Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/308

276   And oh, will the land where the free soul of Penn Still lingers and breathes over mountain and glen; Will the land where a Benezet’s spirit went forth To the peeled and the meted, and outcast of Earth; Where the words of the Charter of Liberty first From the soul of the sage and the patriot burst; Where first for the wronged and the weak of their kind, The Christian and statesman their efforts combined; Will that land of the free and the good wear a chain? Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be vain?

No, Ritner! her “Friends” at thy warning shall stand Erect for the truth, like their ancestral band; Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past time, Counting coldness injustice, and silence a crime; Turning back from the cavil of creeds, to unite Once again for the poor in defence of the Right; Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full tide of Wrong, Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges along; Unappalled by the danger, the shame, and the pain, And counting each trial for Truth as their gain!

And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true, Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due; Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert with thine, On the banks of Swetara, the songs of the Rhine,— The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to brave The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave; Will the sons of such men yield the lords of the South One brow for the brand, for the padlock one mouth? They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain, Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?

No, never! one voice, like the sound in the cloud, When the roar of the storm waxes loud and more loud, Wherever the foot of the freeman hath pressed From the Delaware’s marge to the Lake of the West, On the South-going breezes shall deepen and grow Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble below! The voice of a people, uprisen, awake, Pennsylvania’s watchword, with Freedom at stake, Thrilling up from each valley, flung down from each height, “Our Country and Liberty! God for the Right!”

, this is all,—the utmost reach
 * Of priestly power the mind to fetter!

When laymen think, when women preach,
 * A war of words, a “Pastoral Letter!”

Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes!
 * Was it thus with those, your predecessors,

Who sealed with racks, and fire, and ropes
 * Their loving-kindness to transgressors?