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 look
with stony eye on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is o'er;
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,
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
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
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,
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,
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,
Proved, from the book of God, thy right to reign.
Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to shore,
The
wrath of God o'ertook thee in thy pride;
Thou sitt'st a
ghastly shadow; by thy side
Thy once strong arms hang
nerveless evermore.
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,
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
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,
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.
Go
then, accursed of God, and take thy place
With baleful
memories of the elder time,
With many a wasting pest, and
nameless crime,
And bloody war that thinned the human
race;
With the Black Death, whose way
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.
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,
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
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. |
