Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/358

326  Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds, The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds; And, held a brute, in practice, as in law, Becomes in fact the thing he ’s taken for. There, early summoned to the hemp and corn, The nursing mother leaves her child newborn; There haggard sickness, weak and deathly faint, Crawls to his task, and fears to make complaint; And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in decay, Weep for their lost ones sold and torn away! Of ampler size the master’s dwelling stands, In shabby keeping with his half-tilled lands; The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds unclean, The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean. Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift, Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift; Within, profusion to discomfort joined, The listless body and the vacant mind; The fear, the hate, the theft and falsehood, born In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and scorn! There, all the vices, which, like birds obscene, Batten on slavery loathsome and unclean, From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise, Pollute the nursery where the child-heir lies, Taint infant lips beyond all after cure, With the fell poison of a breast impure; Touch boyhood’s passions with the breath of flame, From girlhood’s instincts steal the blush of shame. So swells, from low to high, from weak to strong, The tragic chorus of the baleful wrong; Guilty or guiltless, all within its range Feel the blind justice of its sure revenge.


 * Still scenes like these the moving chart reveals.

Up the long western steppes the blighting steals; Down the Pacific slope the evil Fate Glides like a shadow to the Golden Gate: From sea to sea the drear eclipse is thrown, From sea to sea the Mauvaises Terres have grown, A belt of curses on the New World’s zone!


 * The curtain fell. All drew a freer breath,

As men are wont to do when mournful death Is covered from their sight. The Showman stood With drooping brow in sorrow’s attitude One moment, then with sudden gesture shook His loose hair back, and with the air and look Of one who felt, beyond the narrow stage And listening group, the presence of the age, And heard the footsteps of the things to be, Poured out his soul in earnest words and free.


 * “O friends!” he said, “in this poor trick of paint

You see the semblance, incomplete and faint, Of the two-fronted Future, which, to-day, Stands dim and silent, waiting in your way. To-day your servant, subject to your will; To-morrow, master, or for good or ill. If the dark face of Slavery on you turns, If the mad curse its paper barrier spurns, If the world granary of the West is made The last foul market of the slaver’s trade, Why rail at fate? The mischief is your own. Why hate your neighbor? Blame yourselves alone!


 * “Men of the North! The South you charge with wrong

Is weak and poor, while you are rich and strong. If questions,—idle and absurd as those The old-time monks and Paduan doctors chose,— Mere ghosts of questions, tariffs, and dead banks, And scarecrow pontiffs, never broke your ranks, Your thews united could, at once, roll back The jostled nation to its primal track. Nay, were you simply steadfast, manly, just, True to the faith your fathers left in trust, If stainless honor outweighed in your scale A codfish quintal or a factory bale, Full many a noble heart, (and such remain