Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/314

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And quiet love, and passion’s fires,
Have soothed or burned in manhood’s breast,
And lofty aims and low desires
By turns disturbed his rest.

The wailing of the newly-born
Has mingled with the funeral knell;
And o’er the dying’s ear has gone
The merry marriage-bell.

And Wealth has filled his halls with mirth,
While Want, in many a humble shed,
Toiled, shivering by her cheerless hearth,
The live-long night for bread.

And worse than all, the human slave,
The sport of lust, and pride, and scorn!
Plucked off the crown his Maker gave,
His regal manhood gone!

Oh, still, my country! o’er thy plains,
Blackened with slavery's blight and ban,
That human chattel drags his chains,
An uncreated man!

And still, where’er to sun and breeze,
My country, is thy flag unrolled,
With scorn, the gazing stranger sees
A stain on every fold.

Oh, tear the gorgeous emblem down!
It gathers scorn from every eye,
And despots smile and good men frown
Whene’er it passes by.

Shame! shame! its starry splendors glow
Above the slaver’s loathsome jail;
Its folds are ruffling even now
His crimson flag of sale.

Still round our country’s proudest hall
The trade in human flesh is driven,
And at each careless hammer-fall
A human heart is riven.

And this, too, sanctioned by the men
Vested with power to shield the right,
And throw each vile and robber den
Wide open to the light.

Yet, shame upon them! there they sit,
Men of the North, subdued and still;
Meek, pliant poltroons, only fit
To work a master’s will.

Sold, bargained off for Southern votes,
A passive herd of Northern mules,
Just braying through their purchased throats
Whate’er their owner rules.

And he, the basest of the base,
The vilest of the vile, whose name,
Embalmed in infinite disgrace,
Is deathless in its shame!

A tool, to bolt the people’s door
Against the people clamoring there,
An ass, to trample on their floor
A people’s right of prayer!

Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast,
Self-pilloried to the public view,
A mark for every passing blast
Of scorn to whistle through;

There let him hang, and hear the boast
Of Southrons o’er their pliant tool,—
A new Stylites on his post,
“Sacred to ridicule!”

Look we at home! our noble hall,
To Freedom’s holy purpose given,
Now rears its black and ruined wall,
Beneath the wintry heaven,

Telling the story of its doom,
The fiendish mob, the prostrate law,
The fiery jet through midnight’s gloom,
Our gazing thousands saw.

Look to our State! the poor man’s right
Torn from him: and the sons of those
Whose blood in Freedom’s sternest fight
Sprinkled the Jersey snows,

Outlawed within the land of Penn,
That Slavery’s guilty fears might cease,
And those whom God created men
Toil on as brutes in peace.

Yet o’er the blackness of the storm
A bow of promise bends on high,
And gleams of sunshine, soft and warm,
Break through our clouded sky.

East, West, and North, the shout is heard,
Of freemen rising for the right:
Each valley hath its rallying word,
Each hill its signal light.