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[1847]
THEY are dying! they are dying! where the golden corn is growing; | |
| They are dying! they are dying! where the crowded herds are lowing: | |
| They are gasping for existence where the streams of life are flowing, | |
| And they perish of the plague where the breeze of health is blowing! | |
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| God of justice! God of power! | 5 |
| Do we dream? Can it be, | |
| In this land, at this hour, | |
| With the blossom on the tree, | |
| In the gladsome month of May, | |
| When the young lambs play, | 10 |
| When Nature looks around | |
| On her waking children now, | |
| The seed within the ground, | |
| The bud upon the bough? | |
| Is it right, is it fair, | 15 |
| That we perish of despair | |
| In this land, on this soil, | |
| Where our destiny is set, | |
| Which we cultured with our toil, | |
| And watered with our sweat? | 20 |
| We have ploughed, we have sown | |
| But the crop was not our own; | |
| We have reaped, but harpy hands | |
| Swept the harvest from our lands; | |
| We were perishing for food, | 25 |
| When lo! in pitying mood, | |
| Our kindly rulers gave | |
| The fat fluid of the slave, | |
| While our corn filled the manger | |
| Of the war-horse of the stranger! | 30 |
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| God of mercy! must this last? | |
| Is this land preordained, | |
| For the present and the past | |
| And the future, to be chained,— | |
| To be ravaged, to be drained, | 35 |
| To be robbed, to be spoiled, | |
| To be hushed, to be whipt, | |
| Its soaring pinions clipt, | |
| And its every effort foiled? | |
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| Do our numbers multiply | 40 |
| But to perish and to die? | |
| Is this all our destiny below,— | |
| That our bodies, as they rot, | |
| May fertilize the spot | |
| Where the harvests of the stranger grow? | 45 |
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| If this be, indeed, our fate, | |
| Far, far better now, though late, | |
| That we seek some other land and try some other zone; | |
| The coldest, bleakest shore | |
| Will surely yield us more | 50 |
| Than the storehouse of the stranger that we dare not call our own. | |
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| Kindly brothers of the West, | |
| Who from Liberty’s full breast | |
| Have fed us, who are orphans beneath a step-dame’s frown, | |
| Behold our happy state, | 55 |
| And weep your wretched fate | |
| That you share not in the splendors of our empire and our crown! | |
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| Kindly brothers of the East,— | |
| Thou great tiaraed priest, | |
| Thou sanctified Rienzi of Rome and of the earth,— | 60 |
| Or thou who bear’st control | |
| Over golden Istambol, | |
| Who felt for our misfortunes and helped us in our dearth,— | |
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| Turn here your wondering eyes, | |
| Call your wisest of the wise, | 65 |
| Your muftis and your ministers, your men of deepest lore; | |
| Let the sagest of your sages | |
| Ope our island’s mystic pages, | |
| And explain unto your highness the wonders of our shore. | |
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| A fruitful, teeming soil, | 70 |
| Where the patient peasants toil | |
| Beneath the summer’s sun and the watery winter sky; | |
| Where they tend the golden grain | |
| Till it bends upon the plain, | |
| Then reap it for the stranger, and turn aside to die; | 75 |
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| Where they watch their flocks increase, | |
| And store the snowy fleece | |
| Till they send it to their masters to be woven o’er the waves; | |
| Where, having sent their meat | |
| For the foreigner to eat, | 80 |
| Their mission is fulfilled, and they creep into their graves. | |
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| ’T is for this they are dying where the golden corn is growing, | |
| ’T is for this they are dying where the crowded herds are lowing, | |
| ’T is for this they are dying where the streams of life are flowing, | |
| And they perish of the plague where the breeze of health is blowing! | 85 |
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