Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform Part 21

I SAID I stood upon thy grave, My Mother State, when last the moon Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.

And, scattering ashes on my head, I wore, undreaming of relief, The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.

Again that moon of blossoms s.h.i.+nes On leaf and flower and folded wing, And thou hast risen with the spring!

Once more thy strong maternal arms Are round about thy children flung,-- A lioness that guards her young!

No threat is on thy closed lips, But in thine eye a power to smite The mad wolf backward from its light.

Southward the baffled robber's track Henceforth runs only; hereaway, The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.

Henceforth, within thy sacred gates, His first low howl shall downward draw The thunder of thy righteous law.

Not mindless of thy trade and gain, But, acting on the wiser plan, Thou'rt grown conservative of man.

So shalt thou clothe with life the hope, Dream-painted on the sightless eyes Of him who sang of Paradise,--

The vision of a Christian man, In virtue, as in stature great Embodied in a Christian State.

And thou, amidst thy sisterhood Forbearing long, yet standing fast, Shalt win their grateful thanks at last;

When North and South shall strive no more, And all their feuds and fears be lost In Freedom's holy Pentecost.

6th mo., 1855.

THE HASCHISH.

OF all that Orient lands can vaunt Of marvels with our own competing, The strangest is the Haschish plant, And what will follow on its eating.

What pictures to the taster rise, Of Dervish or of Almeh dances!

Of Eblis, or of Paradise, Set all aglow with Houri glances!

The poppy visions of Cathay, The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian; The wizard lights and demon play Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!

The Mollah and the Christian dog Change place in mad metempsychosis; The Muezzin climbs the synagogue, The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses!

The Arab by his desert well Sits choosing from some Caliph's daughters, And hears his single camel's bell Sound welcome to his regal quarters.

The Koran's reader makes complaint Of s.h.i.+tan dancing on and off it; The robber offers alms, the saint Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet.

Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes; But we have one ordained to beat it, The Haschish of the West, which makes Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.

The preacher eats, and straight appears His Bible in a new translation; Its angels negro overseers, And Heaven itself a snug plantation!

The man of peace, about whose dreams The sweet millennial angels cl.u.s.ter, Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes, A raving Cuban filibuster!

The noisiest Democrat, with ease, It turns to Slavery's parish beadle; The shrewdest statesman eats and sees Due southward point the polar needle.

The Judge partakes, and sits erelong Upon his bench a railing blackguard; Decides off-hand that right is wrong, And reads the ten commandments backward.

O potent plant! so rare a taste Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten; The hempen Haschish of the East Is powerless to our Western Cotton!

1854.

FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE.

Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason against the slave power.

THE age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk; with blood too pale and tame To pay the debt they owe to shame; Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want; Pay t.i.thes for soul-insurance; keep Six days to Mammon, one to Cant.

In such a time, give thanks to G.o.d, That somewhat of the holy rage With which the prophets in their age On all its decent seemings trod, Has set your feet upon the lie, That man and ox and soul and clod Are market stock to sell and buy!

The hot words from your lips, my own, To caution trained, might not repeat; But if some tares among the wheat Of generous thought and deed were sown, No common wrong provoked your zeal; The silken gauntlet that is thrown In such a quarrel rings like steel.

The brave old strife the fathers saw For Freedom calls for men again Like those who battled not in vain For England's Charter, Alfred's law; And right of speech and trial just Wage in your name their ancient war With venal courts and perjured trust.

G.o.d's ways seem dark, but, soon or late, They touch the s.h.i.+ning hills of day; The evil cannot brook delay, The good can well afford to wait.

Give ermined knaves their hour of crime; Ye have the future grand and great, The safe appeal of Truth to Time!

1855.

THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS.

This poem and the three following were called out by the popular movement of Free State men to occupy the territory of Kansas, and by the use of the great democratic weapon--an over-powering majority--to settle the conflict on that ground between Freedom and Slavery. The opponents of the movement used another kind of weapon.

WE cross the prairie as of old The pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free!

We go to rear a wall of men On Freedom's southern line, And plant beside the cotton-tree The rugged Northern pine!

We're flowing from our native hills As our free rivers flow; The blessing of our Mother-land Is on us as we go.

We go to plant her common schools, On distant prairie swells, And give the Sabbaths of the wild The music of her bells.

Upbearing, like the Ark of old, The Bible in our van, We go to test the truth of G.o.d Against the fraud of man.

No pause, nor rest, save where the streams That feed the Kansas run, Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun.