John Greenleaf Whittier

“ We go to rear a wall of men On Freedom's southern line, And plant beside the cotton-tree The rugged Northern pine! We're flowing from our native hills As our free rivers flow; The blessing of our Mother-land Is on us as we go. We go to plant her common schools, On distant prairie swells, And give the Sabbaths of the wild The music of her bells. Upbearing, like the Ark of old, The Bible in our van, We go to test the truth of God Against the fraud of man. No pause, nor rest, save where the streams That feed the Kansas run, Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun. ”

“ The hands that have done the wrong To right the wronged are strong, And the voice of a nation saith "Enough of the war of swords, Enough of the lying words And shame of a broken faith!" The hills that have watched afar The valleys ablaze with war Shall look on the tasselled corn; And the dust of the grinded grain, Instead of the blood of the slain, Shall sprinkle thy banks, Big Horn! The Ute and the wandering Crow Shall know as the white men know, And fare as the white men fare; The pale and the red shall be brothers, One's rights shall be as another's, Home, School, and House of Prayer! ”

“ For Thou hast heard, O God of Right, The sighing of the island slave; And stretched for him the arm of might, Not shortened that it could not save. The laborer sits beneath his vine, The shackled soul and hand are free; Thanksgiving! for the work is Thine! Praise! for the blessing is of Thee! And oh, we feel Thy presence here, Thy awful arm in judgment bare! Thine eye hath seen the bondman's tear; Thine ear hath heard the bondman's prayer. Praise! for the pride of man is low, The counsels of the wise are naught, The fountains of repentance flow; What hath our God in mercy wrought? ”

“ 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. God 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! ”

“ Here in stern judgment of the oppressor's wrong Shall strong rebukings thrill on Freedom's tongue, No partial justice hold th' unequal scale, No pride of caste a brother's rights assail, No tyrant's mandates echo from this wall, Holy to Freedom and the Rights of All! But a fair field, where mind may close with mind, Free as the sunshine and the chainless wind; Where the high trust is fixed on Truth alone, And bonds and fetters from the soul are thrown; Where wealth, and rank, and worldly pomp, and might, Yield to the presence of the True and Right. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The crowning fact The kingliest act Of Freedom is the freeman's vote! For pearls that gem A diadem The diver in the deep sea dies; The regal right We boast to-night Is ours through costlier sacrifice; The blood of Vane, His prison pain Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod, And hers whose faith Drew strength from death, And prayed her Russell up to God! Our hearts grow cold, We lightly hold A right which brave men died to gain; The stake, the cord, The axe, the sword, Grim nurses at its birth of pain. The shadow rend, And o'er us bend, O martyrs, with your crowns and palms ”

“ Whate'er the loss, Whate'er the cross, Shall they complain Of present pain Who trust in God's hereafter? For who that leans on His right arm Was ever yet forsaken? What righteous cause can suffer harm If He its part has taken? Though wild and loud, And dark the cloud, Behind its folds His hand upholds The calm sky of to-morrow! Above the maddening cry for blood, Above the wild war-drumming, Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good The evil overcoming. Give prayer and purse To stay the Curse Whose wrong we share, Whose shame we bear, Whose end shall gladden Heaven! ”

“ Shrink not from strife unequal! With the best is always hope; And ever in the sequel God holds the right side up! But when, with thine uniting, Come voices long and loud, And far-off hills are writing Thy fire-words on the cloud; When from Penobscot's fountains A deep response is heard, And across the Western mountains Rolls back thy rallying word; Shall thy line of battle falter, With its allies just in view? Oh, by hearth and holy altar, My fatherland, be true! Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom Speed them onward far and fast Over hill and valley speed them, Like the sibyl's on the blast! ”

“ I, for one, Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the sun, Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar brooks, Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple-floor. No falser idol man has bowed before, In Indian groves or islands of the sea, Than that which through the quaint-carved Gothic door Looks forth,—a Church without humanity! Patron of pride, and prejudice, and wrong,— The rich man's charm and fetich of the strong, The Eternal Fulness meted, clipped, and shorn, The seamless robe of equal mercy torn, The dear Christ hidden from His kindred flesh, And, in His poor ones, crucified afresh! ”

“ When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, and God, Are bowed at an Idol polluted with blood; When the recreant North has forgotten her trust, And the lip of her honor is low in the dust,— Thank God, that one arm from the shackle has broken! Thank God, that one man as a freeman has spoken! O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has been blown! Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the murmur has gone! To the land of the South, of the charter and chain, Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's pain; Where the cant of Democracy dwells on the lips Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders of whips! ”

“ We gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves, From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves! Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow; The spirit of her early time is with her even now; Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow and calm and cool, She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister's slave and tool! All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may, Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day; But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone, And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown! ”

“ Fitting it is that here, where Freedom first From her fair feet shook off the Old World's dust, Spread her white pinions to our Western blast, And her free tresses to our sunshine cast, One Hall should rise redeemed from Slavery's ban, One Temple sacred to the Rights of Man! Oh! if the spirits of the parted come, Visiting angels, to their olden home If the dead fathers of the land look forth From their fair dwellings, to the things of earth, Is it a dream, that with their eyes of love, They gaze now on us from the bowers above? ”

“ Oh for the open firmament, The prairie free, The desert hillside, cavern-rent, The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent, The Bushman's tree! Than web of Persian loom most rare, Or soft divan, Better the rough rock, bleak and bare, Or hollow tree, which man may share With suffering man. I hear a voice: "Thus saith the Law, Let Love be dumb; Clasping her liberal hands in awe, Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw From hearth and home." I hear another voice: "The poor Are thine to feed; Turn not the outcast from thy door, Nor give to bonds and wrong once more Whom God hath freed." ”

“ To silence Freedom's voice of warning, And from your precincts shut the light Of Freedom's day around ye dawning; If when an earthquake voice of power And signs in earth and heaven are showing That forth, in its appointed hour, The Spirit of the Lord is going And, with that Spirit, Freedom's light On kindred, tongue, and people breaking, Whose slumbering millions, at the sight, In glory and in strength are waking! When for the sighing of the poor, And for the needy, God bath risen, And chains are breaking, and a door Is opening for the souls in prison! ”

“ We hoped for peace; our eyes survey The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day We prayed for love to loose the chain; 'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain! Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours Has mined and heaved the hostile towers; Not by our hands is turned the key That sets the sighing captives free. A redder sea than Egypt's wave Is piled and parted for the slave; A darker cloud moves on in light; A fiercer fire is guide by night. The praise, O Lord! is Thine alone, In Thy own way Thy work is done! Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast, To whom be glory, first and last! ”

“ A Christian up for sale! Wet with her blood your whips, o'ertask her frame, Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame, Her patience shall not fail! A heathen hand might deal Back on your heads the gathered wrong of years: But her low, broken prayer and nightly tears, Ye neither heed nor feel. Con well thy lesson o'er, Thou prudent teacher, tell the toiling slave No dangerous tale of Him who came to save The outcast and the poor. But wisely shut the ray Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart, And to her darkened mind alone impart One stern command, Obey! ”

“ The fathers sleep, but men remain As wise, as true, and brave as they; Why count the loss and not the gain? The best is that we have to-day. Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime, Within thy mighty bounds transpires, With speed defying space and time Comes to us on the accusing wires; While of thy wealth of noble deeds, Thy homes of peace, thy votes unsold, The love that pleads for human needs, The wrong redressed, but half is told! We read each felon's chronicle, His acts, his words, his gallows-mood; We know the single sinner well And not the nine and ninety good. ”

“ Though long delayed, and far, and slow, The Briton's triumph shall be ours Wears slavery here a prouder brow Than that which twelve short years ago Scowled darkly from her island bowers? Mighty alike for good or ill With mother-land, we fully share The Saxon strength, the nerve of steel, The tireless energy of will, The power to do, the pride to dare. What she has done can we not do? Our hour and men are both at hand; The blast which Freedom's angel blew O'er her green islands, echoes through Each valley of our forest land. ”

“ Up, laggards of Freedom!—our free flag is cast To the blaze of the sun and the wings of the blast; Will ye turn from a struggle so bravely begun, From a foe that is breaking, a field that's half won? Whoso loves not his kind, and who fears not the Lord, Let him join that foe's service, accursed and abhorred Let him do his base will, as the slave only can,— Let him put on the bloodhound, and put off the Man! Let him go where the cold blood that creeps in his veins Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on his chains ”

“ Golden streets for idle knave, Sabbath rest for weary slave! Not for words and works like these, Priest of God, thy mission is; But to make earth's desert glad, In its Eden greenness clad; And to level manhood bring Lord and peasant, serf and king; And the Christ of God to find In the humblest of thy kind! Thine to work as well as pray, Clearing thorny wrongs away; Plucking up the weeds of sin, Letting heaven's warm sunshine in; Watching on the hills of Faith; Listening what the spirit saith, Of the dim-seen light afar, Growing like a nearing star. ”

“ When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth, Instead of birds, are flitting; When children throng the glowing hearth, And quiet wives are knitting; While in the fire-light strong and clear Young eyes of pleasure glisten, To tales of all we see and hear The ears of home shall listen. By many a Northern lake and bill, From many a mountain pasture, Shall Fancy play the Drover still, And speed the long night faster. Then let us on, through shower and sun, And heat and cold, be driving; There 's life alone in duty done, And rest alone in striving. ”

“ The hope of all who suffer, The dread of all who wrong, She drifts in darkness and in storm, How long, O Lord I how long? But courage, O my mariners Ye shall not suffer wreck, While up to God the freedman's prayers Are rising from your deck. Is not your sail the banner Which God hath blest anew, The mantle that De Matha wore, The red, the white, the blue? Its hues are all of heaven, The red of sunset's dye, The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud, The blue of morning's sky. Wait cheerily, then, O mariners, For daylight and for land; The breath of God is in your sail, Your rudder is His hand. ”

“ From Mississippi's fountain-head A sound as of the bison's tread! There rustled freedom's Charter Oak In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke! Cheer answers cheer from rise to set Of sun. We have a country yet! The praise, O God, be thine alone! Thou givest not for bread a stone; Thou hast not led us through the night To blind us with returning light; Not through the furnace have we passed, To perish at its mouth at last. O night of peace, thy flight restrain! November's moon, be slow to wane! Shine on the freedman's cabin floor, On brows of prayer a blessing pour ”

“ Where the black slave shall laugh in his bonds, to behold The White Slave beside him, self-fettered and sold! But ye, who still boast of hearts beating and warm, Rise, from lake shore and ocean's, like waves in a storm, Come, throng round our banner in Liberty's name, Like winds from your mountains, like prairies aflame! Our foe, hidden long in his ambush of night, Now, forced from his covert, stands black in the light. Oh, the cruel to Man, and the hateful to God, Smite him down to the earth, that is cursed where he trod! ”

“ Unappalled by the danger, the shame, and the pain, And counting each trial for Truth as their gain! And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true, Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due; Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert with thine, On the banks of Swetara, the songs of the Rhine,— The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to brave The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave; Will the sons of such men yield the lords of the South One brow for the brand, for the padlock one mouth? They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain, Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again? ”

“ Shall outraged Nature cease to feel? Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow? Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel, The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow, Turn back the spirit roused to save The Truth, our Country, and the Slave? Of human skulls that shrine was made, Round which the priests of Mexico Before their loathsome idol prayed; Is Freedom's altar fashioned so? And must we yield to Freedom's God, As offering meet, the negro's blood? Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought Which well might shame extremest hell? Shall freemen lock the indignant thought? ”

“ For deeper than thunder of summer's loud shower, On the dome of the sky God is striking the hour! Shall we falter before what we've prayed for so long, When the Wrong is so weak, and the Right is so strong? Come forth all together! come old and come young, Freedom's vote in each hand, and her song on each tongue; Truth naked is stronger than Falsehood in mail; The Wrong cannot prosper, the Right cannot fail. Like leaves of the summer once numbered the foe, But the hoar-frost is falling, the northern winds blow ”

“ Vainly to that mean Ambition Which, upon a rival's fall, Winds above its old condition, With a reptile's slimy crawl, Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slave in anguish call. Vainly to the child of Fashion, Giving to ideal woe Graceful luxury of compassion, Shall the stricken mourner go; Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful the hollow show! Nay, my words are all too sweeping: In this crowded human mart, Feeling is not dead, but sleeping; Man's strong will and woman's heart, In the coming strife for Freedom, yet shall bear their generous part. ”

“ Live, till the Southron, who, with all his faults, Has manly instincts, in his pride revolts, Dashes from off him, midst the glad world's cheers, The hideous nightmare of his dream of years, And lifts, self-prompted, with his own right hand, The vile encumbrance from his glorious land! "So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends forth Its widening circles to the South or North, Where'er our banner flaunts beneath the stars Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike bars, There shall Free Labor's hardy children stand The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land. ”

“ Thy words are prophecies; Forward the age of gold, The new Saturnian lies. The universal prayer And hope are not in vain; Rise, brothers! and prepare The way for Saturn's reign. Perish shall all which takes From labor's board and can; Perish shall all which makes A spaniel of the man! Free from its bonds the mind, The body from the rod; Broken all chains that bind The image of our God. Just men no longer pine Behind their prison-bars; Through the rent dungeon shine The free sun and the stars. Earth own, at last, untrod By sect, or caste, or clan, The fatherhood of God, The brotherhood of man! ”

“ The long-bound vassal of the exulting South For very shame her self-forged chain has broken; Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth, And in the clear tones of her old time spoken! Oh, all undreamed-of, all unhoped-for changes The tyrant's ally proves his sternest foe; To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges, New Hampshire thunders an indignant No! Who is it now despairs? Oh, faint of heart, Look upward to those Northern mountains cold, Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag unrolled, And gather strength to bear a manlier part All is not lost. ”

“ And priests like him who Newport's market trod, And o'er its slave-ships shook the bolts of God! So shall your power, with a wise prudence used, Strong but forbearing, firm but not abused, In kindly keeping with the good of all, The nobler maxims of the past recall, Her natural home-born right to Freedom give, And leave her foe his robber-right,—to live. Live, as the snake does in his noisome fen! Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn den! Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of flame, The focal point of million-fingered shame! ”

“ Look we at home! our noble hall, To Freedom's holy purpose given, Now rears its black and ruined wall, Beneath the wintry heaven, Telling the story of its doom, The fiendish mob, the prostrate law, The fiery jet through midnight's gloom, Our gazing thousands saw. Look to our State! the poor man's right Torn from him: and the sons of those Whose blood in Freedom's sternest fight Sprinkled the Jersey snows, Outlawed within the land of Penn, That Slavery's guilty fears might cease, And those whom God created men Toil on as brutes in peace. ”