THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE. [IN a late publication of L. F. TASISTRO, "Random Shots and Southern Breezes," is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as "A GOOD CHRISTIAN! "1 A CHRISTIAN! going, gone! Who bids for God's own image ?-for his grace My God! can such things be? Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done In that sad victim, then, A Christian up for sale! Wet with her blood your whips-o'ertask her frame, Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame, Her patience shall not fail! A heathen hand might deal Back on your heads the gathered wrong of years, But her low, broken prayer and nightly tears, Ye neither heed nor feel. Con well thy lesson o'er, Thou prudent teacher-tell the toiling slave But wisely shut the ray Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart, So shalt thou deftly raise The market price of human flesh; and while On thee, their pampered guest, the planters smile, Thy church shall praise. Grave, reverend men shall tell From Northern pulpits how thy work was blest, Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall, Cheers for the turbaned Bey But our poor slave in vain Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes- God of all right! how long Oh, from the fields of cane, From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cellFrom the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell, And coffle's weary chain,— Hoarse, horrible, and strong, Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry, STANZAS FOR THE TIMES. Is this the land our fathers loved, Are these the graves they slumber in? ? And shall we crouch above these graves, Shall outraged Nature cease to feel? Of human skulls that shrine was made, Is Freedom's altar fashioned so? Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought Which well might shame extremest hell? Shall freemen lock the indignant thought? Shall Honor bleed?-Shall Truth succumb? No-by each spot of haunted ground, Where Freedom weeps her children's fallBy Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's moundBy Griswold's stained and shattered wallBy Warren's ghost-by Langdon's shade--By all the memories of our dead! By their enlarging souls, which burst The bands and fetters round them set- By all Be ours the indignant answer-NO! No-guided by our country's laws, For truth, and right, and suffering man, What! shall we guard our neighbor still, And shall we know and share with him Is't not enough that this is borne ? And asks our haughty neighbor more? Clank round the Yankee farmer's door? Must he be told his freedom stands On Slavery's dark foundations strong- Its life-its soul, from slavery drawn? Rail on, then, "brethren of the South No fetter on the Yankee's press! From our Green Mountains to the Sea, LINES, WRITTEN on reading the Message of Governor RITNER, of Pennsyl vania, 1836. THANK God for the token!-one lip is still freeOne spirit untrammelled-unbending one knee! Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted and firm, Erect, when the multitude bends to the storm; |