Above the maddening cry for blood, Above the wild war-drumming,
Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good The evil overcoming.
Give prayer and purse To stay the Curse Whose wrong we share,
Whose shame we bear,
Whose end shall gladden Heaven!
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1862.
'HEN first I saw our banner wave
Above the nation's council-hall,
I heard beneath its marble wall The clanking fetters of the slave!
In the foul market-place I stood,
And saw the Christian mother sold, And childhood with its locks of gold, Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood.
I shut my eyes, I held my breath,
And, smothering down the wrath and shame That set my Northern blood aflame, Stood silent-where to speak was death.
Beside me gloomed the prison-cell
Where wasted one in slow decline For uttering simple words of mine, And loving freedom all too well.
The flag that floated from the dome Flapped menace in the morning air; I stood a perilled stranger where The human broker made his home.
For crime was virtue: Gown and Sword And Law their threefold sanction gave, And to the quarry of the slave Went hawking with our symbol-bird.
On the oppressor's side was power; And yet I knew that every wrong, However old, however strong, But waited God's avenging hour.
I knew that truth would crush the lie, Somehow, sometime, the end would be; Yet scarcely dared I hope to see The triumph with my mortal eye.
But now I see it! In the sun
A free flag floats from yonder dome, And at the nation's hearth and home The justice long delayed is done.
Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer, The message of deliverance comes, But heralded by roll of drums On waves of battle-troubled air!
Midst sounds that madden and appall,
The song that Bethlehem's shepherds knew! The harp of David melting through
The demon-agonies of Saul!
Not as we hoped; - but what are we? Above our broken dreams and plans God lays, with wiser hand than man's, The corner-stones of liberty.
Rejoice with me! The chastening rod Blossoms with love; the furnace heat Grows cool beneath His blessed feet Whose form is as the Son of God!
Rejoice! Our Marah's bitter springs Are sweetened; on our ground of grief Rise day by day in strong relief The prophecies of better things.
Are one with God, and one with them Who see by faith the cloudy hem Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light!
LL night above their rocky bed
They saw the stars march slow;
The wild Sierra overhead,
The desert's death below.
The Indian from his lodge of bark, The gray bear from his den, Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark, Glared on the mountain men.
Still upward turned, with anxious strain, Their leader's sleepless eye,
Where splinters of the mountain chain Stood black against the sky.
The night waned slow: at last, a glow, A gleam of sudden fire,
Up, men!" he cried, "yon rocky cone, To-day, please God, we 'll pass,
And look from Winter's frozen throne On Summer's flowers and grass!"
They set their faces to the blast, They trod th' eternal snow,
And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last The promised land below.
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