Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/314

282  And quiet love, and passion’s fires,
 * Have soothed or burned in manhood’s breast,

And lofty aims and low desires
 * By turns disturbed his rest.

The wailing of the newly-born
 * Has mingled with the funeral knell;

And o’er the dying’s ear has gone
 * The merry marriage-bell.

And Wealth has filled his halls with mirth,
 * While Want, in many a humble shed,

Toiled, shivering by her cheerless hearth,
 * The live-long night for bread.

And worse than all, the human slave,
 * The sport of lust, and pride, and scorn!

Plucked off the crown his Maker gave,
 * His regal manhood gone!

Oh, still, my country! o’er thy plains,
 * Blackened with slavery's blight and ban,

That human chattel drags his chains,
 * An uncreated man!

And still, where’er to sun and breeze,
 * My country, is thy flag unrolled,

With scorn, the gazing stranger sees
 * A stain on every fold.

Oh, tear the gorgeous emblem down!
 * It gathers scorn from every eye,

And despots smile and good men frown
 * Whene’er it passes by.

Shame! shame! its starry splendors glow
 * Above the slaver’s loathsome jail;

Its folds are ruffling even now
 * His crimson flag of sale.

Still round our country’s proudest hall
 * The trade in human flesh is driven,

And at each careless hammer-fall
 * A human heart is riven.

And this, too, sanctioned by the men
 * Vested with power to shield the right,

And throw each vile and robber den
 * Wide open to the light.

Yet, shame upon them! there they sit,
 * Men of the North, subdued and still;

Meek, pliant poltroons, only fit
 * To work a master’s will.

Sold, bargained off for Southern votes,
 * A passive herd of Northern mules,

Just braying through their purchased throats
 * Whate’er their owner rules.

And he, the basest of the base,
 * The vilest of the vile, whose name,

Embalmed in infinite disgrace,
 * Is deathless in its shame!

A tool, to bolt the people’s door
 * Against the people clamoring there,

An ass, to trample on their floor
 * A people’s right of prayer!

Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast,
 * Self-pilloried to the public view,

A mark for every passing blast
 * Of scorn to whistle through;

There let him hang, and hear the boast
 * Of Southrons o’er their pliant tool,—

A new Stylites on his post,
 * “Sacred to ridicule!”

Look we at home! our noble hall,
 * To Freedom’s holy purpose given,

Now rears its black and ruined wall,
 * Beneath the wintry heaven,

Telling the story of its doom,
 * The fiendish mob, the prostrate law,

The fiery jet through midnight’s gloom,
 * Our gazing thousands saw.

Look to our State! the poor man’s right
 * Torn from him: and the sons of those

Whose blood in Freedom’s sternest fight
 * Sprinkled the Jersey snows,

Outlawed within the land of Penn,
 * That Slavery’s guilty fears might cease,

And those whom God created men
 * Toil on as brutes in peace.

Yet o’er the blackness of the storm
 * A bow of promise bends on high,

And gleams of sunshine, soft and warm,
 * Break through our clouded sky.

East, West, and North, the shout is heard,
 * Of freemen rising for the right:

Each valley hath its rallying word,
 * Each hill its signal light.