The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1866-07-11
POETRY.
THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.

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~D~Ooo~~o-~-~~~O~~O~~
THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.
by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
o Thou great Wrong, that, through the slow
paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and ddst
wield
The SC urge that drove the laborer 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-sufering hath heard the captive's cry,
And touched his shackles at the appointed
hour,
And 10! they fall, and he whose limbs they
galed
Stands in his native manhood, discnthrallcd.
A shout Of joy from the redeemed is sent,
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of
thanks,
Our rivers roll exulting and their banks
Send up hosannas to the armament.
Fields, where the bondman toll
No more shall trench the soil,
Seem now to bask in serener day;
The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the air
Of Heaven with more caressng softness play,
We coming man to liberty like theirs,
glory clothes the land from sea to sea,
For the great land and oil its coasts are tree
Within that land vert thou enthroned of late,
And they by whom the nations Laws were
made,
And they who filled its judgment seats, obey
Thy mandate, rigid as the will Of fate.
Fierce men st thy right hand.
With gesture of command,
Gave forth the word that none might dare
gainssy;
And grave and reverend ones, who love thee
not,
Shrank from thy presence, and in blank dig
may
Choked down, unuttered, the rcbelious
thought;
While meancr towards mingled with thy train,
Proved, from the book Of God, thy right to
reign.
Great rs thou vert, and feared from shore to
shore,
The wrath of God o'ertook thee in thy pride;
Thou s,'st ghastly shallow; by thy side
Thy once strong arms hang ncrveless eyermorc,
And they who quaileI but now
Before thy lowering brow
Devote thy memory to scorn and shamc,
Aud scott at the pale, powcrlcss thing thou
art,
And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
Subduod and standing sullcnly apart,
Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign,
And shattered at blow the prisoners chain.
Well was thy doom deserved thou dilst n t
spare
Life's tendcrest ties, but cruelty dilst part
Husband and wife and from the mothers
heart
Didst 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, nor feared the ven.
gaance due.
Thou didst SOW earth with crimc:, and far and
wide,
harvest of uncountcl iniserics grew,
ontil the measure Of thy sins at last
Was full, and then the avcnging bolt was cast
Go then ac ursed of God, and take thy place
with baleful memories of the elder time,
Win many wasting pest, and namelcss
crime
And bio dy war that thinned the human race /;
tn the Black Death, whose way
Through waing cities lay
Worship of Noloch, tyrannies that built
The pyramids and cruel crecds that taught
10 avehge fnciel 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 loom.
] see the better years that hasten by,
Carry thee back into that shaiowy pat,
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 was sold while at thy feet
Scourges and engin of restraint and pain
Mouldcr and rust by thine eternal seat
There. mid the symbols that proclaim thy
crimes
Dwell thou, warning to the coming times.
"A lantic far Ju'y.