NOTE BY THE AUTHOR. In these Volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my poetical writings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that these scattered children of my brain have found a home, I cannot but regret that I have been unable, by reason of illness, to give that attention to their revision and arrangement, which respect for the opinions of others, and my own after-thought and experience demand. That there are pieces in this collection which I would “willingly let die," I am free to confess. But, it is now too late to disown them, and I must submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins. There are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times, which owe their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which they were written, and the events by which they were suggested. The long poem of Mogg Megone, was, in a great measure, composed in early life ; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such as the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period. J. G. W. AMESBURY, 18th, 3d Mo., 1857: PROEM. I LOVE the old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through, The songs of Spenser's golden days, Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, Yet, vainly in my quiet hours I feel them, as the leaves and flowers In silence feel the dewy showers, The rigor of a frozen clime, The jarring words of one whose rhyme Beat often Labor's hurried time, Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, No rounded art the lack supplies; Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, Or softer shades of Nature's face, Nor mine the seer-like power to show To drop the plummet-line below . Our common world of joy and woe, A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. Yet here at least an earnest sense Of human right and weal is shown; A hate of tyranny intense, And hearty in its vehemence, Oh Freedom! if to me belong Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, Still with a love as deep and strong As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine ! AMESBURY, 11th mo., 1847. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. Funeral Tree of the Sokokis............ The Fountain................... The New Wife and the Oid........ Toussaint L'Ouverture.......... The Slave Ships......................... Stanzas. Our Countrymen in Chains....... The Hunters of Men......................... Clerical Oppressors........ .................. 138 Lines, written on reading the Message of Governor Ritner, of Pennsylvania, 1836.................. 144 Lines, written for the Meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, at Chatham Street Chapel, N. Y., 1834. 151 ri............................ . 157 Lines, written for the Anniversary of the First of The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to her Daughters sold into Southern Bondage.......... The World's Convention.......................... The New Year; Addressed to the Patrons of the Massachusetts to Virginia..... · Lines, suggested by a Visit to the City of Washington Lines, from a Letter to a young Clerical Friend..... Lines, written in the Book of a Friend....... To the Memory of Thomas Shipley........ Lines, on the Adoption of Pinckney's Resolutions The Curse of the Charter-Breakers... The Slaves of Martinique. ..... · 185 189 ................. 195 ................... 208 219 ........................... 223 ................................ 225 The Wife of Manoah to her Husband............ 235 The Crucifixion..................... To a Friend, on her Return from Europe. ........ To the Reformers of England...... The Quaker of the Olden Time.............. The Prisoner for Debt..................:::::: Lines, written on reading Pamphlets published by Clergymen against the Abolition of the Gallows. 277 359 ........... 360 |
