Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1847-01-15
P0ETRY Y.
The Days that are Gone.
ny CHARLES MAcKAY.

'For at least a thousand years, the whole
eountTy seemed in a long and sunny dream.
Every man had his little plot, or
could enclose 1t for a small annual acknowl-
edgement, and the rural race lived on with
little exettion and no care.'-TVm. H0uiW in
Douglas JerrcId's Shilling Magazine.
Who is it that mourns for the days that are
gone,
When a noble could do as he liked with his
ownl
When his serfs, with their burdens well fl.
led on their backs,
Never dared to complain Of the weight Of a
taxi
When his word was a statute, his nod was a
law,
And for aught but his order he cared not a
When each had his dungeon and racks for
the poor,
And a gibbet to hang a refractory boori
They were days when a man with a Thought
in his pate,
Was a man that was born for the popular
hate
And if 'twere a thought that was good for
his kind,
The man was too vile to be left unconfned
The days when obedience in rirht or in
wrong,
Was always the sermon and always the song;
When the People, like cattle, were pounded
or driven,
And to scourge them was thought a Kings
license from Heaven.
They were days when the Sword settled cues
tons Of right,
And talsehood was first to monopolize might;
When The fighter Of battles was always ador-
ed,
And the greater the tyrant, the dearer the
lord
When the King, who by myriads, could num-
Der his stain, l
Was considered by far the most worthy to t
reign; c
When the fate of the multitude hung on his q
breath l
A god in his life and a saint in his death. I
They were days when the headsman was al t
ways prepared "
The block ever ready-ihe axe ever barred ; II
When a corr Sc On The gibbet aye swung to 4
And the FIRE at the stake never smouldered Il
too low, h
When famine and ago made a woman a
witch. II
To be roasted alive, or be drowned in a ditch; a
When difference of creed was the vilest of C
crime, e
And martyrs were burned half a score a, a I
time. c
They were days when the gallows stood black
in the way,
The larger the town the more plentiful they
When Law never dreamed it was good to re-
lent,
Or thought it less wisdom to kill than pre-
vent;
When Justice herself, taking law for her
guide,
Was never appeased till a victim had died
And the stealer of sheep, and the slayer of
Were strung up together again and again.
They were days when the Crowd had no
freedom of speech,
And reading and writing were out of its reach;
When Ignorance, stolid and dense, was its
doom,
And Bigotry swathed it from cradle to tomb,
When the Few thought The Many mere work
ers for them,
To use them, and when they had used, 10
conlemR;
And the Many, poor fools, thought the treat
ment their due,
anu CIdWleu III tuo uuSI dt tile Icet OF the
Few.
No-the Present, though clouds Ger her coun-
tenance roll,
Has a light in her eyes, and a hope in her
soul.
And we are too wise, like the Bigots to
mourn,
For the darkness of days that shall never re-
Worn out and extinct, may their history
serve
AS a beacon TO warn US whene'er we would
swerve;
To shun the Oppression, the Folly and Crime
That blac Ken the page of the Record OF Fine.
Their Chivalry fghtened the gloom it is true,
And Honor and Loyalty dwelt with the Few;
But small was the light, and of little avail,
Compared With The blaze OF our Press and
our Rail.
Success to that blaze! May it shine over
all,
Till Ignorance learn with what grace she
may fall,
And fly from the world with the sorrow she
wrought,
And leave it to Virtue and Freedom Of
Thought.
A Picture.
A Boston correspondent of the Pa. Free