Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/123

Rh him superlatively jealous. I have two long ears flapping into my face immediately from the pillow over my head, in serious appeal. Poor Flushie! The point of this fact is, that when I read old books he does not care."

Nowhere was the name of Elizabeth Barrett now more honoured, or lauded than in the United. States, and many were the Americans who strove to obtain her co-operation in their schemes, philanthropic or otherwise. The Abolitionists were the most energetic and successful. There were evident reasons why the daughter of Edward, the niece of Samuel, Barrett should not take any prominent part in public questions connected with slavery, but Elizabeth could not but feel deeply for all enduring sorrow or oppression, and such, she was persuaded, were the negroes in America. Her aid was obtained, she wrote a poem on the subject, a poem intended to further the abolition of slavery, and sent it to America. She appeared to have repented subsequently of the work, and expressed a hope that the lines would not be published. They appeared however, in 1845, in The Liberty Bell as "A Curse for a Nation."

Her friendly tone notwithstanding, the lines appear to have created some soreness, and to one American correspondent who had remonstrated with her about them she wrote:—"Never say that I have cursed your country, I only declared the consequences of the evil in her, and which has since developed itself in thunder and flame. I feel, with more pain than many Americans do, the sorrow of this transition time; but I do know that it is a transition; that it is a crisis, and that you will come out of the fire purified, stainless, having had the angel of a great cause walking with