Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete: Volume III of The Works of John Greenleaf WhittierWhittier, John Greenleaf
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Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete: Volume III of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
Whittier, John Greenleaf
Slavery -- United States -- Poetry
Nor wholly lost the fallen mart;
Her olden blood
Through many a free and generous heart
Still pours its flood.
That brave old blood, quick-flowing yet,
Shall know no check,
Till a free people's foot is set
On Slavery's neck.
Even now, the peal of bell and gun,
And hills aflame,
Tell of the first great triumph won
In Freedom's name. (10)
The long night dies: the welcome gray
Of dawn we see;
Speed up the heavens thy perfect day,
God of the free!
1851.
OFFICIAL PIETY.
Suggested by reading a state paper, wherein the higher law is invoked to
sustain the lower one.
A Pious magistrate! sound his praise throughout
The wondering churches. Who shall henceforth doubt
That the long-wished millennium draweth nigh?
Sin in high places has become devout,
Tithes mint, goes painful-faced, and prays its lie
Straight up to Heaven, and calls it piety!
The pirate, watching from his bloody deck
The weltering galleon, heavy with the gold
Of Acapulco, holding death in check
While prayers are said, brows crossed, and beads are told;
The robber, kneeling where the wayside cross
On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss
From his own carbine, glancing still abroad
For some new victim, offering thanks to God!
Rome, listening at her altars to the cry
Of midnight Murder, while her hounds of hell
Scour France, from baptized cannon and holy bell
And thousand-throated priesthood, loud and high,
Pealing Te Deums to the shuddering sky,
"Thanks to the Lord, who giveth victory!"
What prove these, but that crime was ne'er so black
As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to lack?
Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he lays
His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural phrase
And saintly posture, gives to God the praise
And honor of the monstrous progeny.
What marvel, then, in our own time to see
His old devices, smoothly acted o'er,--
Official piety, locking fast the door
Of Hope against three million soups of men,--
Brothers, God's children, Christ's redeemed,--and then,
With uprolled eyeballs and on bended knee,
Whining a prayer for help to hide the key!
1853.
THE RENDITION.
On the 2d of June, 1854, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia,
after being under arrest for ten days in the Boston Court House, was
remanded to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act, and taken down State
Street to a steamer chartered by the United States Government, under
guard of United States troops and artillery, Massachusetts militia and
Boston police. Public excitement ran high, a futile attempt to rescue
Burns having been made during his confinement, and the streets were
crowded with tens of thousands of people, of whom many came from other
towns and cities of the State to witness the humiliating spectacle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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