Apostate clime! the blood then shed, Fell thick with vengeance on thy head, To weigh it down 'neath the coming rod When thy red right hand should be stretched to God. Behold the price of the life ye took; At the death ye gave 'twas a world that shook; And the despot deed that one heart broke, From their slavish sleep a Million woke! Not all alone did the victim fall, Whose wrongs first brought him to your thrall; The old man played a Nation's part, And ye struck your blow at a Nation's heart! The freemen-host is at your door, And a Voice goes forth with a stern "No More!" To the deadly Curse, whose swift redeem Was the visioned thought of John Brown's dream. To the Country's Wrong, and the Country's stain, It shall prove as the scythe to the yielding grain; And the dauntless pow'r to spread it forth, Is the free-born soul of the chainless North. From the East, and West, and North they come, To the bugle's call and the roll of drum; And a form walks viewless by their side-- A form that was born when the Old Man died! The Soldier old in his grave may rest, Afar with his dead in the prairie West; But a red ray falls on the headstone there, Like a God's reply to a Soldier's pray'r. He may sleep in peace 'neath the greenwood pall, For the land's great heart hath heard his call; And a people's Will and a people's Might, Shall right the Wrong and proclaim the Right. The foe may howl at the fiat just, And gnash his fangs in the trodden dust; But the battle leaves his bark a wreck, And the Freeman's heel is on his neck. Not all in vain is the lesson taught, That a great soul's Dream is the world's New Thought; And the Scaffold marked with a death sublime Is the Throne ordained for the coming time. The chaplain runs as naturally to poetry, my boy, as a water-melon does to seed, and his muse is apt to be--alas! what a melancholy one!