 | John Brown, and the heroes of Harper's Ferry |  |
I.—CHATHAM. CANADA.
A House on the Outskirts of the Town.—Harriet, Stevens; enter Brown, Coppie, Cook, and Kagi.Harriet.
I do my best; our hearts are right.
Stevens.
We doubt you not;
Heaven knows, I am a soldier;
More than aught else, the child of camp and storm.
Had it been otherwise; would I had breathed
Beneath a parent's eye, and felt the thrill
Of love from some fond heart.
Harriet.
You do not mock me?
8
I know, this is not talk. Many or one,
Be it myself alone, I take the road
That goes to free thy race. No fresh debate;
For me I should not dare to live, and feel
More like a slave, than now!
Harriet.
My people are unversed in strife and arms;
Peace ever is the music of their hearts;
And, long crushed down, even those who, with us now,
Sit under their own vine, dream but of rest.
What think you of the meeting?
Stevens.
Our men must meet, and each must have his talk.
Thus, in the olden times, the fathers met.
We need this government provisional;
We make it freely and declare its laws;
And in that feast, at which the Saviour sat,
There were but twelve, so few; he felt,—
“Few tho' there be, that number shall prevail.”
9
I have persuaded four to join your band.
Stevens.
Four? One is an army in this cause!
Harriet.
Stevens! I know thee for a man of truth.
I hear the Captain questioned, as too rash;
Risking, upon a throw, the cost of years,
All to one end,—to march a score of men
Against broad States built up on providence,
Leagued by oppression and to crime congealed,
And you, and, like you, some few generous hearts,
Ranked like the Spartans, in a narrow pass,—
Some blue Virginia vale, where throb swift streams—
Stevens.
(Silence! breathe not a whisper!)
Harriet.
Fear not! but think, destruction follows this,
As the forked lightning cleaves its echoing shroud.
10
Some one must perish. That pure, godly soul,
The Captain, sets not upon his life the price
Would buy an empty shard? Life,—is it life
To breathe this tainted air of slavery's curse?
Republic!—flaunting to the winds its flag,
Free as the stars which spot it, and in truth
More chained than Austrian Hofers, or the vale
Where Tell let go his arrow, laying fast
Heavenly prescripts to each new-born man.
(Enter John Brown.)
Brown.
Harriet! we seldom can make sweet your days.
The woman's heart is aching for its race.
Their fate is hazardous, yet fear it not,—
The sword of Gideon in our hands is set.
Think of the men who till the wide-spread fields,
11
And every brother of the outspread race
Waiting to clasp a brother to his breast.
Harriet.
There is a pulse in that!
Cook.
This blow must fall; the sooner 't is the better.
I know that country well; the people hate
The South, and Southern institutions too,
There, where the shot must strike.
Stevens.
How many are there in that town?
Cook.
Five thousand.
Brown.
'T is but their love and gratitude we seek;
It seems as if the planters ask us there.
A price set on my head! (what is it worth?)
From near and far, I hear the ocean-swell,
The voice of Liberty o'er hill and dale,
A sound as blithesome as the wind-shook corn.
Stevens.
I laugh to think how they will stand surprised,—
Our dozen marching like a conqueror's host.
12
Whether to fall or rise, we go content,
And a new government, embracing all,
Goes with us. Small must we seem, our band too few;
But often from dim causes come effects
Of unsuspecting splendor.
Coppie.
The arms, you say, are ready, Captain?
Then, no delay. Some fear this plot is smoked;
Now, for myself, I vow, give me my gun,
And ten sharp-shooters' rifles by my side,
I lit a fire upon those Southern hills,
To burn till that black sky is all one blaze.
Cities shall shrivel in its burning arms,
And the close Nessus-shirt that kills a race,
Fit for a high deliverance, were it free,
Drops like the fetter off the skeleton
At the magician's wand, in midnight's trance.
Brown.
Now, for these thirty years, I kept this plan,
13
Much have I pondered, long have read and thought;
Was there Sertorius, who thro' his brave plans
Built up a soul in Spain, artfully strengthened;
And Schamyl on the Caucasus, that nought
Could quell nor break, not all dull Russia's serfs.
And much I loved that noble hero-man,
Toussaint, so rightly called to be
L'Oucerture to a race who needed that.
But this our cause flies far before them all,—
Far as unceasing ocean to a tarn,
Securely sleeping on its rock-bound bed.
Now shall Humanity attain due place
To all its neighbor worlds,—a sun of love!
But what to-day has come? The woe, the pain,
And toiling bondmen, with no wage nor hope,
14
Drive from the mountain's crest, from sea and shore,
Rivet anew his bonds, send back the doomed!
This must not be! God is a most just God.
‘Do unto others, as to you they should.”
Forth in the gleaming fields the yellow grain
Waves for the sickle in a freedman's hand.
It falls; the old dead past falls off!
| John Brown, and the heroes of Harper's Ferry | |