TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS GONE to thy Heavenly Father's rest! Gentlest of spirits!—not for thee Our tears are shed, our sighs are given: When Autumn's sun is downward going But woe for us! who linger still With feebler strength and hearts less lowly, And minds less steadfast to the will Of Him whose every work is holy. For not like thine, is crucified Not warm like thine, but cold and slow, Darkly upon our struggling way Our watch amidst the darkness keeping, In meekness and in self-denial. Oh! for that spirit, meek and mild, Yet faithful to its trust remaining. Even where the fires of Hate were burning, O loved of thousands! to thy grave, Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore thee; The poor man and the rescued slave Wept as the broken earth closed o'er thee; And grateful tears, like summer rain, Quickened its dying grass again! And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine, Shall come the outcast and the lowly, Of gentle deeds and words of thine Recalling memories sweet and holy! Oh! for the death the righteous die! With holier, tenderer beauty shining; As if that pure and blessed light, The spirit to its worship going! TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN. 1846. Is this thy voice, whose treble notes of fear Hadst thou no fear, that, ere long, doubling back, Cold, calm and proud, in the teeth o' the Senate flung, O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan, Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man? How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting, And pointing to the lurid heaven afar, Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting, Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star! But, when the task was done, kept pouring still, master drowned! So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee, For God still overrules man's schemes, and takes LINES, WRITTEN On the adoption of Pinckney's Resolutions, in the House of Representatives, and the passage of Calhoun's "Bill for excluding papers written or printed, touching the subject c Slavery from the U. S. Post-office," in the Senate of the United States. MEN of the North-land! where's the manly spirit Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone? Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit Their names alone? Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us, Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low, That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us To silence now? Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging, What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter, For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us, God and our charter ? Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters, Here the false jurist human rights deny, And, in the church, their proud and skilled abettors Make truth a lie ? Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible, Both man and God? Shall our New England stand erect no longer, Oh, no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie→ From her blue rivers and her welling fountains, And clear, cold sky— From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean Gnaws with his surges from the fisher's skiff, With white sail swaying to the billows' motion Round rock and cliff From the free fire-side of her unbought farmerFrom her free laborer at his loom and wheel |