re perishing for food,
When lo! in pitying mood,
Our kindly rulers gave
The fat fluid of the slave,
While our corn filled the manger
Of the war-horse of the stranger!

God of mercy! must this last?
Is this land preordained,
For the present and the past
And the future, to be chained,--
To be ravaged, to be drained,
To be robbed, to be spoiled,
To be hushed, to be whipt,
Its soaring pinions clipt,
And its every effort foiled?

Do our numbers multiply
But to perish and to die?
Is this all our destiny below,--
That our bodies, as they rot,
May fertilize the spot
Where the harvests of the stranger grow?
If this be, indeed, our fate,
Far, far better now, though late,
That we seek some other land and try some other zone;
The coldest, bleakest shore
Will surely yield us more
Than the storehouse of the stranger that we dare not call our own.

Kindly brothers of the West,
Who from Liberty's full breast
Have fed us, who are orphans beneath a step-dame's frown,
Behold our happy state,
And weep your wretched fate
That you share not in the splendors of our empire and our crown!

Kindly brothers of the East,--
Thou great tiaraed priest,
Thou sanctified Rienzi of Rome and of the earth,--
Or thou who bear'st control
Over golden Istambol,
Who felt for our misfortunes and helped us in our dearth,--

Turn here your wondering eyes,
Call your wisest of the wise,
Your muftis and your ministers, your men of deepest lore;
Let the sagest of your sages
Ope our island's mystic pages,
And explain unto your highness the wonders of our shore.

A fruitful, teeming soil,
Where the patient peasants toil
Beneath the summer's sun and the watery winter sky;
Where they tend the golden grain
Till it bends upon the plain,
Then reap it for the stranger, and turn aside to die;

Where they watch their flocks increase,
And store the snowy fleece
Till they send it to their masters to be woven o'er the waves;
Where, having sent their meat
For the foreigner to eat,
Their mission is fulfilled, and they creep into their graves.

'Tis for this they are dying where the golden corn is growing,
'Tis for this they are dying where the crowded herds are lowing,
'Tis for this they are dying where the streams of life are flowing,
And they perish of the plague where th