The Liberator (newspaper)/September 18, 1857/A Word to the Wise is Enough

Poetry.

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For the Liberator.
A Word to the Wise is Enough.

When partnership links the strong to the weak,
How palsied the strong one’s arm!
‘You will ruin us both; sit quiet and wait:’
So he yields to the weak one’s alarm.
A word to the wise.

Of the tyrant Mezentius, the wicked, the vile,
And his cruelty, have ye ne’er read?
How he linked the fresh and breathing life
To the loathsome corpse of the dead?
A word to the wise.

Did ye never read in those Eastern tales
How Sinbad, the Sailor bold,
Was bowed and bent by that vile old man,
And half killed by his strangling fold?
A word to the wise.

And the Babylonian despot’s dream
Of the image on Dura’s plain,
‘Whose feet were iron and miry clay’—
How they crumbled to dust again?
A word to the wise.

Thus mixed with the miry clay of the South
Are the iron New England States:—
What chemist can these amalgamate?
And what but disunion awaits?
A word to the wise.

Tenterden, (England.)Jane Ashby.