The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1852-01-08
For the National Era.
THE DEATH OF THE SLAVE LEWIS

FOR tno NATIONAL
THE DEATH OF THE SLAVE LEWIS
In the deep sanctuary of sheltering night
Kept by the angels of the stars serene,
The meanost hireling holds his vested right
Mourner, slave culprit lose from thought aud sight
The weight of grief that shall be- or hath been.
Within its walls young lovers tune their strings
And ravished saints breathe alteration deep;
But softly prayer and song unfold their wings,
Lest ev'n the full hearts upward murmurings
Too rudoly touch the silver spell of sleep.
From out that holy realm of night, Shrek
As of soul in Hades rent the veil
OF silence-then prophet seemed to speak,
To anger reused not, " Turn tn unsmitten check +"
But, Blood for blood" answered the dismal wall.
And then heard piteous creature lift
His agonizing ploadings, whore he stood
Bound naked, marked with many bloody rift,
While blows urged out, in torture cries his shrft
To one with drunken fury in his blood.
The brute but logged the harder for his cry;
1t gave the horrid sport keoner zcst
1t is appointed once to man to die;
But what the crimo, the agony say /,
When twenty murders tear one bleeding breast?
They beat him with broad, fat thong It's urged
For all security of life and limb
Brethren, was He by whom mems sins are purged,
Ev'n thus with a broad leather merely scourgod,
Why waste our womanish hearts their throbs on
him?
Blows rained upon him, till his yielding brain
Had fashioned out the tale they wished to learn,
In dreadful Inspiration of his pain,
They left hp, gibbet-wise within his chain, T..
10 soe4.ss J -.Sss-ss 5sSa2a - ...es ~, ,
Ysov ~. nan y, 10 ) ratson hlm, .<s-r
~Who, as men win, forsook .his misery
But while he staid, unless his statement err
Not rest nor healing cravod the sufferer
But, Can you lend me any help to die"
Blind Nature has an instinct to BIO free
Despair is mighty, though her hands be tod;
Howe'er he bowed the head and bent the knee
The action has a dark subiimity)
The black man gathered up his strength, and died
They left thee, Lewis, with thy wounds all warm,
But when they came to heap thy measure 'er.
Free in the letters hung thy passive form
Oh theirs the crime, if in hates widest storm,
Thy soul, unbidden, sought tn eternal shore.
Priests toll us Of the guilt of suicide
Let the word pause upon the untried tongue
They stormed lfe's citadel, -fortifed,
Till the vexed soul fed, poworiess to abide,
And Deaths pale flag of truce aloft was flung
Death was thy champion; meath his icy shield
al Anl,, L., HI A II. 10
While by those wound-mouths never to be sealed,
Thy soul unto the Ever Just appealed,
Cried out to God, Remember what I've borne -
| Where stays avenging Justice? why compel
| Our hearts to seek her in tn abyss below?
| Shuddering eyes glance downwards for a hell,
| Since Judge and Jurys fat fatty fell;
A slave the victim lot the white man CO."
| 1t is no MURDER when unsanctioned force
Wastes poor negros life beneath the thong
In your brave Sonth. Where froer law has course,
man who toys too rudely with his horse
Is held culprit, and acquits the wrong.
| But there must be a hell, as thou shalt know
By all its furies loosed within thy breast.
| Remorso shall feed on thee his hunger slow
Or, art thou for her craving sunk too low,
Spectres of fear shall scare thee from thy rest.
The curse Of Cain shall hunt thy wandering though
To frantic haste to fainting weariness
Lookest thou earthward blood is there unsought;
| Skyward the clouds tn avengng hue have caught,
| And mock, like crimson monsters. thy distress,
Scourging for scourging, but in keener kind,
| And death for death, but in a living grave
While, from tn uneasy torment of thy mind,
| Thou shalt behold and envy, peace-enshrined,
| The placid phantom of thy murdered slave.
Ev'n though thou babble from the mystic book,
And taste the sacred symbols of thy creed.
Let Christs black brother from the altar look
Fsint, faltcr, meath his whitening rebuke-
The heav' My food can poison too, at need.
pause, unwilling further to rehearse
Thy needs, or shut thee from Gods clomency
Rather, I'll weep, and wish thee nothing worse
Than that, returning blessing for thy curse,
Thy victim soul may plead with God for thee,
GIULIANA.