University of Virginia Library

II.—THE PRAIRIE NEAR RAIN'S FORT, KANSAS.

Rhoda, Ellen, Kagi, then Brown.
Kagi.
Still dreaming of your home?

Rhoda.
Be sure, we must remember it for good,—
Our sunny cabin, with its garden-ground,
Its few sweet herbs, its scanty coop of fowl,—
And there my children played the livelong day!

Kagi.
And yet you chose to fly?

Rhoda.
Most surely; had we stayed, to-morrow morn
They dragged us off, the Southern planter's game,
And sold us far from home, to Texan fiends.

Kagi.
Men dream there is a Providence, and that
Decrees this life of slavery. Sold? Mother from child,
Torn from each other's lives, banished apart,
To feel the lash, to wear the chain,—tortured
For being born, nor pay for toil, and this,—
This monstrous curse is Providence! is God!

Rhoda.
Master, in all our woes, yet we believe
There is the Lord above us; He is good.

Ellen.
So, Rhoda, was I taught.

Kagi.
Then, were you taught, by whom?

Ellen.
There was an aged slave, bent to the earth
By weight of many winters and much toil,
Who somewhere on this voyage o'er life's cold wave
Had learned to read the Gospel. Oft at night,
When all the field was hushed, save the dogs bayed
The slowly passing moon, or the wind whispered
Thro' the cotton-wood, he read the Word of Life,
And taught us faith in God and human love,
And, most of all, patience,—the slave's sole coin!

Kagi.
As one of us you speak!

Ellen.
Seest thou, my skin is lighter than thine own?

Kagi.
I did not note it; for myself, know you,
My birth is Southern. On Virginia's hills
I breathe my native air.

Ellen.
And I, the same; the first in all the county,
Was that one from whom I claim my birth.

Kagi.
What deeds! and yet they call us maniacs,
We, who must strive to free a fallen race.
Thus have we fought in Kansas, these hard years,
A battle for the right. How few our band,
Our arms and means how pinched, our habit scant.
We lead a savage life; no Indian's trail
Ever by wilder speed was torn along
The pathless prairies, than where we pursue;
The rattle of the sleepless snake, the clear
And ringing whistle from the waving grass
Wherein the gopher stands, and the lone clouds
Softly and sweetly pacing down the skies;
The creaking cranes that Homer portraits, far
In heaven o'er our heads, and sounding 'neath our feet,—
A land all one profoundest loveliness;
And we, this hunted band, and hunting others,
Tortured and stung and maddened to fell deeds;
Versed to the crack of carbines, the wild fray;
Or, ambushed in the edges of the wood,
With murder in our hearts (men call it such).
Yes, well I know 't is death! My rifle rings;
The quick young life is sped; a mother weeps,—
Her youngest lies in the unburied heaven;
That corpse of human slavery pours forth
A doom, to which the Upas-tree was baim!

(Enter John Brown.)
Brown.
Is all secure, all safe? Is the watch set?
Nay, do not light the fire,—a long day's march;
It matters not; there may be shorter days,
Of which this march is part.

Kagi.
You look beyond these days?

Brown.
Yes, Kagi, I have spoken oft to you
Of this; a man must come to break the power
Of slavery,—one fetched upon this errand;
God has set his seal upon that soul;
As in the Hebrew days, the prophets saw;
The ocean rises from an infant spring!
Mark you, now, these things are but the preface
To our work. We crush the fangs of crime,
And spill the adder's venom to that end.
Kagi, I would you loved the truth of God!

Kagi.
Not more than I.

Brown.
Have you, then, prayed for help?

Kagi.
Oh, utterly!

Brown.
And heard no answer?

Kagi.
Never, the least! How could I in this tomb,
That bears cut deep the shapes of slavery?

Brown.
My child, there hangs a mist across your brow,—
You seeing, see not; in God's purposes
There is a wiser meed of goodness fixed
Than human tongues may utter. These are days
When hardness is endured: the well-paid spy,
The bullet at the heart, my children's blood
Soaking the prairie weeds, and far from home,
And all that consolation knows on earth
(That mother dear, who weeps on Elba's height,
Widowed almost),—yet bate I not a jot.
Within my inmost soul I know that peace,
The future's fruit, clear as yon twilight star!

Kagi.
Captain, I never hear your speech unmoved;
'T is sweeter to my ear than woman's tones,
When, on her trembling lute, in twilight's calm,
She sings the vision of her love to rest.
Old man, I never knew a dear one's eye;
And still, I think that true affection sprung
When first I felt thee, thou so firmly true.
Are men and thoughts null, because opposite?
I caught the histories; I learned the tales
Of sage and saint; the mad Crusader's rage,
And Luther's outspoke hate, and Cromwell's steel
Crushed in the heart-blood of that worthless Charles,—
I could not rest and live, I felt the call,—
A race weeps here in hell; I marked their looks;
Was I not of them, and that shriek of doom,
Thrilling thro' me, to go and breathless take
My life upon my arm and act for them?
But of your gods and priests, and heaven in store,—
I yet must take the thought that's next my mind.

Brown.
(aside).
(I have not known these whims,—what does he mean?
A dreaming youth,—how strange his look, how wild!)
Kagi, there is vouchsafed to each of us
A lesson of his own, and good for each.
To me, the God, who led His people forth
From Egypt's poisonous creeds and withered states,
Is nigh. His guiding touch I feel; He leads
Across life's wilderness my thirsty soul.
My children fell; a price set on my head,
Because I lead these fettered slaves to life;
Affliction, outrage, all that makes life hard,
Must fall upon my fate. And yet I know
A Father's eye is on me, always near,—
I would He filled your thoughts.

Kagi.
Oh, look upon me as a man who lives
To bear across this tempest-stricken tide
The olive-branch of peace! Most strange are we;
Culture dissensions, misformed sentiments
Diversify our aims; yet all must sweep
Into one mighty river of the Free,
As, instruments of forethought, firm we sail
Across the ocean of this strife to calm,
For weal or woe as one bound up to strive.