Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/351

Rh Found him, and treed and shot him. For the rest, The heathens round about begin to feel The influence of our pious ministrations And works of love; and some of them already Have purchased negroes, and are settling down As sober Christians! Bless the Lord for this! I know it will rejoice you. You, I hear, Are on the eve of visiting Chicago, To fight with the wild beasts of Ephesus, Long John, and Dutch Free-Soilers. May your arm Be clothed with strength, and on your tongue be found The sweet oil of persuasion. So desires Your brother and co-laborer. Amen!


 * P. S. All ’s lost. Even while I write these lines,

The Yankee abolitionists are coming Upon us like a flood—grim, stalwart men, Each face set like a flint of Plymouth Rock Against our institutions—staking out Their farm lots on the wooded Wakarusa, Or squatting by the mellow-bottomed Kansas; The pioneers of mightier multitudes, The small rain-patter, ere the thunder shower Drowns the dry prairies. Hope from man is not. Oh, for a quiet berth at Washington, Snug naval chaplaincy, or clerkship, where These rumors of free labor and free soil Might never meet me more. Better to be Door-keeper in the White House, than to dwell Amidst these Yankee tents, that, whitening, show On the green prairie like a fleet becalmed. Methinks I hear a voice come up the river From those far bayous where the alligators Mount guard around the camping filibusters: “Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn to Cuba— (That golden orange just about to fall, O’er-ripe, into the Democratic lap;) Keep pace with Providence, or, as we say, Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow The message of our gospel, thither borne Upon the point of Quitman’s bowie knife, And the persuasive lips of Colt’s revolvers. There may’st thou, underneath thy vine and fig-tree, Watch thy increase of sugar cane and negroes, Calm as a patriarch in his eastern tent!” Amen: So mote it be. So prays your friend.

him, comrades, to his grave; Never over one more brave
 * Shall the prairie grasses weep,

In the ages yet to come, When the millions in our room,
 * What we sow in tears, shall reap.

Bear him up the icy hill, With the Kansas, frozen still
 * As his noble heart, below,

And the land he came to till With a freeman’s thews and will,
 * And his poor hut roofed with snow!

One more look of that dead face, Of his murder’s ghastly trace!
 * One more kiss, O widowed one!

Lay your left hands on his brow, Lift your right hands up, and vow
 * That his work shall yet be done.

Patience, friends! The eye of God Every path by Murder trod
 * Watches, lidless, day and night;

And the dead man in his shroud, And his widow weeping loud,
 * And our hearts, are in His sight.

Every deadly threat that swells With the roar of gambling hells,
 * Every brutal jest and jeer,

Every wicked thought and plan Of the cruel heart of man,
 * Though but whispered, He can hear!

We in suffering, they in crime, Wait the just award of time,
 * Wait the vengeance that is due;

Not in vain a heart shall break, Not a tear for Freedom’s sake
 * Fall unheeded: God is true.