| |
| O THOU great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years, | |
| Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield | |
| The scourge that drove the laborer to the field, | |
| And turn a stony gaze on human tears, | |
| Thy cruel reign is o’er; | 5 |
| Thy bondmen crouch no more | |
| In terror at the menace of thine eye; | |
| For He who marks the bounds of guilty power, | |
| Long-suffering, hath heard the captive’s cry, | |
| And touched his shackles at the appointed hour, | 10 |
| And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled | |
| Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled. | |
| |
| A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent; | |
| Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks; | |
| Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks | 15 |
| Send up hosannas to the firmament! | |
| Fields where the bondman’s toil | |
| No more shall trench the soil, | |
| Seem now to bask in a serener day; | |
| The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs | 20 |
| Of heaven with more caressing softness play, | |
| Welcoming man to liberty like theirs. | |
| A glory clothes the land from sea to sea, | |
| For the great land and all its coasts are free. | |
| |
| Within that land wert thou enthroned of late, | 25 |
| And they by whom the nation’s laws were made, | |
| And they who filled its judgment-seats, obeyed | |
| Thy mandate, rigid as the will of Fate. | |
| Fierce men at thy right hand, | |
| With gesture of command, | 30 |
| Gave forth the word that none might dare gainsay; | |
| And grave and reverend ones, who loved thee not, | |
| Shrank from thy presence, and in blank dismay | |
| Choked down, unuttered, the rebellious thought; | |
| While meaner cowards, mingling with thy train, | 35 |
| Proved, from the book of God, thy right to reign. | |
| |
| Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to shore, | |
| The wrath of Heaven o’ertook thee in thy pride; | |
| Thou sitt’st a ghastly shadow; by thy side | |
| Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evermore. | 40 |
| And they who quailed but now | |
| Before thy lowering brow, | |
| Devote thy memory to scorn and shame, | |
| And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art. | |
| And they who ruled in thine imperial name, | 45 |
| Subdued, and standing sullenly apart, | |
| Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign, | |
| And shattered at a blow the prisoner’s chain. | |
| |
| Well was thy doom deserved; thou didst not spare | |
| Life’s tenderest ties, but cruelly didst part | 50 |
| Husband and wife, and from the mother’s heart | |
| Didst wrest her children, deaf to shriek and prayer; | |
| Thy inner lair became | |
| The haunt of guilty shame; | |
| Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side, | 55 |
| Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due. | |
| Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide, | |
| A harvest of uncounted miseries grew, | |
| Until the measure of thy sins at last | |
| Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast! | 60 |
| |
| Go now, accursed of God, and take thy place | |
| With hateful memories of the elder time, | |
| With many a wasting plague, and nameless crime, | |
| And bloody war that thinned the human race; | |
| With the Black Death, whose way | 65 |
| Through wailing cities lay, | |
| Worship of Moloch, tyrannies that built | |
| The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught | |
| To avenge a fancied guilt by deeper guilt— | |
| Death at the stake to those that held them not. | 70 |
| Lo! the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom | |
| Of the flown ages, part to yield thee room. | |
| |
| I see the better years that hasten by | |
| Carry thee back into that shadowy past, | |
| Where, in the dusty spaces, void and vast, | 75 |
| The graves of those whom thou hast murdered lie. | |
| The slave-pen, through whose door | |
| Thy victims pass no more, | |
| Is there, and there shall the grim block remain | |
| At which the slave was sold; while at thy feet | 80 |
| Scourges and engines of restraint and pain | |
| Moulder and rust by thine eternal seat. | |
| There, mid the symbols that proclaim thy crimes, | |
| Dwell thou, a warning to the coming times. | |
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