 | Airs of Palestine, and other poems |  |
IV.
THE TOCSIN.
“If the pulpit be silent, whenever or wherever there may be a sinner, bloody with this guilt, within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust.”
—D. Webster.“All are born free!”—Their spirits come
Back to the places where they bled
In Freedom's holy martyrdom,
And find you sleeping on their graves
And hugging there your chains,—ye slaves!
And dream of Freedom, while ye sleep?
Ay,—dream, while Slavery's foot is set
So firmly on your necks,—while deep
The chain her quivering flesh endures
Gnaws, like a cancer, into yours?
Calling you slaves?—Then prove ye're not;
Work a free press!—ye'll see it broken;
Stand to defend it!—ye'll be shot. —
O yes! but people should not dare
Print what “the brotherhood” won't bear!
Gleaned from the Holy Bible's pages,
Fall, while ye're pleading for a race
Whose blood has flowed through chains for ages;—
And pray,—“Lord, let thy kingdom come!”
And see if ye're not stricken dumb.
As, by the Word of God, ye're bidden;
By the pressed lip,—the blanching cheek,
Ye feel yourselves rebuked and chidden;
And, if ye're not cast out, ye fear it;—
And why?—“The brethren” will not hear it.
To prove your freedom ye 're not able,
Go,—like the Sun of Righteousness,
By wise men honored,—to a stable!
Say there that God made all men free!
Ere of her form ye've caught a glimpse,
Even there, are fires infernal lighted,
And ye're driven out by Slavery's imps.
Ah, well!—“so persecuted they
The prophets” of a former day!
To prove ye are not slaves, but men!
Write “Freedom,” on its towering wall!
Baptize it in the name of Penn;
And give it to her holy cause,
Beneath the Ægis of her laws;—
And, while your hearts begin to throb,
And burn within you—Hark! the yell,—
The torch,—the torrent of the Mob!—
And leave your hall a smouldering heap!
On your own servants, through the door
Of your own Senate,—that the scourge
May gash your brother's back no more,—
Are trampled underneath their feet,
While ye stand praying in the street!
To hunt down Indian wives or maids,
Doomed to the lash!—Yes, and their bones,
Whitening 'mid swamps and everglades,
Where no friend goes to give them graves,
Prove that ye are not Slavery's slaves!
Ye lift to Heaven, to swear ye 're free,
Will break a truce, to seize the lands
Of Seminole or Cherokee!
Yes,—tear a flag, that Tartar hordes
Respect, and shield it with their swords!
To pay it hath thy justice bound thee;
Even now, I see thee take thy rod,—
Thy thunders, leashed and growling round thee;—
Slip them not yet, in mercy!—Deign
Thy wrath yet longer to restrain!—
Let Church, let State, receive thy chain!
Let pulpit, press, and hall be dumb,
If so “the brotherhood” ordain!
The Muse her own indignant spirit
Will yet speak out;—and men shall hear it.
That she can strike her fire from still;
While there's a shaft at Lexington,
Or half a one on Bunker's Hill,
There shall she stand and strike her lyre,
And Truth and Freedom shall stand by her.
For purer heights she'll plume her wing;—
Spurning a land of slaves, to heaven
She'll soar, where she can safely sing.
God of our fathers, speed her thither!
God of the free, let me go with her!
Bear witness, “Grounds of Complaint preferred against the Rev. John Pierpont, by a Committee of the Parish, called ‘The Proprietors of Hollis-Street Meetinghouse,’ to be submitted to a mutual Ecclesiastical Council, as Reasons for dissolving his Connexion with said Parish,” July 27th, 1840: one of which runs thus;—Because “of his too busy interference with questions of legislation on the subject of prohibiting the sale of ardent spirits;—of his too busy interference with questions of legislation on the subject of imprisonment for debt;—of his too busy interference with the popular controversy on the subject of the abolition of slavery.” And this, in the eighteen hundred and fortieth year of Him whom the Lord God sent “to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound”!
Bear witness, that large “upper room,” the hay-loft over the stable of the Marlborough Hotel, standing upon the ground now covered by the Marlborough Chapel; the only temple in Boston, into which the friends of human liberty, that is, of the liberty of man as man, irrespective of color or caste, could gain admittance for the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, January 25th, 1837. Bear witness, too, that smaller room in Summer Street, where a meeting was held the same day, by members of the same Society; where their only altar was an iron stove,—their only incense, the fumes of a quantity of cayenne pepper, that some one of the “imps” had sprinkled upon the hot stove-plates, to drive the friends of the freedom of all men out of that little asylum.
Bear witness, ye ruins of “Pennsylvania Hall”!—a heap of ruins made by a Philadelphia mob, May 17th, 1838,—and still allowed to remain a heap of ruins, as I was lately told in Philadelphia, from the fear, on the part of the city government, that, should the noble structure be reared again, and dedicated again to Liberty, the fiery tragedy of the 17th of May would be encored.
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