THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE. "Thou, who to thy Church hast given Golden streets for idle knave, Sabbath rest for weary slave! Not for words and works like these, And to level manhood bring Thine to work as well as pray, Watching on the hills of Faith; God's interpreter art thou, - Catching gleams of temple spires, Hearing notes of angel choirs, Where, as yet unseen of them, Comes the New Jerusalem ! Like the seer of Patmos gazing, On the glory downward blazing; Till upon Earth's grateful sod Rests the City of our God! THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE. SUGGESTED BY A DAGUERREOTYPE FROM A FRENCH ENGRAVING. BEAMS of noon, like burning lances, through the tree-tops flash and glisten, As she stands before her lover, with raised face to look and listen. Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the ancient Jewish song: Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her graceful beauty wrong. He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal's garb and hue, Holding still his spirit's birthright, to In the veins of whose affections kindred his higher nature true; Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a freeman in his heart, As the greegree holds his Fetich from the white man's gaze apart. Ever foremost of his comrades, when the driver's morning horn blood is but a part, Of one kindly current throbbing from the universal heart; Can ye know the deeper meaning of a love in Slavery nursed, Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in that Soil accursed? Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the Love of Home, and Love of Woman! fields of cane and corn: Fall the keen and burning lashes never on his back or limb; Scarce with look or word of censure, turns the driver unto him. Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his eye is hard and stern; Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has never deigned to learn. And, at evening, when his comrades dance before their master's door, Folding arms and knitting forehead, stands he silent evermore. God be praised for every instinct which rebels against a lot Where the brute survives the human, and man's upright form is not! As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral fold on fold Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers in his hold; Slow decays the forest monarch, closer girds the fell embrace, Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is in its place, So a base and bestial nature round the vassal's manhood twines, And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba choked with vines. God is Love, saith the Evangel; and our world of woe and sin Is made light and happy only when a Love is shining in. Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, find ing, wheresoe'er ye roam, Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, making all the world like home; To dear to all, but doubly dear the heart whose pulses elsewhere measure only hate and fear. All around the desert circles, underneath a brazen sky, Only one green spot remaining where the dew is never dry! From the horror of that desert, from its atmosphere of hell, Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the diver seeks his bell. 1 79 THE CRISIS. oss the valley, where s hut is seen, THE CRISIS. bloom of coffee, and WRITTEN ON LEARNING THE TERMS OF Eaves so green. he slave-gang, toil he maid; er the waters, leanhis spade? sighs he: 't is the he sees, of the mountains, by the breeze! O countrymen and brothers! that land Of salt wastes alternating with valleys Of mountains white with winter, looking On their feet with spring-vines tangled nd presses, and he Swift through whose black volcanic gates, ce call : o'er many a sunny vale, ! Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes | Great Heaven! The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Great herds that wander all unwatched, Is this our mission? End in this the prayers and tears, The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger, better years? Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through The Crisis presses on us; face to face With solemn lips of question, like the This This Even day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin; now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown, We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down! By all for which the martyrs bore their By all the warning words of truth with O my people! O my brothers! let us So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way; To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's bay; To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain; And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong of man? And mountain unto mountain call, PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE! THE HOLY LAND. 81 MISCELLANEOUS. THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN. ERE down yon blue Carpathian hills These prison shades are dark and cold, - For since the day when Warkworth wood An alien from my name and blood, When, looking back in sunset light, I saw her turret gleam, And from its casement, far and white, Her sign of farewell stream, Like one who, from some desert shore, So from the desert of my fate The shade is backward cast! I've wandered wide from shore to shore, And by the Holy Sepulchre I've pledged my knightly sword To Christ, his blessed Church, and her, The Mother of our Lord. O, vain the vow, and vain the strife! In vain the penance strange and long, The eyes of memory will not sleep,- And still the loves and joys of old Ah me! upon another's breast I see upon another rest The glance that once was mine. "O faithless priest! O perjured knight!” I hear the Master cry; "Shut out the vision from thy sight, Let Earth and Nature die. "The Church of God is now thy spouse, In vain! This heart its grief must know, Till life itself hath ceased, O pitying Mother! souls of light, Then let the Paynim work his will, THE HOLY LAND. FROM LAMARTINE. I HAVE not felt, o'er seas of sand, |