The Sentence of John L. Brown

Oh, from the fields of cane,From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cell;From the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell,And coffle's weary chain;Hoarse, horrible, and strong,Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,Filling the arches of the hollow sky,How long, O God, how long?

Ho! thou who seekest late and longA License from the Holy BookFor brutal lust and fiendish wrong,Man of the Pulpit, look!Lift up those cold and atheist eyes,This ripe fruit of thy teaching see;And tell us how to heaven will riseThe incense of this sacrifice--This blossom of the gallows tree!

Search out for slavery's hour of needSome fitting text of sacred writ;Give heaven the credit of a deedWhich shames the nether pit.Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto HimWhose truth is on thy lips a lie;Ask that His bright winged cherubimMay bend around that scaffold grimTo guard and bless and sanctify.

O champion of the people's causeSuspend thy loud and vain rebukeOf foreign wrong and Old World's laws,Man of the Senate, look!Was this the promise of the free,The great hope of our early time,That slavery's poison vine should beUpborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed treeO'erclustered with such fruits of crime?

Send out the summons East and West,And South and North, let all be thereWhere he who pitied the oppressedSwings out in sun and air.Let not a Democratic handThe grisly hangman's task refuse;There let each loyal patriot stand,Awaiting slavery's command,To twist the rope and draw the noose!

But vain is irony--unmeetIts cold rebuke for deeds which startIn fiery and indignant beatThe pulses of the heart.Leave studied wit and guarded phraseFor those who think but do not feel;Let men speak out in words which raiseWhere'er they fall, an answering blazeLike flints which strike the fire from steel.

Still let a mousing priesthood plyTheir garbled text and gloss of sin,And make the lettered scroll denyIts living soul within:Still let the place-fed, titled knavePlead robbery's right with purchased lips,And tell us that our fathers gaveFor Freedom's pedestal, a slave,The frieze and moulding, chains and whips!

But ye who own that Higher LawWhose tablets in the heart are set,Speak out in words of power and aweThat God is living yet!Breathe forth once more those tones sublimeWhich thrilled the burdened prophet's lyre,And in a dark and evil timeSmote down on Israel's fast of crimeAnd gift of blood, a rain of fire!

Oh, not for us the graceful layTo whose soft measures lightly moveThe footsteps of the faun and fay,O'er-locked by mirth and love!But such a stern and startling strainAs Britain's hunted bards flung downFrom Snowden to the conquered plain,Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain,On trampled field and smoking town.

By Liberty's dishonored name,By man's lost hope and failing trust,By words and deeds which bow with shameOur foreheads to the dust,By the exulting strangers' sneer,Borne to us from the Old World's thrones,And by their victims' grief who hear,In sunless mines and dungeons drear,How Freedom's land her faith disowns!

Speak out in acts. The time for wordsHas passed, and deeds suffice alone;In vain against the clang of swordsThe wailing pipe is blown!Act, act in God's name, while ye may!Smite from the church her leprous limb!Throw open to the light of dayThe bondman's cell, and break awayThe chains the state has bound on him!

Ho! every true and living soul,To Freedom's perilled altar bearThe Freeman's and the Christian's wholeTongue, pen, and vote, and prayer!One last, great battle for the right--One short, sharp struggle to be free!To do is to succeed--our fightIs waged in Heaven's approving sight;The smile of God is Victory.