YES, let them gather! Summon forth The pledged philanthropy of Earth.
From every land, whose hills have heard The bugle blast of Freedom waking; Or shrieking of her symbol-bird From out his cloudy eyrie breaking Where Justice hath one worshipper, Or truth one altar built to her;
Where'er a human eye is weeping O'er wrongs which Earth's sad children know; Where'er a single heart is keeping Its prayerful watch with human woe Thence let them come, and greet each other, And know in each a friend and brother!
Yes, let them come! from each green vale Where England's old baronial halls Still bear upon their storied walls The grim crusader's rusted mail, Battered by Paynim spear and brand On Malta's rock or Syria's sand!
And mouldering pennon-staves once set Within the soil of Palestine, By Jordan and Gennesaret; Or, borne with England's battle line, O'er Acre's shattered turrets stooping, Or, midst the camp their banners drooping, With dews from hallowed Hermon wet, A holier summons now is given Than that gray hermit's voice of old, Which unto all the winds of heaven The banners of the Cross unrolled!
Not for the long-deserted shrine; Not for the dull unconscious sod, Which tells not by one lingering sign That there the hope of Israel trod; But for that truth, for which alone In pilgrim eyes are sanctified The garden moss, the mountain stone, Whereon His holy sandals pressed,-- The fountain which His lip hath blessed,--
Whate'er hath touched His garment's hem At Bethany or Bethlehem, Or Jordan's river-side.
For Freedom in the name of Him Who came to raise Earth's drooping poor, To break the chain from every limb, The bolt from every prison door!
For these, o'er all the earth hath passed An ever-deepening trumpet blast, As if an angel's breath had lent Its vigor to the instrument.
And Wales, from Snowden's mountain wall, Shall startle at that thrilling call, As if she heard her bards again; And Erin's "harp on Tara's wall"
Give out its ancient strain, Mirthful and sweet, yet sad withal,-- The melody which Erin loves, When o'er that harp, 'mid bursts of gladness And slogan cries and lyke-wake sadness, The hand of her O'Connell moves!
Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill, And mountain hold, and heathery bill, Shall catch and echo back the note, As if she heard upon the air Once more her Cameronian's prayer And song of Freedom float.
And cheering echoes shall reply From each remote dependency, Where Britain's mighty sway is known, In tropic sea or frozen zone; Where'er her sunset flag is furling, Or morning gun-fire's smoke is curling; From Indian Bengal's groves of palm And rosy fields and gales of balm, Where Eastern pomp and power are rolled Through regal Ava's gates of gold; And from the lakes and ancient woods And dim Canadian solitudes, Whence, sternly from her rocky throne, Queen of the North, Quebec looks down; And from those bright and ransomed Isles Where all unwonted Freedom smiles, And the dark laborer still retains The scar of slavery's broken chains!
From the hoar Alps, which sentinel The gateways of the land of Tell, Where morning's keen and earliest glance On Jura's rocky wall is thrown, And from the olive bowers of France And vine groves garlanding the Rhone,-- "Friends of the Blacks," as true and tried As those who stood by Oge's side, And heard the Haytien's tale of wrong, Shall gather at that summons strong; Broglie, Passy, and he whose song Breathed over Syria's holy sod, And, in the paths which Jesus trod, And murmured midst the hills which hem Crownless and sad Jerusalem, Hath echoes whereso'er the tone Of Israel's prophet-lyre is known.
Still let them come; from Quito's walls, And from the Orinoco's tide, From Lima's Inca-haunted halls, From Santa Fe and Yucatan,-- Men who by swart Guerrero's side Proclaimed the deathless rights of man, Broke every bond and fetter off, And hailed in every sable serf A free and brother Mexican!
Chiefs who across the Andes' chain Have followed Freedom's flowing pennon, And seen on Junin's fearful plain, Glare o'er the broken ranks of Spain The fire-burst of Bolivar's cannon!
And Hayti, from her mountain land, Shall send the sons of those who hurled Defiance from her blazing strand, The war-gage from her Petion's hand, Alone against a hostile world.
Nor all unmindful, thou, the while, Land of the dark and mystic Nile!
Thy Moslem mercy yet may shame All tyrants of a Christian name, When in the shade of Gizeh's pile, Or, where, from Abyssinian hills El Gerek's upper fountain fills, Or where from Mountains of the Moon El Abiad bears his watery boon, Where'er thy lotus blossoms swim Within their ancient hallowed waters; Where'er is beard the Coptic hymn, Or song of Nubia's sable daughters; The curse of slavery and the crime, Thy bequest from remotest time, At thy dark Mehemet's decree Forevermore shall pass from thee; And chains forsake each captive's limb Of all those tribes, whose hills around Have echoed back the cymbal sound And victor horn of Ibrahim.
And thou whose glory and whose crime To earth's remotest bound and clime, In mingled tones of awe and scorn, The echoes of a world have borne, My country! glorious at thy birth, A day-star flashing brightly forth, The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn!
Oh, who could dream that saw thee then, And watched thy rising from afar, That vapors from oppression's fen Would cloud the upward tending star?
Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which heard, Awe-struck, the shout which hailed thy dawning, Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and king, To mock thee with their welcoming, Like Hades when her thrones were stirred To greet the down-cast Star of Morning!
"Aha! and art thou fallen thus?
Art thou become as one of us?"
Land of my fathers! there will stand, Amidst that world-assembled band, Those owning thy maternal claim Unweakened by thy, crime and shame; The sad reprovers of thy wrong; The children thou hast spurned so long.
Still with affection's fondest yearning To their unnatural mother turning.
No traitors they! but tried and leal, Whose own is but thy general weal, Still blending with the patriot's zeal The Christian's love for human kind, To caste and climate unconfined.
A holy gathering! peaceful all No threat of war, no savage call For vengeance on an erring brother!
But in their stead the godlike plan To teach the brotherhood of man To love and reverence one another, As sharers of a common blood, The children of a common God Yet, even at its lightest word, Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred: Spain, watching from her Moro's keep Her slave-ships traversing the deep, And Rio, in her strength and pride, Lifting, along her mountain-side, Her snowy battlements and towers, Her lemon-groves and tropic bowers, With bitter hate and sullen fear Its freedom-giving voice shall hear; And where my country's flag is flowing, On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing, Above the Nation's council halls, Where Freedom's praise is loud and long, While close beneath the outward walls The driver plies his reeking thong; The hammer of the man-thief falls, O'er hypocritic cheek and brow The crimson flush of shame shall glow And all who for their native land Are pledging life and heart and hand, Worn watchers o'er her changing weal, Who fog her tarnished honor feel, Through cottage door and council-hall Shall thunder an awakening call.
The pen along its page shall burn With all intolerable scorn; An eloquent rebuke shall go On all the winds that Southward blow; From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb, Warning and dread appeal shall come, Like those which Israel heard from him, The Prophet of the Cherubim; Or those which sad Esaias hurled Against a sin-accursed world!
Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling Unceasing from its iron wing, With characters inscribed thereon, As fearful in the despot's ball As to the pomp of Babylon The fire-sign on the palace wall!
And, from her dark iniquities, Methinks I see my country rise Not challenging the nations round To note her tardy justice done; Her captives from their chains unbound; Her prisons opening to the sun But tearfully her arms extending Over the poor and unoffending; Her regal emblem now no longer
A bird of prey, with talons reeking, Above the dying captive shrieking, But, spreading out her ample wing, A broad, impartial covering, The weaker sheltered by the stronger Oh, then to Faith's anointed eyes The promised token shall be given; And on a nation's sacrifice, Atoning for the sin of years, And wet with penitential tears, The fire shall fall from Heaven!
1839.
MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.
Written on reading an account of the proceedings of the citizens of Norfolk, Va., in reference to George Latimer, the alleged fugitive slave, who was seized in Boston without warrant at the request of James B. Grey, of Norfolk, claiming to be his master. The case caused great excitement North and South, and led to the presentation of a petition to Congress, signed by more than fifty thousand citizens of Massachusetts, calling for such laws and proposed amendments to the Constitution as should relieve the Commonwealth from all further participation in the crime of oppression. George Latimer himself was finally given free papers for the sum of four hundred dollars.
THE blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way, Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay.
No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal, Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel.
No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go; Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow; And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far, A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are spread for war.
We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy words and high, Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our sky; Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes its honest labor here, No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends his axe in fear.
Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's bank; Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and dank; Through storm, and wave, and blinding mist, stout are the hearts which man The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.
The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms, Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms; Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam, They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.
What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?
How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then?
Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the call Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from Faneuil Hall?
When, echoing back her Henry's cry, came pulsing on each breath Of Northern winds, the thrilling sounds of "Liberty or Death!"
What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved False to their fathers' memory, false to the faith they loved; If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn, Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?
We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell; Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound's yell; We gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves, From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves!
Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow; The spirit of her early time is with her even now; Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow and calm and cool, She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister's slave and tool!
All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may, Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day; But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone, And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!
Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair; Cling closer to the "cleaving curse" that writes upon your plains The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains.
Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old, By watching round the shambles where human flesh is sold; Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count his market value, when The maddened mother's cry of woe shall pierce the slaver's den!
Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the Virginia name; Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with rankest weeds of shame; Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair universe; We wash our hands forever of your sin and shame and curse.
A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been, Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire's mountain men: The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.
And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his prey Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft of gray, How, through the free lips of the son, the father's warning spoke; How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke!
A hundred thousand right arms were lifted up on high, A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud reply; Through the thronged towns of Essex the startling summons rang, And up from bench and loom and wheel her young mechanics sprang!
The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of thousands as of one, The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lexington; From Norfolk's ancient villages, from Plymouth's rocky bound To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close her round;
From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua flows, To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the mountain larches stir, Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of "God save Latimer!"
And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray; And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill, And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill.
The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and daughters, Deep calling unto deep aloud, the sound of many waters!