No nook so narrow but he spreads them there
With ease, and is at large. The oppressor holds
His body bound; but knows not what a range
His spirit takes, unconscious of a chain;
And that to bind him is a vain attempt
Whom God delights in, and in whom he dwells.
COWPER.
THE SLAVE-OWNER.
SEE the dull Creole at his pompous board,
Attendant vassals cringing round their lord;
Satiate with food, his heavy eyelids close,
Voluptuous minions fan him to repose;
Prone on the noonday couch he lolls in vain,
Delirious slumbers rock his maudlin brain;
He starts in horror from bewildering dreams,
His blood-shot eye with fire and frenzy gleams;
He stalks abroad-through all his wonted rounds,
The negro trembles, and the lash resounds;
And cries of anguish shrilling thro' the air,
To distant fields his dread approach declare.
Mark, as he passes, every head declined,
Then slowly raised, to curse him from behind.
This is the veriest wretch on nature's face,
Own'd by no country-spurn'd by every race;
The tether'd tyrant of one narrow span;
The bloated vampire of a living man;
His frame, a fungus form, of dunghill birth,
That taints the air, and rots above the earth;
His soul-has he a soul, whose sensual breast
Of selfish passions is a serpent's nest;
Who follows headlong, ignorant and blind,
The vague brute instinct of an idiot mind;
Whose heart, 'midst scenes of suffering, senseless
E'en in his mother's lap was chill'd to stone;
Whose torpid pulse no social feelings move;
A stranger to the tenderness of love,
His motley harem charms his gloating eye,
Where ebon, brown, and olive beauties vie :
His children, sprung alike from sloth and vice,
Are born his slaves, and loved at market-price:
Has he a soul?-With his departing breath,
A form shall hail him at the gates of death,
The spectre Conscience-shrieking thro' the gloom,
"Man, we shall meet again beyond the tomb!"
J. MONTGOMERY.
HOME AND COUNTRY.
THERE is a land of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth,
Time-tutor❜d age, and love-exalted youth;
The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so beautiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;
In every clime the magnet of his soul,
Touch'd by remembrance trembles to that pole;
For in this land of heaven's peculiar grace,
The heritage of nature's noblest race,
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest;
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his soften'd looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, father, friend:
Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife,
Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life;
In the clear heaven of her delightful eye,
An angel-guard of loves and graces lie;
Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fire-side pleasures gambol at her feet.
Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?
Art thou a man? --a patriot?-look around;
O thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy Country, and that spot thy Home.
J. MONTGOMERY.
MY NATIVE LAND.
BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim :
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concenter'd all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band
That knits me to thy rugged strand!
THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION.
Of all that patriot hearts should struggle for;
Cemented by the blood of heroes, chiefs,
And the bold worthies of the olden time,
Radiant with liberty's bright beam. For thee,
Proud trophy of a nation's highest pride,
A Hampden perished, and a Russell bled;
And thousands struggled in the mental night
That wrapt all nations looking for the ray
Of freedom, which unto the eye of faith
Seemed dawning on the land. Oh! ye that fell
Before the haughty Norman's thirsty steel-
Your weapons in your hands,-and ye that stood
At Runnemede, cased up in burnished mail,
To gain the charter of our lands and lives:
Ye godly pleaid, who in heaven's name
Implored the tyrant on the bended knee;
And ye that fell on Chalgrove's bloody field,—
We owe ye much: ourselves, our children, owe
A debt of gratitude, increasing with
The glorious progress of the deathless mind
Each passing year. Oh! if your spirits watch
O'er England's weal, and can forgive the scoffs
Of those more base than regal tyrants-if
Ye smile on those who would uphold the cause
For which ye struggled-teach us to transmit,
Pure and entire unto our children, all
Those glorious rights to which ourselves were born.
And be Thou with us, never-failing God;
Throw round us thy protecting arm,-endue
Thy servants with the holiness, the faith,
The union, and peace; to serve, to love,
And trust in Thee-in Thee alone,-to save,
Through ages yet to come, from storm and wreck,
The people and their king.
LIKE a thing of the desert, alone in its glee,
I make a small home seem an empire to me;
Like a bird in the forest, whose world is its nest,
My home is my all, and the centre of rest.
Let Ambition stretch over the world at a stride,
Let the restless go rolling away with the tide,
I look on life's pleasures as follies at best,
And, like sunset, feel calm when I'm going to rest.
I sit by the fire, in the dark winter's night,
While the cat cleans her face with her foot in
And the winds all a-cold, with rude clatter and din Shake the windows, like robbers who want to
Or else, from the cold to be hid and away,
By the bright burning fire see my children at play, Making houses of cards, or a coach of a chair, While I sit enjoying their happiness there.
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