STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

135

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

Is this the land our fathery loved

The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the soil whereon they moved?

Are these the graves they slumber in?
Are we the sons by whom are borne
The mantles which the dead have worn?
And shall we crouch above these graves,
With craven soul and fettered lip?
Yoke in with marked and branded slaves,
And tremble at the driver's whip?
Bend to the earth our pliant knees,
And speak
but as our masters please?

--

Shall outraged Nature cease to feel?
Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow?
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel

The dungeon's gloom - the assassin's blow,
Turn back the spirit roused to save

The Truth, our Country, and the Slave?

Of human skulls that shrine was made,
Round which the priests of Mexico
Before their loathsome idol prayed, -

Is Freedom's altar fashioned so?
And must we yield to Freedom's God,
As offering meet, the negro's blood?

Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought
Which well might shame extremest hell?
Shall freemen lock the indignant thought?

Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell?

Shall Honor bleed? - Shall Truth succumb?
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?

No

by each spot of haunted ground, Where Freedom weeps her children's fall · By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's mound

By Griswold's stained and shattered wallBy Warren's ghost - by Langdon's shade By all the memories of our dead!

By their enlarging souls, which burst

The bands and fetters round them set
By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed
Within our inmost bosoms, yet -
- below-
Be ours the indignant answer — - NO!

By all above around

No-guided by our country's laws,

For truth, and right, and suffering man,
Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause,
As Christians may· -as freemen can!
Still pouring on unwilling ears
That truth oppression only fears.

What! shall we guard our neighbor still,
While woman shrieks beneath his rod,
And while he tramples down at will

The image of a common God!
Shall watch and ward be round him set,
Of Northern nerve and bayonet?

And shall we know and share with him

The danger and the growing shame ? And see our Freedom's light grow dim,

Which should have filled the world with flame? And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn, A world's reproach around us burn?

Is 't not enough that this is borne ?

And asks our haughty neighbor more?
Must fetters which his slaves have worn,

Clank round the Yankee farmer's door?
Must he be told, beside his plough,
What he must speak, and when, and how?

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

Must he be told his freedom stands

On Slavery's dark foundations strongOn breaking hearts and fettered hands, On robbery, and crime, and wrong? That all his fathers taught is vainThat Freedom's emblem is the chain?

Its life its soul, from slavery drawn?
profane! Go teach as well

False

- foul

Of holy Truth from Falsehood born!

Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell!
Of Virtue in the arms of Vice!
Of Demons planting Paradise!

Rail on, then, "brethren of the South"
Ye shall not hear the truth the less-
No seal is on the Yankee's mouth,

No fetter on the Yankee's press!
From our Green Mountains to the Sea,
One voice shall thunder- WE ARE FREE!

17

OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE.

GNE, gone sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,

THE FAREWELL.

Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air,
Gone, gone sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters,
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone

sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash,
Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
Or a mother's arms caress them.

Gone, gone-sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go,

aint with toil, and racked with pain, To their cheerless homes again ·

-

There no brother's voice shall greet them
There no father's welcome meet them.

Gone, gone sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From the tree whose shadow lay

On their childhood's place of play —