 | The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield |  |
As from the violet pavilion stole
The dayspring's beautiful and blessed light,
Like rose leaves floating, and the mountains bent
Their awful brows in worship at the fount
Of radiance, by all ages sacred held
As the peculiar home of deity,
Mythra or Bel or Elios—(the name
Erred, but the spirit filled the heavens with life,)
Uprose the vassals from their earth-beds, late
On yesternight pressed by the sinking limbs
And breaking hearts of bondage; no perfumes
Soothed bodies gashed with scourges, or shorn heads,
No lavers waited thraldom; on they flung
Rude garments soiled by servitude, and turned
To grind at the accursed mill, and lift
Their branded brows at the stern master's voice,
In silence passing o'er Mosaic floors
To bear the golden bowl or myrrhine cup,
Falernian, or frankincense to their lords.
For them no statue bowed in majesty,
No council framed a law, and none of all
The common deeds of earth had interest;
For they were stricken from the roll of men
And banished from humanity,
and Rome
Gazed from the temple of her trophies on
The hopeless captives—from her triumph hills,
Where armies shouted Liberty! upon
Her myriads of bondmen, with a smile,
That thanked her thrice ten thousand deities,
The o'ershadowing empire of the world was Free!
The dayspring's beautiful and blessed light,
Like rose leaves floating, and the mountains bent
Their awful brows in worship at the fount
Of radiance, by all ages sacred held
As the peculiar home of deity,
Mythra or Bel or Elios—(the name
Erred, but the spirit filled the heavens with life,)
Uprose the vassals from their earth-beds, late
On yesternight pressed by the sinking limbs
And breaking hearts of bondage; no perfumes
Soothed bodies gashed with scourges, or shorn heads,
No lavers waited thraldom; on they flung
Rude garments soiled by servitude, and turned
To grind at the accursed mill, and lift
Their branded brows at the stern master's voice,
In silence passing o'er Mosaic floors
To bear the golden bowl or myrrhine cup,
Falernian, or frankincense to their lords.
For them no statue bowed in majesty,
No council framed a law, and none of all
The common deeds of earth had interest;
For they were stricken from the roll of men
85
Gazed from the temple of her trophies on
The hopeless captives—from her triumph hills,
Where armies shouted Liberty! upon
Her myriads of bondmen, with a smile,
That thanked her thrice ten thousand deities,
The o'ershadowing empire of the world was Free!
Probably among no people, not even the mercenary Africans themselves, who are always more ready to sell than the Christian trafficker is to buy, was the condition of slaves so utterly hopeless and irreclaimable as in the republics of Greece and Rome. Their vivid jealousy of personal privileges peculiarly fitted them to tyrannize over every people not incorporated within their chartered dominions. Nothing is so cruel as boasting philanthropy; nothing so unjust as a dominant hierarchy; nothing so capricious and despotic as an unrestrained democracy.
| The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield | |