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Show 34 * * * * In the sunny Gaudaloupe A dark hull'd vessellay\- Vith a crew who noted never The night-fall or the day. The blossom of the orange * Waved white by every stream, . And tropic leaf, and flower, and bud, \Vere iri the warm sun-beam. And the sky was bright us ever, And the moonlight slept as well, On the palm-trees by the hill-side, And the stream let of the dell. And the glances of the Creole Were still as archly deep, And her smi les as full as ever Of passion and of sleep. But vain were bird and blossom, The green earth and the sky, And the smile of human faces, To the ever darken'd eye; For, amidst a world of beauty, The slaver went abroad, With his ghastly visage written By the awful curse of God ! STANZAS. On the appearance of these Stanzas in the Liberator, it was predicted by Garrison, that' they would ring from l\lainc to the Rocky 1\lountains.' and the prophecy has been fulfilletl. They have been circulated in periodicals, quoted in addre~;sc~ und orations, and scattered broad·cast, over the land, beneath the kneeling slave and motto, 'Am I not a man and a brothc1·'! '-the device of Cowper and the English Abolitionists. In this last form, they ha\'C roused the consciences of slaveholders in New-Orleans-have been held up to a Boston audience by the sophist Gurley, after a fruitless endeavor to create a tumult by one of his strong nppcals to prejudice and se lfishness-and ha\'e been displayed by the noble-souled May before a l\lassachuselts Legislature, as a refutation of the charge of in ce ndiari ~m cast on the Aholilionists by the Legislatures of the South. In witnessing the effect of poetic talent thus applied, we cease to wonder that the words of Fletcher of Saltoun-' Gi\•c me to make the ballads of a nation, and let who will make the laws,' ha\'c passed into a. proverb. 'The despotism which our fathers could not bear in their native country ill expiring, and the sword of justice in her reformed bauds has applied its exterm inating edge to s!.nery. Shall the United Stales-the free United States, which could not bear the bonds of a king, cradle the bondage which a king is aholishing '! Shall n Republic be less free than a l\Iona1·chy '! Shal l we, in the Yigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less encrgelic in righteousness, thnn a kingdom in its age'! '-Dr. Follen'a Addreu. |
