LINES ON THE PASSAGE OF THE PERSONAL LIBERTY BILL

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY

THE EVE OF ELECTION

LE MARAIS DU CYGNE

BARBARA FRIETCHIE

LAUS DEO

N

OT unto us who did but seek

The word that burned within to speak,

Not unto us this day belong

The triumph and exultant song.

Upon us fell in early youth
The burden of unwelcome truth,
And left us, weak and frail and few,
The censor's painful work to do.

Thenceforth our life a fight became,

The air we breathed was hot with blame;
For not with gauged and softened tone
We made the bondman's cause our own.

We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn,
The private hate, the public scorn;
Yet held through all the paths we trod
Our faith in man and trust in God.

We prayed and hoped; but still, with awe,
The coming of the sword we saw;
We heard the nearing steps of doom,
And saw the shade of things to come.

In grief which they alone can feel
Who from a mother's wrong appeal,

3d Mo.,

With blended lines of fear and hope
We cast our country's horoscope.

For still within her house of life
We marked the lurid sign of strife,
And, poisoning and embittering all,
We saw the star of Wormwood fall.

Deep as our love for her, became

Our hate of all that wrought her shame,
And if, thereby, with tongue and pen
We erred,
we were but mortal men.

We hoped for peace our eyes survey
The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day;
We prayed for love to loose the chain;
"T is shorn by battle's axe in twain !

Not skill nor strength nor zeal of ours
Has mined and heaved the hostile towers;
Not by our hands is turned the key
That sets the sighing captives free.

A redder sea than Egypt's wave
Is piled and parted for the slave;
A darker cloud mnoves on in light,
A fiercer fire is guide by night!

The praise, O Lord! be Thine alone,
In Thy own way Thy work be done!
Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast,
To whom be glory, first and last!

1865.

UR fellow-countrymen in chains!
Slaves in a land of light and law!

Slaves crouching on the very plains

Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!

A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood
A wail where Camden's martyrs fell
By every shrine of patriot blood,
From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well!

By storied hill and hallowed grot,
By mossy wood and marshy glen,
Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,
And hurrying shout of Marion's men!
The groan of breaking hearts is there-
The falling lash—the fetter's clank!
Slaves- SLAVES are breathing in that air,
Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank!

What, ho!

—our countrymen in chains! The whip on WOMAN's shrinking flesh!

Our soil yet reddening with the stains,

Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh! What! mothers from their children riven! What! God's own image bought and sold! AMERICANS to market driven,

And bartered as the brute for gold!

Speak! shall their agony of prayer
Come thrilling to our hearts in vain!
To us whose fathers scorned to bear
The paltry menace of a chain;
To us, whose boast is loud and long
Of holy Liberty and Light-

Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong,
Plead vainly for their plundered Right?

What! shall we send, with lavish breath,
Our sympathies across the wave,
Where Manhood, on the field of death,

Strikes for his freedom, or a grave?
Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung
For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning,
And millions hail with pen and tongue

Our light on all her altars burning?