But not the less do thou aspire
Light's earlier messages to preach;
Keep back no syllable of fire,—
Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech;
Yet God deems not thine aëried sight
More worthy than our twilight dim,—
For meek Obedience, too, is Light,
And following that is finding Him.
The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set,
Until occasion tells him what to do;
And he who waits to have his task mark'd out
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfill'd.
Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds:
Reason and Government, like two broad seas,
Yearn for each other with outstretchéd arms
Across this narrow isthmus of the throne,
And roll their white surf higher every day.
One age moves onward, and the next builds up
Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood
The rude log huts of those who tamed the wild,
Rearing from out the forests they had fell'd
The goodly framework of a fairer state;
The builder's trowel and the settler's axe
Are seldom wielded by the selfsame hand;
Ours is the harder task, yet not the less
Shall we receive the blessing for our toil
From the choice spirits of the after-time.
The field lies wide before us, where to reap
The easy harvest of a deathless name,
Though with no better sickles than our swords.
My soul is not a palace of the past,
Where outworn creeds, like Rome's gray senate, quake,
Hearing afar the Vandal's trumpet hoarse,
That shakes old systems with a thunder-fit.
The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change;
Then let it come: I have no dread of what
Is call'd for by the instinct of mankind;
Nor think I that God's world will fall apart
Because we tear a parchment more or less.
Truth is eternal, but her effluence,
With endless change, is fitted to the hour;
Her mirror is turn'd forward, to reflect
The promise of the future, not the past.
He who would win the name of truly great
Must understand his own age and the next,
And make the present ready to fulfil
Its prophecy, and with the future merge
Gently and peacefully, as wave with wave.
The future works out great men's destinies;
The present is enough for common souls,
Who, never looking forward, are indeed
Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age
Are petrified forever: better those
Who lead the blind old giant by the hand
From out the pathless desert where he gropes,
And set him onward in his darksome way.
I do not fear to follow out the truth,
Albeit along the precipice's edge.
Let us speak plain: there is more force in names
Than most men dream of; and a lie may keep
Its throne a whole age longer if it skulk
Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name.
Let us call tyrants tyrants, and maintain
That only freedom comes by grace of God,
And all that comes not by his grace must fall;
For men in earnest have no time to waste
In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.
ON THE CAPTURE OF CERTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR
WASHINGTON.
Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can,
The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man;
Let those whose hearts are dungeon'd up with interest or with ease
Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these!
I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast
Suck'd in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest;
And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame,
'Tis but my Bay-State dialect,- -our fathers spake the same!
Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on stone
To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and gone,
While we look coldly on, and see law-shielded ruffians slay
The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day!
Are we pledged to craven silence? Oh, fling it to the wind,
The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind,—
That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest,
While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast!
Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first;
The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed;
Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod
Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God!
We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more,
To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirits' core;
Our country claims our fealty: we grant it so; but then
Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.
He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done,
To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun,
That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base,
Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race.
God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free
With parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or sea.
Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will,
From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.
Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart,
With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart:
When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay-State's iron shore,
The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more.
Out from the land of bondage 'tis decreed our slaves shall go,
And signs to us are offer'd, as erst to Pharaoh ;
If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore,
Through a Red Sea is doom'd to be, whose surges are of gore.
'Tis ours to save our brethren, with peace and love to win
Their darken'd hearts from error, ere they harden it to sin;
But if man before his duty with a listless spirit stands,
Ere long the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands.
Giddings, far rougher names than thine have grown
Smoother than honey on the lips of men;
And thou shalt aye be honorably known
As one who bravely used his tongue and pen
As best befits a freeman,-even for those
To whom our Law's unblushing front denies
A right to plead against the life-long woes
Which are the Negro's glimpse of Freedom's skies:
Fear nothing and hope all things, as the Right
Alone may do securely; every hour
The thrones of Ignorance and ancient Night
Lose somewhat of their long-usurpéd power,
And Freedom's lightest word can make them shiver
With a base dread that clings to them forever.
'Joshua R. Giddings, now (1858) the oldest member of the United States House of Representatives, was born in Athens, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, on the 6th of October, 1795. While in his infancy, his father removed to Canandaigua, New York, and remained there till 1806, when he removed to Ashtabula County, Ohio. Having a strong taste for literature, he determined to enter professional life; and by constant labor and self-denying efforts he was enabled to present himself for admission to the bar in 1820. His practice soon became extensive. In a few years, he was elected to the Legislature of his own State, and in 1838 to a seat in the United States House of Representatives. In February, 1838, he made his first anti-slavery speech in Congress. In 1842, he was censured by the House of Representatives for introducing anti-slavery resolutions. He at once resigned, returned home, appealed to his constituents, and in five weeks was returned by an overwhelming majority. There he has remained ever since, a most vigilant and faithful watchman on the watch-tower of liberty. His Congressional speeches have been published in a handsome volume of 511 pages, a monument to his courage and faithfulness to truth more enduring than granite or marble. In 1858, he published an historical work of deep interest, and designed to tell, not conceal, the truth, entitled, The Exiles of Florida: or the Crimes committed by our Government against the Maroons, who fled from South Carolina and other Slave States, seeking Protection under Spanish Laws.
Men whose boast it is that ye
Come of fathers brave and free,
If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,-
Slaves unworthy to be freed?
Women! who shall one day bear
Sons to breathe New England air,
If ye hear, without a blush,
Deeds to make the roused blood rush
Like red lava through your veins,
For your sisters now in chains,-
Answer! are ye fit to be
Mothers of the brave and free?
Is true Freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt?
No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free!
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
MARIA WHITE, the daughter of an opulent citizen of Watertown, Massachusetts, was born July 8, 1821. In December, 1844, she was married to James Russell Lowell, and died on the 22d of October, 1853. In 1855, her husband had a volume of her poetry privately printed, of the character of which some judgment may be formed from the following beautiful and touching lines addressed to a friend after the loss of a child.
1 Sung at the Anti-Slavery Picnic in Dedham, on the anniversary of West India Emancipation, August 1, 1843.
When on my ear your loss was knell'd,
And tender sympathy upburst,
A little spring from memory well'd,
Which once had quench'd my bitter thirst,
And I was fain to bear to you
A portion of its mild relief, That it might be a healing dew,
To steal some fever from your grief.
After our child's untroubled breath
Up to the Father took its way,
And on our home the shade of Death
Like a long twilight haunting lay,
And friends came round, with us to weep
Her little spirit's swift remove,
The story of the Alpine sheep
Was told to us by one we love.
They, in the valley's sheltering care,
Soon crop the meadow's tender prime,
And when the sod grows brown and bare,
The shepherd strives to make them climb
To airy shelves of pasture green,
That hang along the mountain's side, Where grass and flowers together lean,
And down through mists the sunbeams slide.
But naught can tempt the timid things
The steep and rugged path to try,
Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings,
And sear'd below the pastures lie,
Till in his arms his lambs he takes,
Along the dizzy verge to go:
Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks,
They follow on o'er rock and snow.
And in these pastures, lifted fair,
More dewy-soft than lowland mead,
The shepherd drops his tender care,
And sheep and lambs together feed.
This parable, by Nature breathed,
Blew on me as the south wind free
O'er frozen brooks that flow unsheathed
From icy thraldom to the sea.
A blissful vision through the night
Would all my happy senses sway
Of the Good Shepherd on the height,
Or climbing up the starry way,
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