Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1866-07-13


Thou great Wrong, that, through the slor
paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettercd, and didst wiel,
The seourge that drove the labnrer to the field
And look with stony eye on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is Ger;
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 heur
And lo they fall, and he whose limbs they gailet
Stands in his native manhood, disenthrallcd.
A shout Of 10y from the redeemed is sent;
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymns of Thanks
Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
Send up hosannahs to the armament,
Fields, where the bondinan's toll
No more shall trench the SOIL
Seem now to bask in a serener day;
The meadow birds sing sweeter, and the airs
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 all its coasts are free.
Within that land vert thou enthroned of late,
And they by whom the nation'sla were made
And they who filed its judgment-seats, obeyed
Thy mandate, rigid as the win 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,
Shrauk 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 thou vert, and feared from shore to shore
The wrath of COP s'ertook thee in thy pride;
Thou sittst ghastly shadow; by thy side
Thy once strong arms hang nerveless eyermore.
And they who quailed but now
Before thy lowering brow
Devote thy memory to seorn and shame.
And scott at the pale, pouerless thing thou art,
And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
Snbdued, and standing sullenly apart
ScOwl at the hands that overthrow thy reign,
And shattered at blow tho 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
Didst Wrest erchildren 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, nor feared the vengeance
due.
Thou didst sew earth with crimes, and, far and
A harvest of uncounted miseries grew,
Until the measure of thy sins at last
Was full, and then the aYenging bolt was cast.
Go then, accursed of COP, and take thy place
With baleful memories of the older 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 MoLooH, tyrants that built
The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught
To aYengeNa fancied guilt by deeper guilt
Death at the stake to those that held them not,
Lo, the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom
thp IN iald thpar
| 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 slaye-pen, through whose door
Thy victims pass no more,
Is there, and there shall the grim block remain
At which the slave sold; while at thy feet
Seourges and engines of restraint and pain
Molder and rust by thine eternal seat,
There, mid the symbols that proclaim thy crimes,
Dwell thou, warning to the coming times.