Part 3

'T is the fervid tropic noontime; faint and low the sea-waves beat; Hazy rise the inland mountains through the glimmer of the heat,--

Where, through mingled leaves and blossoms, arrowy sunbeams flash and glisten, Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she lifts her head to listen:--

"We shall live as slaves no longer! Freedom's hour is close at hand! Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the boat upon the strand!

"I have seen the Haytien Captain; I have seen his swarthy crew, Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and color true.

"They have sworn to wait our coming till the night has passed its noon, And the gray and darkening waters roll above the sunken moon!"

Oh, the blessed hope of freedom! how with joy and glad surprise, For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant beam her eyes!

But she looks across the valley, where her mother's hut is seen, Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and the lemon- leaves so green.

And she answers, sad and earnest: "It were wrong for thee to stay; God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and his finger points the way.

"Well I know with what endurance, for the sake of me and mine, Thou hast borne too long a burden never meant for souls like thine.

"Go; and at the hour of midnight, when our last farewell is o'er, Kneeling on our place of parting, I will bless thee from the shore.

"But for me, my mother, lying on her sick-bed all the day, Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming through the twilight gray.

"Should I leave her sick and helpless, even freedom, shared with thee, Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, and stripes to me.

"For my heart would die within me, and my brain would soon be wild; I should hear my mother calling through the twilight for her child!"

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines the sun of morning-time, Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and green hedges of the lime.

Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the lover and the maid; Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, leaning forward on his spade?

Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is the Haytien's sail he sees, Like a white cloud of the mountains, driven seaward by the breeze.

But his arm a light hand presses, and he hears a low voice call Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightier than all. 1848.

THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS.

The rights and liberties affirmed by Magna Charta were deemed of such importance, in the thirteenth century, that the Bishops, twice a year, with tapers burning, and in their pontifical robes, pronounced, in the presence of the king and the representatives of the estates of England, the greater excommunication against the infringer of that instrument. The imposing ceremony took place in the great Hall of Westminster. A copy of the curse, as pronounced in 1253, declares that, "by the authority of Almighty God, and the blessed Apostles and Martyrs, and all the saints in heaven, all those who violate the English liberties, and secretly or openly, by deed, word, or counsel, do make statutes, or observe then being made, against said liberties, are accursed and sequestered from the company of heaven and the sacraments of the Holy Church."

William Penn, in his admirable political pamphlet, England's Present Interest Considered, alluding to the curse of the Charter- breakers, says: "I am no Roman Catholic, and little value their other curses; yet I declare I would not for the world incur this curse, as every man deservedly doth, who offers violence to the fundamental freedom thereby repeated and confirmed."

IN Westminster's royal halls, Robed in their pontificals, England's ancient prelates stood For the people's right and good. Closed around the waiting crowd, Dark and still, like winter's cloud; King and council, lord and knight, Squire and yeoman, stood in sight; Stood to hear the priest rehearse, In God's name, the Church's curse, By the tapers round them lit, Slowly, sternly uttering it.

"Right of voice in framing laws, Right of peers to try each cause; Peasant homestead, mean and small, Sacred as the monarch's hall,--

"Whoso lays his hand on these, England's ancient liberties; Whoso breaks, by word or deed, England's vow at Runnymede;

"Be he Prince or belted knight, Whatsoe'er his rank or might, If the highest, then the worst, Let him live and die accursed.

"Thou, who to Thy Church hast given Keys alike, of hell and heaven, Make our word and witness sure, Let the curse we speak endure!"

Silent, while that curse was said, Every bare and listening head Bowed in reverent awe, and then All the people said, Amen!

Seven times the bells have tolled, For the centuries gray and old, Since that stoled and mitred band Cursed the tyrants of their land.

Since the priesthood, like a tower, Stood between the poor and power; And the wronged and trodden down Blessed the abbot's shaven crown.

Gone, thank God, their wizard spell, Lost, their keys of heaven and hell; Yet I sigh for men as bold As those bearded priests of old.

Now, too oft the priesthood wait At the threshold of the state; Waiting for the beck and nod Of its power as law and God.

Fraud exults, while solemn words Sanctify his stolen hoards; Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips Bless his manacles and whips.

Not on them the poor rely, Not to them looks liberty, Who with fawning falsehood cower To the wrong, when clothed with power.

Oh, to see them meanly cling, Round the master, round the king, Sported with, and sold and bought,-- Pitifuller sight is not!

Tell me not that this must be God's true priest is always free; Free, the needed truth to speak, Right the wronged, and raise the weak.

Not to fawn on wealth and state, Leaving Lazarus at the gate; Not to peddle creeds like wares; Not to mutter hireling prayers;

Nor to paint the new life's bliss On the sable ground of this; Golden streets for idle knave, Sabbath rest for weary slave!

Not for words and works like these, Priest of God, thy mission is; But to make earth's desert glad, In its Eden greenness clad;

And to level manhood bring Lord and peasant, serf and king; And the Christ of God to find In the humblest of thy kind!

Thine to work as well as pray, Clearing thorny wrongs away; Plucking up the weeds of sin, Letting heaven's warm sunshine in;

Watching on the hills of Faith; Listening what the spirit saith, Of the dim-seen light afar, Growing like a nearing star.

God's interpreter art thou, To the waiting ones below; 'Twixt them and its light midway Heralding the better day;

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! 1848.

PAEAN.

This poem indicates the exultation of the anti-slavery party in view of the revolt of the friends of Martin Van Buren in New York, from the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1848.

Now, joy and thanks forevermore! The dreary night has wellnigh passed, The slumbers of the North are o'er, The Giant stands erect at last!

More than we hoped in that dark time When, faint with watching, few and worn, We saw no welcome day-star climb The cold gray pathway of the morn!

O weary hours! O night of years! What storms our darkling pathway swept, Where, beating back our thronging fears, By Faith alone our march we kept.

How jeered the scoffing crowd behind, How mocked before the tyrant train, As, one by one, the true and kind Fell fainting in our path of pain!

They died, their brave hearts breaking slow, But, self-forgetful to the last, In words of cheer and bugle blow Their breath upon the darkness passed.

A mighty host, on either hand, Stood waiting for the dawn of day To crush like reeds our feeble band; The morn has come, and where are they?

Troop after troop their line forsakes; With peace-white banners waving free, And from our own the glad shout breaks, Of Freedom and Fraternity!

Like mist before the growing light, The hostile cohorts melt away; Our frowning foemen of the night Are brothers at the dawn of day.

As unto these repentant ones We open wide our toil-worn ranks, Along our line a murmur runs Of song, and praise, and grateful thanks.

Sound for the onset! Blast on blast! Till Slavery's minions cower and quail; One charge of fire shall drive them fast Like chaff before our Northern gale!

O prisoners in your house of pain, Dumb, toiling millions, bound and sold, Look! stretched o'er Southern vale and plain, The Lord's delivering hand behold!

Above the tyrant's pride of power, His iron gates and guarded wall, The bolts which shattered Shinar's tower Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall.

Awake! awake! my Fatherland! It is thy Northern light that shines; This stirring march of Freedom's band The storm-song of thy mountain pines.

Wake, dwellers where the day expires! And hear, in winds that sweep your lakes And fan your prairies' roaring fires, The signal-call that Freedom makes! 1848.

THE CRISIS.

Written on learning the terms of the treaty with Mexico.

ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's drouth and sand, The circles of our empire touch the western ocean's strand; From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and free, Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to California's sea; And from the mountains of the east, to Santa Rosa's shore, The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air no more.

O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple children weep; Close watch about their holy fire let maids of Pecos keep; Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines, And Santa Barbara toll her bells amidst her corn and vines; For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with eager eyes of gain, Wide scattering, like the bison herds on broad Salada's plain.

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what sound the winds bring down Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold Nevada's crown! Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with rein of travel slack, And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the sunrise at his back; By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and pine, On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires shine.

O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and plain, Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with grain; Of mountains white with winter, looking downward, cold, serene, On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped in softest green; Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er many a sunny vale, Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's dusty trail!

Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes whose mystic shores The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Saxon oars; Great herds that wander all unwatched, wild steeds that none have tamed, Strange fish in unknown streams, and birds the Saxon never named; Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, where Nature's chemic powers Work out the Great Designer's will; all these ye say are ours!

Forever ours! for good or ill, on us the burden lies; God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across the skies. Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn the poised and trembling scale? Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber Wrong prevail? Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry splendor waves, Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread of slaves?

The day is breaking in the East of which the prophets told, And brightens up the sky of Time the Christian Age of Gold; Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to clerkly pen, Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her serfs stand up as men;

The isles rejoice together, in a day are nations born, And the slave walks free in Tunis, and by Stamboul's Golden Horn!

Is this, O countrymen of mine! a day for us to sow The soil of new-gained empire with slavery's seeds of woe? To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old World's cast-off crime, Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, from the tired lap of Time? To run anew the evil race the old lost nations ran, And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong of man?

Great Heaven! 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 ours in shadow turn, A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through outer darkness borne? Where the far nations looked for light, a black- ness in the air? Where for words of hope they listened, the long wail of despair?

The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands, With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands! This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin; This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin; Even 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 agony and shame; By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came; By the Future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast Their faint and trembling beams across the black- ness of the Past; And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died, O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way; To wed Penobseot's waters to San Francisco's bay; To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain; And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea, And mountain unto mountain call, Praise God, for we are free 1845.

LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER.

A pleasant print to peddle out In lands of rice and cotton; The model of that face in dough Would make the artist's fortune. For Fame to thee has come unsought, While others vainly woo her, In proof how mean a thing can make A great man of its doer.

To whom shall men thyself compare, Since common models fail 'em, Save classic goose of ancient Rome, Or sacred ass of Balaam? The gabble of that wakeful goose Saved Rome from sack of Brennus; The braying of the prophet's ass Betrayed the angel's menace!

So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats, And azure-tinted hose oil, Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets The slow-match of explosion-- An earthquake blast that would have tossed The Union as a feather, Thy instinct saved a perilled land And perilled purse together.

Just think of Carolina's sage Sent whirling like a Dervis, Of Quattlebum in middle air Performing strange drill-service! Doomed like Assyria's lord of old, Who fell before the Jewess, Or sad Abimelech, to sigh, "Alas! a woman slew us!"

Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise The danger darkly lurking, And maiden bodice dreaded more Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkin. How keen to scent the hidden plot! How prompt wert thou to balk it, With patriot zeal and pedler thrift, For country and for pocket!

Thy likeness here is doubtless well, But higher honor's due it; On auction-block and negro-jail Admiring eyes should view it. Or, hung aloft, it well might grace The nation's senate-chamber-- A greedy Northern bottle-fly Preserved in Slavery's amber! 1850.