"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT."
What gives the wheat-field blades of steel?
What points the rebel cannon? What sets the roaring rabble's heel On the old star-spangled pennon? What breaks the oath
Of the men o' the South? What whets the knife
For the Union's life?
Hark to the answer: Slayery!
Then waste no blows on lesser foes In strife unworthy freemen. God lifts to-day the veil, 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!
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.
I cavil not with Him: the voice That freedom's blessed gospel tells Is sweet to me as silver bells, Rejoicing! - yea, I will rejoice!
Dear friends still toiling in the sun, Ye dearer ones who, gone before,. Are watching from the eternal shore The slow work by your hands begun,
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.
Rejoice in hope! The day and night Are one with God, and one with them Who see by faith the cloudy hem
Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light!
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,
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