If so thou may'st thy brethren free! Do this in memory of me!'
Up-while ye slumber, deeper yet
The shadow of our fame is growing-
Up-While ye pause, our sun may set
In blood, around our altars flowing!
Oh rouse ye-ere the storm comes forth-
The gathered wrath of God and man-
Like that which wasted Egypt's earth,
When hail and fire above it ran.
Hear ye no warnings in the air?
Feel ye no earthquake underneath?
Up-up-why will ye slumber where
The sleeper only wakes in death?
Up now for Freedom !—not in strife
Like that your sterner fathers saw;
The awful waste of human life-
The glory and the guilt of war:
But break the chain-the yoke remove
And smite to earth oppression's rod,
With those mild arms of Truth and Love,
Made mighty through the living God!
Prone let the shrine of Moloch sink,
And leave no traces where it stood
Nor longer let its idol drink
His daily cup of human blood:
But rear another altar there,
To truth and love and mercy given,
And Freedom's gift and Freedom's prayer
Shall call an answer down from Heaven!
Blessings of Instruction.
THE heart has tendrils like the vine,
Which round another's bosom twine,
Outspringing from the living tree
Of deeply planted sympathy;
Whose flowers are hope, its fruits are bliss,
Beneficence its harvest is.
There are some bosoms dark and drear,
Which an unwatered desert are ;
Yet there a curious eye may trace
Some smiling spot, some verdant place,
Where little flowers, the weeds between,
Spend their soft fragrance all unseen.
Despise them not-for wisdom's toil
Has ne'er disturbed that stubborn soil:
Yet care and culture might have brought
The ore of truth from mines of thought:
And fancy's fairest flowers had bloomed
Where truth and fancy lie entombed.
Blessings of Instruction.
Insult him not-his blackest crime
May, in his Maker's eye sublime,
In spite of all thy pride, be less
Than e'en thy daily waywardness;
Than many a sin and many a stain
Forgotten-and impressed again.
There is in every human heart
Some not completely barren part,
Where seeds of truth and love might grow,
And flowers of generous virtue blow:
To plant, to watch, to water there-
This be our duty, be our care!
And sweet it is the growth to trace,
Of worth, of intellect, of grace,
In bosoms where are our labors first
Bid the young seed of spring-time burst,
And lead it on from hour to hour,
To ripen into perfect flower.
Hark! Hark, to the trumpet call—
'Arise in the name of God most high !'
On ready hearts the deep notes fall,
And firm and full is the strong reply:
'The hour is at hand to do and dare!-
Bound with the bondsmen now are we!
We may not utter the patriot's prayer,
Or bend in the house of God the knee !
Go! bear the tale of warning round,
Amid the free hills of the north,
And rocky peak, and wood, and dell,
Shall pour a living army forth :
Not unto battle and to blood,
Not girt and panoplied in steel,
But to a strife of heart with heart,
And armed with Christian faith and zeal.
Say! shall the blood of the martyred slain,
Sink vainly to the attesting earth ?
To prison and exile, scourge and chain,
Shall the faithful and the just go forth?
Throng, throng, from your mountains green!
Pour like a flood from your hill-tops white!
With kindling hearts and voices keen,
Swell high the song of truth and right.
A mighty sound the region fills—
An awful voice from our fathers' graves! It comes from the brows of a thousand hills'Woe to the lords of a land of slaves!'
Up, woman! unto thee the prayer
Of the oppressed and wronged is poured;
Not in the eloquence which speaks
In uttered thought and and fervid word;
The lines of anguish and despair,
Which mark the mother's lifted brow,
The fire which wildly lights her eye,
Are pleading with thy spirit now.
Oh, shall that prayer be poured in vain ?
No! by the truth of woman's love;
No! by the lofty energies
With which on Plymouth rock she strove.
No! she shall rise in moral power,
And plead with man and plead with Heaven,
Till broken is the oppressor's rod,
And freedom to the slave is given.
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