Bradford reporter. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1844-1884, 1866-06-28

81 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Thou great Wrong that, through the slow-paced
years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered and didst WELD
The scourge that drove the laborer to the field
And look with stony eyes 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,
Longsuhering, had 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, disenthralled
shout of Joy from the redeemed is sent,
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks
Our rivers roll exuIting 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.
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 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,
Chobed down, unuttered. the rebellous 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 a 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 scorn and shame,
And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art.
And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
Subdued, and standing sullenly apart,
Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign,
And shattered at a blow the prisoners chain.
Well was thy doom deserved thou didst not spare
Lies tenderest ties, but cruelty didst part
Husband and wife, and from the mothers heart
Thy inner lair became
The haunt oi guilty shame;
Thy lash dropped blood the murderer, at thy side,
Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance
due
Thou ddst sow earth with crimes, and, far and
wide
Aharvest Of uncoanted miseries, grew
Until the measure of thy sins at last
Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast
60 then, accursed of God, and take thy place
With baletul memories of the elder time,
With many wasting pest, and nameless crime,
And bloody 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 creeds that taught
10 ayen8e a tancied guilt by deeper guilt
Death at the stake to those that hold them not.
H. the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom
vi the flown ages, part to yield thee room.
see the better years that hasten by,
Garry thee back into that shadowy past,
Where, in the dusty spaces void and vast,
The graves of those whom thou kastmurdered lie
The slave-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
Ncourges and engines of restraint and pain
AIolder and rust by thine eternal seat.
There mid the symbols that proclaim thy crimes
Dwell thou, a warning to the coming times.