To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey. Lands intersected by a narrow frith Abhor each other. Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys; Like kindred drops been mingled into one. And, worse than all, and most to be deplored As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
They have builded him an altar in the evening
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps :
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel :
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal ;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."
With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart, Then what is man? And what man, seeing this, Weeps, when she sees inflicted on a beast. And having human feelings, does not blush, And hang his head, to think himself a man? I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earned. No; dear as freedom is, and in my heart's Just estimation prized above all price, I had much rather be myself the slave, And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. We have no slaves at home. Then why abroad? And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall That parts us are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs He is sifting out the hearts of men before his Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
O, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you
FROM "THE TIMEPIECE."
O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumor of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more! My ear is pained, My soul is sick, with every day's report Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. There is no flesh in man's obdúrate heart; It does not feel for man; the natural bond Of brotherhood is severed as the flax, That falls asunder at the touch of fire. He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own, and, having power
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then, And let it circulate through every vein Of all your empire; that, where Britain's power Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.
This is love, who, deaf to prayers, Floods with blessing unawares. Draw, if then cauft, the mystic live Severing rightly his from themes
Which is human, which divine.
Rev. Emerson.
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