Delaware State journal and statesman., 1866-07-03
From the Atlantic Monthly for July.
THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.
by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.


paced years,
Didst hold thy millions Gettered, and didst
WELD
The scourge that drove the laborer to the
field,
And look with stony eye on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is DER:
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 captiye's cry,
And touched his shackles at the appointed
hour,
And lol they fall, and he whose limbs they
CALLED,
Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.
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 Tie armament.
Fields, where the bondsman's toll
No more shall trench the soil,
Seem now to bask in serener day;
The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the
airs
vi heaven with more caressing soltness play,
Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.
A glory clothes 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 iudgment-seats,
obeyed
Thy mandate, rigid As thy 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 black
dismay,
Choked down, unuttered, the rebelious
thoughts;
While meaner towards, mingling with thy
train,
Proved, from the book of God, thy right tC
reign.
Great as thou vert, and feared from shore
to shore,
The wrath of God o'ertook thee in thy
pride;
Thou sitt'st ghastly shadow; by thy side
Thy once strong arm hangs neryeless ever
more.
And they who quailed but now
Before thy lowering brow
Devote thy memory to scorn and shame,
And scott at the pale, powerless thing
thou art.
And they who ruled in thy imperial name,
Subdued, and standing sullenly apart,
Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign
And shattered at blow the prisoners chain
Well was thy doom deserved; thou didst no
spare
Life's tenderest ties, but cruelty didst par
Husband and wife, and from the mother,
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, a
thy side,
Showed his red hands, nor feared the ven
geance due.
Thou didst SOW earth with crimes, and, lai
and wide,
A harvest of uncounted miseries grew,
Until the measure of thy sins at last
Was full, and then the avenging bolt wal
cast.
Go then, accursed of God, and take thy place
With baleful memories of the elder time,
With many wasting pest, and nameles'
crime,
And bloody war that thinned the human
race;
With the Black Death, whose way
Through wailing cities lay,
Worship of Moloch, tyrannes that built
The Pyramids, and cruel deeds that taugh
To avenge a ancied guilt by deeper guilt
Death at the stake to those that held then
not.
Lo, the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom
0fthe flown ages, part to yield thee room.
l 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 mur
dered lie.
The slave-pen, through whose door
Thy victims pass no more,
Is there, and there shall the grim block re
main
AT which the slave was sold; while at til,
feet
scourges and engines of restraint and pain
Moulder and rust by thine eternal seal.
There, mid the symbols that proclaim III
crimes,
Dwell thou, warning to the coming tilue;
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WHIPPED HIS CHILD TO DEAT1