MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.

All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may,
Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day;

But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone,
And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!

Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air
With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair;
Cling closer to the "cleaving curse" that writes upon your plains
The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains.

Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old,
By watching round the shambles where human flesh is sold,
Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count his market value, when
The maddened mother's cry of woe shall pierce the slaver's den!

Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the Virginia name;
Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with rankest weeds of shame;
Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair universe,

We wash our hands forever of your sin and shame and curse.

A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been,
Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire's mountain men:
The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still

In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.

And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his prey
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft of gray,

How, through the free lips of the son, the father's warning spoke;
How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke!

A hundred thousand right arms were lifted up on high,

A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud reply;

Through the thronged towns of Essex the startling summons rang,
And up from bench and loom and wheel her young mechanics sprang

The voice of free, broad Middlesex,- of thousands as of one, -
The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lexington,
From Norfolk's ancient villages, from Plymouth's rocky bound
To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close her round; -

From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose
Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua flows,
To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the mountain larches stir,
Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of " God save Latimer!

And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray, -
And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay!
Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,
And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill

The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and daughters, -
Deep calling unto deep aloud, -the sound of many waters!
Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand?
No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land!

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Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne,

In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn;
You've spurned our kindest counsels, — you've hunted for our lives, -
And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves!

We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within
The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin;
We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can,
With the strong upward tendencies and godlike soul of man!

But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given
For freedom and humanity is registered in Heaven;
No slave-hunt in our borders, · - no pirate on our strand!
No fetters in the Bay State, -no slave upon our land!

THE RELIC.

[PENNSYLVANIA HALL, dedicated to Free Discussion and the cause of human liberty, was destroyed by a mob in 1838. The following was written on receiving a cane wrought from a fragment of the wood-work which the fire had spared.]

THE BRANDED HAND.

Wreck of a temple, unprofaned, -
Of courts where Peace with Freedom
trod,
Lifting on high, with hands unstained,
Thanksgiving unto God;

Where Mercy's voice of love was plead-
ing

For human hearts in bondage bleeding!

Where, midst the sound of rushing feet

And curses on the night-air flung,
That pleading voice rose calm and sweet
From woman's earnest tongue;
And Riot turned his scowling glance,
Awed, from her tranquil countenance!

3at temple now in ruin lies! -
The fire-stain on its shattered wall,
And open to the changing skies

Its black and roofless hall,
1. stands before a nation's sight,
A gravestone over buried Right!

But from that ruin, as of old,

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The fire-scorched stones themselves
are crying,

And from their ashes white and cold
Its timbers are replying!

A voice which slavery cannot kill
Speaks from the crumbling arches
still!

And even this relic from thy shrine,
O holy Freedom! hath to me
A potent power, a voice and sign
To testify of thee;

And, grasping it, methinks I feel
A deeper faith, a stronger zeal.

And not unlike that mystic rod,

Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian

wave,

Which opened, in the strength of God,
A pathway for the slave,

It yet may point the bondman's way,
And turn the spoiler from his prey.

THE BRANDED HAND.

1846.

WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray,
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day,

With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain!

Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal cravens aim

To make God's truth thy falsehood, his holiest work thy shame?
When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,
How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!

They change to wrong the duty which God hath written out
On the great heart of humanity, too legible for doubt!

They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown,
Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!

Why, that brand is highest honor!- than its traces never yet
Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set;
And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand,
Shall tell with pride the story of their father's BRANDED HAND!

As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back from Syrian wan
The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scymitars,

The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's crimson span,
So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of God and man

He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave,
Thou for his living presence in the bound and bleeding slave;
He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,

Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God!

For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip o'er him swung,
From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery wrung,
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine,
Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured the bondman's blood for wine, -

While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour knelt,

And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt ;
Thou beheld'st him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim,
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto him!

In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below,
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know;
God's stars and silence taught thee, as his angels only can,

That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man!

That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law and creed,
In the depth of God's great goodness may find mercy in his need;
But woe to him who crushes the SOUL with chain and rod,
And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!

Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of the wave!
Its branded palm shall prophesy, SALVATION TO THE SLAVE!"
Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads may feel
His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.

་

Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air, -
Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there!
Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce's heart of
In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before !

yore,

And the tyrants of the slave-land shall tremble at that sign,
When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan line:
Woe to the State-gorged leeches and the Church's locust band,
When they look from slavery's ramparts on the coming of that hand!

TO FANEUIL HALL.