Gone, gone-sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go,
aint with toil, and racked with pain,

To their cheerless homes again

There no brother's voice shall greet them -
There no father's welcome meet them.

Gone, gone sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters,
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

19

From the cool spring where they drank―
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank-
From the solemn house of prayer,
And the holy counsels there,

Gone, gone sold and gone,

WRITTEN ON READING THE MESSAGE OF GOVERNOR RITNER, OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1836.

HANK God for the token!

TH

One spirit untrammelled

one lip is still free

- unbending one knee!

Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted and firm,
Erect, when the multitude bends to the storm;
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!
Where "chivalric" honor means really no more
Than scourging of women, and robbing the poor!
Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth on high,

And the words which he utters are- WORSHIP, OR DIE!

Right onward, oh, speed it! Wherever the blood
Of the wronged and the guiltless is crying to God;
Wherever a slave in his fetters is pining;
Wherever the lash of the driver is twining;
Wherever from kindred, torn rudely apart,
Comes the sorrowful wail of the broken of heart;
Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind,

In silence and darkness, the God-given mind;
There, God speed it onward!—its truth will be felt
The bonds shall be loosened the iron shall melt!

And oh, will the land where the free soul of PENN
Still lingers and breathes over mountain and glen
Will the land where a BENEZET's spirit went forth
To the peeled, and the meted, and outcast of Earth-
Where the words of the Charter of Liberty first
From the soul of the sage and the patriot burst
Where first for the wronged and the weak of their kind,
The Christian and statesman their efforts combined
Will that land of the free and the good wear a chain?
Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be vain ?

NO, RITNER! - her "Friends," at thy warning shall stand
Erect for the truth, like their ancestral band;
Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past time,
Counting coldness injustice, and silence a crime;
Turning back from the cavil of creeds, to unite
Once again for the poor in defence of the Right;
Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full tide of Wrong,
Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges along;
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?

No, never! - one voice, like the sound in the cloud,
When the roar of the storm waxes loud and more loud,
Wherever the foot of the freeman hath pressed
From the Delaware's marge to the Lake of the West,
On the South-going breezes shall deepen and grow
Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble below!

Pennsylvania's watchword, with Freedom at stake,

Thrilling up from each valley, flung down from each height, "OUR COUNTRY AND LIBERTY! — GOD FOR THE RIGHT!"

23

MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.

HE blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern

THE

way,

Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay:

No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,

Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel.

No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go -
Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow;

And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far,
A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are spread for war.

We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy words and high,
Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our sky;
Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes its honest labor here
No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends his axe in fear.

Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's bank Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and dank; Through storm and wave, and blinding mist, stout are the hearts which man

The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.

The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms, Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms; Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam, They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.