Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/317

Rh :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 wheresoe’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 Fé 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 heard 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.