Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/318

286   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 for 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 hall 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!

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;