The brook bank whitening in the grist

mill's storm,

217

A village straggling in loose disarray Of vulgar newness, premature decay; A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls, With "Slaves at Auction!" garnish ing its walls.

Without, surrounded by a motley crowd, The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulou and loud,

A squire or colonel in his pride of place, Known at free fights, the caucus, and the race,

Prompt to proclaim his honor without blot,

And silence doubters with a ten-pace shot,

Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant With pious phrase and democratic cant, Yet never scrupling, with a filthy jest, To sell the infant from its mother's breast,

Break through all ties of wedlock, home, and kin,

Yield shrinking girlhood up to graybeard sin;

Sell all the virtues with his human stock, The Christian graces on his auctionblock,

And coolly count on shrewdest bargains driven

In hearts regenerate, and in souls forgiven !

Look once again! The moving canvas shows

A slave plantation's slovenly repose, Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds,

The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds;

And, held a brute, in practice, as in law, Becomes in fact the thing he's taken for. There, early summoned to the hemp and

corn,

The nursing mother leaves her child new-born;

There haggard sickness, weak and deathly faint,

Crawls to his task, and fears to make complaint;