Poems Written During the Progress of the Abolition Question In the United States/Lines
The editor of the Western Messenger, published in Louisville, Kentucky, December, 1836, copies the following poem, and says, 'It is so full of fire and spirit, so original, so picturesque, that it must give pleasure to every reader. The five verses beginning "Shall our New England,' are equal to almost any thing in Campbell. Though no friends of abolitionism, we like good poetry on any and every subject."'
LINES
Written on the passage of Mr. Pinckney's Resolutions, in the House of Representatives, and of Mr. Calhoun's 'Bill of Abominations,' in the Senate of the United States.
Now, by our fathers' ashes! where's the spirit
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit
Their names alone?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us?
Stoops the proud manhood of our souls so low,
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us
To silence now?
No—when our land to ruin's brink is verging,
In God's name, let us speak while there is time!
Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,
Silence is crime!
What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors
Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter,
For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us,
God and our charter?
Here shall the statesman seek the free to fetter?
Here Lynch law light its horrid fires on high?
And, in the church, their proud and skilled abettor
Make truth a lie?—
Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood?
And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel
Both man and God?
Shall our New England stand erect no longer,
But stoop in chains upon her downward way,
Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger,
Day after day?
Oh, no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains:
From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie—
From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,
And clear, cold sky;—
From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean
Gnaws with his surges—from the fisher's skiff,
With white sail swaying to the billows' motion
Round rock and cliff;—
From the free fire-side of her unbought farmer—
From her free laborer at his loom and wheel—
From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer,
Rings the red steel;—
From each and all, if God hath not forsaken
Our land, and left us to an evil choice,
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken
A people's voice!
Startling and stern! the northern winds shall bear it
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;
And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it
Within her grave.
O, let that voice go forth! The bondman, sighing
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,
Revive again.
Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing
Sadly upon us from afar, shall smile,
And, unto God devout thanksgiving raising,
Bless us the while.
O, for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,
Let it go forth!
Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter
With all they left ye periled and at stake?
Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar
The fire awake!
Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come together,
Put on the harness for the moral fight,
And, with the blessing of your heavenly Father,
Maintain the right!