When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous

throe,

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and

fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,

Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with
God

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the

sod,

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler

clod.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom

or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the

right,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that

light.

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt

stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is

strong,

And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea;

Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgement hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the

Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim un

known,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within: "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

Slavery, the earthborn Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,

Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,

Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey; Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched

crust,

Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be

just;

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands

aside,

Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,

And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

Count me o'er Earth's chosen heroes, they were souls that stood alone

While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,

Stood serene and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not

back,

And these mounts of anguish number how each generation

learned

One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned

Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves; Worshipers of light ancestral make the present light a crime : Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?

Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across

the sea.

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires ; Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste

to slay,

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pil

grims be,

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted

key.

December, 11, 1845.

ON THE CAPTURE OF CERTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES

NEAR WASHINGTON.

BY THE SAME.

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can,

The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly

man;

Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease

Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these!

I first drew in New-England's air, and from her hardy breast
Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest;
And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame,
'Tis but my Bay State dialect, our fathers spake the same!

Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on stone
To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and gone,
While we look coldly on, and see law-shielded ruffians slay
The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day!

Are we pledged to craven silence?

O fling it to the wind, The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human

That makes us cringe, and temporize, and dumbly stand at

rest,

While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast!

Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties

first;

The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed ;
Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,
Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to
God!

We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more,
To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's

core;

Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then

Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.