Sunbury American. [volume] (Sunbury, Pa.) 1848-1879, 1866-07-21
? @ E I | C A L.
From the Atlantic Monthly, for July.l
THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.

by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. ...
0 thou great Wrong that, through the slow paced
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst WELD
The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
And looked 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 captives cry,
And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,
And 10 they fall and he whose limbs they CALLED
Stands in his native manhood, disenthrallcd.
shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
Ten thousand hamets swell the hymn of thanks
Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
Send up hosannas to the armament
Fields, where the bondman's toll
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 crowns the land from sea to sea,
For the great land and all its coasts are free.
Within that land vert thou enthroned of late,
And they by whom the nations 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 towards, mingled 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 sittst ghastly shadow;
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 scof at the pale poworless thing thou art
And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
Subdued and standing sullenly apart,
Scowl at the hands that overthrow thy reign,
And shattered at blow the prisoners chain
Well was thy doom deserved thou didst not spare
Life's tenderest ties, but cruelty didst part
Husband and wife, and from the mothers heart
Did wrest her children deaf to shrek and prayer
Thy inner lair became
The haunt of guilty shame;
Thy lash dropped blood the murderer at thy side
Showed his red hands, feared the vengeance due
Thou didst SOW earth with crimes and, far and wide
A harvest of uncounted miserics grew,
Until the measure of thy sins at last
Was full and then the avengng bolt was cast
Go, then accursed of God, and take thv place
With baleful memories of the elder time,
with many 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 crecds that taught
10 avenge 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.
| see the better years that hasten by,
Garry thee back into the shadowy past,
m Where, in the dusty spaces, void and vast,
The graves of those with whom thou hast murdered
lie,
The slave-pen through whose door
Thy victims pass more,
Is there, and there shall the grim block remain