A figure grim and rusty, Now even such men as Nature forms One cares not to speak first to. Who knows, thought I, but he has come, Behind my wainscot buried? About that garb outlandish- "I come from Plymouth, deadly bored With toasts, and songs, and speeches, As long and flat as my old sword, As threadbare as my breeches: "We had some toughness in our grain, "He had stiff knees, the Puritan, That were not good at bending; The homespun dignity of man He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten. These loud ancestral boasts of yours, How can they else than vex us? Where were your dinner orators When slavery grasped at Texas? Dumb on his knees was every one That now is bold as Cæsar; Mere pegs to hang an office on Such stalwart men as these are." "Good sir," ," I said, "you seem much stirred; The sacred compromises 99 "Now God confound the dastard word! My gall thereat arises: Northward it hath this sense alone, That you, your conscience blinding, ""T is shame to see such painted sticks "We forefathers to such a rout! - "No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain The hem of thy white vesture. "I feel the soul in me draw near The streaks of first forewarning, "Child of our travail and our woe, I hear great steps, that through the shade And voices call like that which bade I looked, no form mine eyes could find, Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham, And he will print my ditty. ON THE CAPTURE OF FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON In a letter to Edward M. Davis written from Elmwood July 24, 1845, Lowell says: "I blew another dolorous and jarring blast' in the Courier the other day, which you will probably see in the Liberator of this week or next. I was impelled to write by the account of the poor fugitives who were taken near Washington. I think it has done some good. At any rate, it has set two gentlemen together by the ears about Dissolution, and they are hammering away at each other in the Courier." The blast was the following stanzas. LOOK on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these! Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first; The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God! We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core; Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men. He's true to God who's true to man ; wherever wrong is done, To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race. God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free With parallels of latitude, with mountainrange or sea. Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will, From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill. Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart, With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart: When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay State's iron shore, The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more. Out from the land of bondage 't is decreed our slaves shall go, And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh ; If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore, Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore. Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, Where, as the breezes pass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, Who, from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Did we but pay the love we owe, On all these living pages of God's book. Some weak phantom, which your doubt Hark! that rustle of a dress, Here comes one whose cheek would flush 'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin With the emblems woven there. Skulks, down-looking, — it is Pride. |