God lifts to-day the vail, and shows

The features of the demon !

O North and South,

Its victims both,

Can ye not cry,

"Let slavery die!"

And union find in freedom?

What though the cast-out spirit tear

The nation in his going?

We who have shared the guilt must share The pang of his o'erthrowing!

Whate'er the loss,

Whate'er the cross,

Shall they complain

Of present pain

Who trust in God's hereafter?

For who that leans on His right arm

Was ever yet forsaken ?

What righteous cause can suffer harm

If He its part has taken?

Though wild and loud

And dark the cloud

Behind its folds

His hand upholds

The calm sky of to-morrow!

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!

In vain the bells of war shall ring

Of triumphs and revenges,

While still is spared the evil thing

That severs and estranges.

But blest the ear

That yet shall hear

The jubilant bell

That rings the knell

Of Slavery forever!

Then let the selfish lip be dumb,

And hushed the breath of sighing; Before the joy of peace must come The pains of purifying.

God give us grace

Each in his place

To bear his lot,

And, murmuring not,

Endure and wait and labor!

And, taking counsel but of common sense,
To strike at cause as well as consequence.
O, never yet since Roland wound his horn
At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown
Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own,
Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn!
It had been safer, doubtless, for the time,
To flatter treason, and avoid offence

To that Dark Power whose underlying crime
Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence.

But, if thine be the fate of all who break

The ground for truth's seed, or forerun their

years

Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make A lane for freedom through the level spears, Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee,

Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free!

The land shakes with them, and the slave's dull ear

Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear. Who would recall them now must first arrest The winds that blow down from the free North

west,

Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back

The Mississippi to its upper springs.

Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack

But the full time to harden into things.