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| THE BLAST from Freedom’s Northern hills, upon its Southern way, | |
| Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay: | |
| No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle’s peal, | |
| Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen’s steel, | |
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| No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go; | 5 |
| Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow; | |
| And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far, | |
| A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are spread for war. | |
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| We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy words and high | |
| Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our sky; | 10 |
| Yet not one brown, hard hand foregoes its honest labor here, | |
| No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends his axe in fear. | |
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| Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George’s bank; | |
| Cold on the shores of Labrador the fog lies white and dank; | |
| Through storm, and wave, and blinding mist, stout are the hearts which man | 15 |
| The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann. | |
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| The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms, | |
| Bent grimly o’er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms; | |
| Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam, | |
| They laugh to scorn the slaver’s threat against their rocky home. | 20 |
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| What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day | |
| When o’er her conquered valleys swept the Briton’s steel array? | |
| How, side by side with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men | |
| Encountered Tarleton’s charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then? | |
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| Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the call | 25 |
| Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from Faneuil Hall? | |
| When, echoing back her Henry’s cry, came pulsing on each breath | |
| Of Northern winds the thrilling sounds of ‘Liberty or Death!’ | |
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| What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved | |
| False to their fathers’ memory, false to the faith they loved; | 30 |
| If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn, | |
| Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn? | |
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| We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery’s hateful hell; | |
| Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound’s yell; | |
| We gather, at your summons, above our fathers’ graves, | 35 |
| From Freedom’s holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves! | |
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| Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow; | |
| The spirit of her early time is with her even now; | |
| Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow and calm and cool, | |
| She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister’s slave and tool! | 40 |
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| All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may, | |
| Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day; | |
| But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone, | |
| And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown! | |
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| Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God’s free air | 45 |
| With woman’s shriek beneath the lash, and manhood’s wild despair; | |
| Cling closer to the ‘cleaving curse’ that writes upon your plains | |
| The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains. | |
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| Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old, | |
| By watching round the shambles where human flesh is sold; | 50 |
| Gloat o’er the new-born child, and count his market value, when | |
| The maddened mother’s cry of woe shall pierce the slaver’s den! | |
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| Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the Virginia name; | |
| Plant, if ye will, your fathers’ graves with rankest weeds of shame; | |
| Be, if ye will, the scandal of God’s fair universe; | 55 |
| We wash our hands forever of your sin and shame and curse. | |
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| A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom’s shrine hath been, | |
| Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire’s mountain men: | |
| The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still | |
| In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill. | 60 |
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| And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his prey | |
| Beneath the very shadow of Bunker’s shaft of gray, | |
| How, through the free lips of the son, the father’s warning spoke; | |
| How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke! | |
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| A hundred thousand right arms were lifted up on high, | 65 |
| A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud reply; | |
| Through the thronged towns of Essex the startling summons rang, | |
| And up from bench and loom and wheel her young mechanics sprang! | |
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| The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of thousands as of one, | |
| The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lexington; | 70 |
| From Norfolk’s ancient villages, from Plymouth’s rocky bound | |
| To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close her round; | |
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| From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose | |
| Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua flows, | |
| To where Wachuset’s wintry blasts the mountain larches stir, | 75 |
| Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of ‘God save Latimer!’ | |
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| And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray; | |
| And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay! | |
| Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill, | |
| And the cheer of Hampshire’s woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill. | 80 |
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| The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and daughters, | |
| Deep calling unto deep aloud, the sound of many waters! | |
| Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand? | |
| No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land! | |
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| Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne, | 85 |
| In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn; | |
| You’ve spurned our kindest counsels; you’ve hunted for our lives; | |
| And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves! | |
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| We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within | |
| The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin; | 90 |
| We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can, | |
| With the strong upward tendencies and God-like soul of man! | |
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| But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given | |
| For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven; | |
| No slave-hunt in our borders,—no pirate on our strand! | 95 |
| No fetters in the Bay State,—no slave upon our land! | |
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