Fired! With Athenian eloquence, Towering aloft in his noble manhood! Bearing the grand proud form Of a Cret'an hero! Hurling! The thunder of heaven Upon the guilty heads Of your inhuman and infamous oppressors, Who would enslave The very freedom of his speech! And hang The fetters of party strife Upon his independent thoughts! But he rose up in his giant strength, Raising the prostrate column Of your rights, Manfully fighting for it, block by block, Every inch of the ground Contested! What wonder That common minds, Lacking the moral vertebræ (backbone) Of a grand and noble humanity, should deem him Passionate! Yet, "what is life Without passionate feeling To false sentiment? It is, indeed, a dangerous auxiliary; But no true sentiment is complete Without it." And truer sentiments Never lit the fires of eloquence in a purer breast Than Sumner's! A breast that heaved with indignation For your bitter wrongs, And the piteous spectacle of human nature That Taney's mandate presented To the eyes of the world! That, "_The black man_ _Has no rights the white man is bound to respect._" O! omnipotent And omnipresent God! Who made us in thine own image, Breathing Thine own pure breath Into our dust-created bodies! Giving of thine own life A semblance So great in all its purity so grand in all its fulness, That our humanity can scarce contain it! So, whether our faces be black, or whether They be white, If we but retain thy semblance, And keep _within_