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Home  »  The Poetical Works In Four Volumes  »  For Righteousness’ Sake

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Anti-Slavery Poems

For Righteousness’ Sake

  • Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason against the slave power.


  • THE AGE is dull and mean. Men creep,

    Not walk; with blood too pale and tame

    To pay the debt they owe to shame;

    Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep

    Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want;

    Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep

    Six days to Mammon, one to Cant.

    In such a time, give thanks to God,

    That somewhat of the holy rage

    With which the prophets in their age

    On all its decent seemings trod,

    Has set your feet upon the lie,

    That man and ox and soul and clod

    Are market stock to sell and buy!

    The hot words from your lips, my own,

    To caution trained, might not repeat;

    But if some tares among the wheat

    Of generous thought and deed were sown,

    No common wrong provoked your zeal;

    The silken gauntlet that is thrown

    In such a quarrel rings like steel.

    The brave old strife the fathers saw

    For Freedom calls for men again

    Like those who battled not in vain

    For England’s Charter, Alfred’s law;

    And right of speech and trial just

    Wage in your name their ancient war

    With venal courts and perjured trust.

    God’s ways seem dark, but, soon or late,

    They touch the shining hills of day;

    The evil cannot brook delay,

    The good can well afford to wait.

    Give ermined knaves their hour of crime;

    Ye have the future grand and great,

    The safe appeal of Truth to Time!

    1855.