Where they may rest in peace, secure, Nor fear the oppressor’s iron hand,-- Worse scenes of rapine, lust, and shame, Than e’er disgraced the Russian name, Worse than the Austrian ever saw, Are sanctioned here as righteous law. Here might the Austrian butcher[M] make Progress in shameful cruelty, Where women-whippers proudly take The meed and praise of chivalry. Here might the cunning Jesuit learn, Though skilled in subtle sophistry, And trained to persevere in stern Unsympathizing cruelty, And call that good, which, right or wrong, Will tend to make his order strong: He here might learn from those who stand High in the gospel ministry, The very magnates of the land In evangelic piety, That conscience must not only bend To everything the church decrees, But it must also condescend, When drunken politicians please To place their own inhuman acts Above the “higher law” of God, And on the hunted victim’s tracks Cheer the malignant fiends of blood, To help the man-thief bind the chain Upon his Christian brother’s limb, And bear to slavery’s hell again The bound and suffering child of Him Who died upon the cross, to save Alike, the master and the slave. While all the oppressed from every land Are welcomed here with open hand, And fulsome praises rend the heaven For those who have the fetters riven Of European tyranny, And bravely struck for liberty; And while from thirty thousand fanes Mock prayers go up, and hymns are sung, Three million drag their clanking chains, “Unwept, unhonored, and unsung;” Doomed to a state of slavery, Compared with which the darkest night Of European tyranny, Seems brilliant as the noonday light. While politicians void of shame, Cry this is law and liberty, The clergy lend the awful name And sanction of the Deity, To help sustain the monstrous wrong, And crush the weak beneath the strong. Lord, thou hast said the tyrant’s ear Shall not be always closed to thee, But that thou wilt in wrath appear, And set the trembling captive free. And even now dark omens rise To those who either see or hear, And gather o’er the darkening skies The threatening signs of fate and fear; Not like the plagues which Egypt saw, When rising in an evil hour, A rebel ’gainst the “higher law,” And glorying in her mighty power,-- Saw blasting fire, and blighting hail, Sweep o’er her rich and fertile vale, And heard on every rising gale Ascend the bitter mourning wail; And blighted herd, and blasted plain, Through all the land the first-born slain, Her priests and magi made to cower In witness of a higher power, And darkness like a sable pall Shrouding the land in deepest gloom, Sent sadly through the minds of all, Forebodings of approaching doom. What though no real shower of fire Spreads o’er this land its withering blight,