sturge, the founder of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, proposed the calling of a world's anti-slavery convention, and the proposal was promptly seconded by the American Anti-Slavery Society.

The call was addressed to "friends of the slave of every nation and of every clime."

YES, let them gather! Summon forth The pledged philanthropy of Earth.

From every land, whose hills have heard The bugle blast of Freedom waking; Or shrieking of her symbol-bird From out his cloudy eyrie breaking Where Justice hath one worshipper, Or truth one altar built to her;

Where'er a human eye is weeping O'er wrongs which Earth's sad children know; Where'er a single heart is keeping Its prayerful watch with human woe Thence let them come, and greet each other, And know in each a friend and brother!

Yes, let them come! from each green vale Where England's old baronial halls Still bear upon their storied walls The grim crusader's rusted mail, Battered by Paynim spear and brand On Malta's rock or Syria's sand!

And mouldering pennon-staves once set Within the soil of Palestine, By Jordan and Gennesaret; Or, borne with England's battle line, O'er Acre's shattered turrets stooping, Or, midst the camp their banners drooping, With dews from hallowed Hermon wet, A holier summons now is given Than that gray hermit's voice of old, Which unto all the winds of heaven The banners of the Cross unrolled!

Not for the long-deserted shrine; Not for the dull unconscious sod, Which tells not by one lingering sign That there the hope of Israel trod; But for that truth, for which alone In pilgrim eyes are sanctified The garden moss, the mountain stone, Whereon His holy sandals pressed,-- The fountain which His lip hath blessed,--

Whate'er hath touched His garment's hem At Bethany or Bethlehem, Or Jordan's river-side.

For Freedom in the name of Him Who came to raise Earth's drooping poor, To break the chain from every limb, The bolt from every prison door!

For these, o'er all the earth hath pa.s.sed An ever-deepening trumpet blast, As if an angel's breath had lent Its vigor to the instrument.

And Wales, from Snowden's mountain wall, Shall startle at that thrilling call, As if she heard her bards again; And Erin's "harp on Tara's wall"

Give out its ancient strain, Mirthful and sweet, yet sad withal,-- The melody which Erin loves, When o'er that harp, 'mid bursts of gladness And slogan cries and lyke-wake sadness, The hand of her O'Connell moves!

Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill, And mountain hold, and heathery bill, Shall catch and echo back the note, As if she heard upon the air Once more her Cameronian's prayer And song of Freedom float.

And cheering echoes shall reply From each remote dependency, Where Britain's mighty sway is known, In tropic sea or frozen zone; Where'er her sunset flag is furling, Or morning gun-fire's smoke is curling; From Indian Bengal's groves of palm And rosy fields and gales of balm, Where Eastern pomp and power are rolled Through regal Ava's gates of gold; And from the lakes and ancient woods And dim Canadian solitudes, Whence, sternly from her rocky throne, Queen of the North, Quebec looks down; And from those bright and ransomed Isles Where all unwonted Freedom smiles, And the dark laborer still retains The scar of slavery's broken chains!

From the h.o.a.r Alps, which sentinel The gateways of the land of Tell, Where morning's keen and earliest glance On Jura's rocky wall is thrown, And from the olive bowers of France And vine groves garlanding the Rhone,-- "Friends of the Blacks," as true and tried As those who stood by Oge's side, And heard the Haytien's tale of wrong, Shall gather at that summons strong; Broglie, Pa.s.sy, and he whose song Breathed over Syria's holy sod, And, in the paths which Jesus trod, And murmured midst the hills which hem Crownless and sad Jerusalem, Hath echoes whereso'er the tone Of Israel's prophet-lyre is known.

Still let them come; from Quito's walls, And from the Orinoco's tide, From Lima's Inca-haunted halls, From Santa Fe and Yucatan,-- Men who by swart Guerrero's side Proclaimed the deathless rights of man, Broke every bond and fetter off, And hailed in every sable serf A free and brother Mexican!

Chiefs who across the Andes' chain Have followed Freedom's flowing pennon, And seen on Junin's fearful plain, Glare o'er the broken ranks of Spain The fire-burst of Bolivar's cannon!

And Hayti, from her mountain land, Shall send the sons of those who hurled Defiance from her blazing strand, The war-gage from her Petion's hand, Alone against a hostile world.

Nor all unmindful, thou, the while, Land of the dark and mystic Nile!

Thy Moslem mercy yet may shame All tyrants of a Christian name, When in the shade of Gizeh's pile, Or, where, from Abyssinian hills El Gerek's upper fountain fills, Or where from Mountains of the Moon El Abiad bears his watery boon, Where'er thy lotus blossoms swim Within their ancient hallowed waters; Where'er is beard the Coptic hymn, Or song of Nubia's sable daughters; The curse of slavery and the crime, Thy bequest from remotest time, At thy dark Mehemet's decree Forevermore shall pa.s.s from thee; And chains forsake each captive's limb Of all those tribes, whose hills around Have echoed back the cymbal sound And victor horn of Ibrahim.

And thou whose glory and whose crime To earth's remotest bound and clime, In mingled tones of awe and scorn, The echoes of a world have borne, My country! glorious at thy birth, A day-star flashing brightly forth, The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn!

Oh, who could dream that saw thee then, And watched thy rising from afar, That vapors from oppression's fen Would cloud the upward tending star?

Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which heard, Awe-struck, the shout which hailed thy dawning, Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and king, To mock thee with their welcoming, Like Hades when her thrones were stirred To greet the down-cast Star of Morning!

"Aha! and art thou fallen thus?

Art thou become as one of us?"

Land of my fathers! there will stand, Amidst that world-a.s.sembled band, Those owning thy maternal claim Unweakened by thy, crime and shame; The sad reprovers of thy wrong; The children thou hast spurned so long.

Still with affection's fondest yearning To their unnatural mother turning.

No traitors they! but tried and leal, Whose own is but thy general weal, Still blending with the patriot's zeal The Christian's love for human kind, To caste and climate unconfined.

A holy gathering! peaceful all No threat of war, no savage call For vengeance on an erring brother!

But in their stead the G.o.dlike plan To teach the brotherhood of man To love and reverence one another, As sharers of a common blood, The children of a common G.o.d Yet, even at its lightest word, Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred: Spain, watching from her Moro's keep Her slave-ships traversing the deep, And Rio, in her strength and pride, Lifting, along her mountain-side, Her snowy battlements and towers, Her lemon-groves and tropic bowers, With bitter hate and sullen fear Its freedom-giving voice shall hear; And where my country's flag is flowing, On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing, Above the Nation's council halls, Where Freedom's praise is loud and long, While close beneath the outward walls The driver plies his reeking thong; The hammer of the man-thief falls, O'er hypocritic cheek and brow The crimson flush of shame shall glow And all who for their native land Are pledging life and heart and hand, Worn watchers o'er her changing weal, Who fog her tarnished honor feel, Through cottage door and council-hall Shall thunder an awakening call.

The pen along its page shall burn With all intolerable scorn; An eloquent rebuke shall go On all the winds that Southward blow; From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb, Warning and dread appeal shall come, Like those which Israel heard from him, The Prophet of the Cherubim; Or those which sad Esaias hurled Against a sin-accursed world!

Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling Unceasing from its iron wing, With characters inscribed thereon, As fearful in the despot's ball As to the pomp of Babylon The fire-sign on the palace wall!

And, from her dark iniquities, Methinks I see my country rise Not challenging the nations round To note her tardy justice done; Her captives from their chains unbound; Her prisons opening to the sun But tearfully her arms extending Over the poor and unoffending; Her regal emblem now no longer

A bird of prey, with talons reeking, Above the dying captive shrieking, But, spreading out her ample wing, A broad, impartial covering, The weaker sheltered by the stronger Oh, then to Faith's anointed eyes The promised token shall be given; And on a nation's sacrifice, Atoning for the sin of years, And wet with penitential tears, The fire shall fall from Heaven!

1839.

Ma.s.sACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.

Written on reading an account of the proceedings of the citizens of Norfolk, Va., in reference to George Latimer, the alleged fugitive slave, who was seized in Boston without warrant at the request of James B. Grey, of Norfolk, claiming to be his master. The case caused great excitement North and South, and led to the presentation of a pet.i.tion to Congress, signed by more than fifty thousand citizens of Ma.s.sachusetts, calling for such laws and proposed amendments to the Const.i.tution as should relieve the Commonwealth from all further partic.i.p.ation in the crime of oppression. George Latimer himself was finally given free papers for the sum of four hundred dollars.

THE blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way, Bears greeting to Virginia from Ma.s.sachusetts Bay.

No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal, Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of hors.e.m.e.n's steel.