From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the
From each and all, if God hath not forsaken
Our land, and left us to an evil choice,
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken
A People's voice
Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;
And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it
Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,
Revive again.
Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing
Sadly upon us from afar, shall smile,
And unto God devout thanksgiving raising,
Bless us the while.
Oh, for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and
Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter
With all they left ye perilled and at stake?
Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar
Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come together, Put on the harness for the moral fight,
And, with the blessing of your Heavenly Father, MAINTAIN THE RIGHT!
THE CURSE OF THE CHARTERBREAKERS.37
IN Westminster's royal halls,
Robed in their pontificals,
England's ancient prelates stood
For the people's right and good.
Closed around the waiting crowd,
Dark and still, like winter's cloud;
King and council, lord and knight,
Squire and yeoman, stood in sight-
Stood to hear the priest rehearse,
In God's name, the Church's curse,
By the tapers round them lit,
Slowly, sternly uttering it.
"Right of voice in framing laws,
Right of peers to try each cause;
Peasant homestead, mean and small,
Sacred as the monarch's hall-
"Whoso lays his hand on these,
England's ancient liberties—
Whoso breaks, by word or deed,
England's vow at Runnymede-
"Be he Prince or belted knight,
Whatsoe'er his rank or might,
If the highest, then the worst,
Let him live and die accursed.
"Thou, who to thy Church hast given
Keys alike, of hell and heaven,
Make our word and witness sure,
Let the curse we speak endure!'
Silent, while that curse was said,
Every bare and listening head
Bowed in reverent awe, and then
All the people said, Amen!
Seven times the bells have tolled,
For the centuries gray and old,
Since that stoled and mitred band
Cursed the tyrants of their land.
Since the priesthood, like a tower,
Stood between the poor and power;
And the wronged and trodden down
Blessed the abbot's shaven crown.
Gone, thank God, their wizard spell,
Lost, their keys of heaven and hell;
Yet I sigh for men as bold
As those bearded priests of old.
Now, too oft the priesthood wait
At the threshold of the state-
Waiting for the beck and nod
Of its power as law and God.
Fraud exults, while solemn words
Sanctify his stolen hoards;
Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips
Bless his manacles and whips.
Not on them the poor rely,
Not to them looks liberty,
Who with fawning falsehood cower
To the wrong, when clothed with power.
Oh! to see them meanly cling,
Round the master, round the king,
Sported with, and sold and bought--
Pitifuller sight is not!
Tell me not that this must be:
God's true priest is always free;
Free, the needed truth to speak,
Right the wronged, and raise the weak.
Not to fawn on wealth and state,
Leaving Lazarus at the gate-
Not to peddle creeds like wares—
Not to mutter hireling prayers—
Nor to paint the new life's bliss
On the sable ground of this-
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 dimseen light afar,
Growing like a nearing star.
God's interpreter art thou,
To the waiting ones below;
"Twixt them and its light midway
Heralding the better day-
Catching gleams of temple spires,
Hearing notes of angel choirs,
Where, as yet unseen of them,
Comes the New Jerusalem!
Like the seer of Patmos gazing,
On the glory downward blazing;
Till upon Earth's grateful sod
Rests the City of our God!
THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.
SUGGESTED BY A DAGUERREOTYPE FROM A FRENCH ENGRAVING.
BEAMS of noon, like burning lances, through the tree-tops flash and glisten,
As she stands before her lover, with raised face to look and listen.
Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the ancient Jewish song:
Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her graceful beauty wrong.
He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal's arb and hue,
Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his higher nature true;
Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a free man in his heart,
As the greegree holds his Fetich from the white man's gaze apart.
Ever foremost of his comrades, when the drivers
Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the fields of
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