What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day
When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array ?
How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men
Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then?

Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the call

Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from Faneuil Hall ? When, echoing back her Henry's cry, came pulsing on each breath Of Northern winds, the thrilling sounds of "LIBERTY OR DEATH!"

What asks the Old Dominion?
False to their fathers' memory
If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn,
Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?

If now her sons have proved
false to the faith they loved,

We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell -
Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound's yell-
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!

Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air

With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild de

spair;

Cling closer to the "cleaving curse" that writes upon your plains The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains.

MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.

Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old,

25

By watching round the shambles where human flesh is sold
Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count his market value, when
The maddened mother's cry of woe shall pierce the slaver's den !

Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the Virginian name;
Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with rankest weeds of shame;
Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair universe

We wash our hands forever, of your sin, and shame, and curse.

A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been,

Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire's mountain

men:

The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still

In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.

And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his prey
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft of gray,

How, through the free lips of the son, the father's warning spoke;

How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke !

A hundred thousand right arms were lifted up on high,

A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud reply;

Through the thronged towns of Essex the startling summons

rang,

And up from bench and loom and wheel her young mechanics sprang !

The voice of free, broad Middlesex of thousands as of one-
The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lexington -
From Norfolk's ancient villages; from Plymouth's rocky bound
To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close her round;

From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua flows, To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the mountain larches stir, Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of "God save Latimer!"

And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay! Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,

And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill.

The voice of Massachusetts ! Of her free sons and daughters — Deep calling unto deep aloud — the sound of many waters! Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand? No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land!

Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne,
In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn;
You've spurned our kindest counsels you've hunted for our

And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and

gyves!

We wage no war we lift no arm-we fling no torch within The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin; We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can, With the strong upward tendencies and God-like soul of man !

But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given
For freedom and humanity, is registered in Heaven;
No slave-hunt in our borders · -no pirate on our strand!
No fetters in the Bay State—no slave upon our land!

THE BRANDED HAND.

27

THE BRANDED HAND.

1846.

WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray,

W

And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day,

With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve, in vain Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain!

Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal cravens aim
To make God's truth thy falsehood, his holiest work thy shame ?
When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,
How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!

They change to wrong, the duty which God hath written out
On the great heart of humanity too legible for doubt!

They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to

crown,

Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!

Why, that brand is highest honor!

than its traces never yet

Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set;
And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand,
Shall tell with pride the story of their father's BRANDED HAND!

As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back from Syrian wars The scars of Arab lances, and of Paynim scimetars,

The pallor of the prison and the shackle's crimson span,

So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of God and man!

He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave,
Thou for his living presence in the bound and bleeding slave;

He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,

Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God!

For, while the jurist sitting with the slave-whip o'er him swung,
From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery wrung,
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine,
Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured the bondman's blood
for wine,

While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour knelt,
And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt;
Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prison-shadows dim,
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!

In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below, Thou did'st learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know;

God's stars and silence taught thee, as his angels only can,
That the one, sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven, is Man!

That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law and creed,
In the depth of God's great goodness may find mercy in his need;
But woe to him who crushes the SOUL with chain and rod,
And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!

Then lift that manly right hand, bold ploughman of the wave! Its branded palm shall prophesy, "SALVATION TO THE SLAVE ! Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads may feel His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.

Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air,
Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God look there!
Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce's heart of

yore,

In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before!

And the tyrants of the slave-land shall tremble at that sign,
When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan line:
Woe to the State-gorged leeches, and the Church's locust band,
When they look from slavery's ramparts on the coming of that

hand!