, under the direction of one of
the officers, gave a series of concerts in the Northern States, for the
purpose of establishing the college on a firmer financial foundation.
Their hymns and songs, mostly in a minor key, touched the hearts of the
people, and were received as peculiarly expressive of a race delivered
from bondage.
VOICE of a people suffering long,
The pathos of their mournful song,
The sorrow of their night of wrong!
Their cry like that which Israel gave,
A prayer for one to guide and save,
Like Moses by the Red Sea's wave!
The stern accord her timbrel lent
To Miriam's note of triumph sent
O'er Egypt's sunken armament!
The tramp that startled camp and town,
And shook the walls of slavery down,
The spectral march of old John Brown!
The storm that swept through battle-days,
The triumph after long delays,
The bondmen giving God the praise!
Voice of a ransomed race, sing on
Till Freedom's every right is won,
And slavery's every wrong undone
1880.
GARRISON.
The earliest poem in this division was my youthful tribute to the great
reformer when himself a young man he was first sounding his trumpet in
Essex County. I close with the verses inscribed to him at the end of his
earthly career, May 24, 1879. My poetical service in the cause of
freedom is thus almost synchronous with his life of devotion to the
same cause.
THE storm and peril overpast,
The hounding hatred shamed and still,
Go, soul of freedom! take at last
The place which thou alone canst fill.
Confirm the lesson taught of old--
Life saved for self is lost, while they
Who lose it in His service hold
The lease of God's eternal day.
Not for thyself, but for the slave
Thy words of thunder shook the world;
No selfish griefs or hatred gave
The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.
From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew
We heard a tender under song;
Thy very wrath from pity grew,
From love of man thy hate of wrong.
Now past and present are as one;
The life below is life above;
Thy mortal years have but begun
Thy immortality of love.
With somewhat of thy lofty faith
We lay thy outworn garment by,
Give death but what belongs to death,
And life the life that cannot die!
Not for a soul like
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