Domestic bliss; thou fairest flower
That erst in Eden grew,
Dear relic of the happy bower,
Our first grand parents knew!
We hail thee in the rugged soil
Of this waste wilderness,
To cheer our way and cheat our toil,
With gleams of happiness.
In thy mild light we travel on,
And smile at toil and pain;
And think no more of Eden gone,
For Eden won again.
Such, Emily, the bliss, the joy
By Heaven bestowed on you;
A husband kind, a lovely boy,
A father fond and true.
Religion adds her cheering beams,
And sanctifies these ties;
And sheds o'er all the brighter gleams,
She borrows from the skies.
But ah! reflect; are all thus blest?
Hath home such charms for all?
Can such delights as these invest
Foul slavery's wretched thrall?
Can those be happy in these ties
Who wear her galling chain?
Or taste the blessed charities
That in the household reign?
Can those be blest, whose hope, whose life,
Hang on a tyrant's nod;
To whom nor husband, child, nor wife
Are known—yea, scarcely God?
Whose ties may all be rudely riven,
At avarice' fell behest;
Whose only hope of home is heaven,
The grave their only rest.
Oh! think of those, the poor, th' oppressed,
In your full hour of bliss;
Nor e'er from prayer and effort rest,
While earth bears woe like this.
O PITY THE SLAVE MOTHER.
Words from the Liberator. Air, Araby's Daughter.
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I pity the slave mother, careworn and weary,
Who sighs as she presses her babe to her breast;
I lament her sad fate, all so hopeless and dreary,
I lament for her woes, and her wrongs unredressed.
O who can imagine her heart's deep emotion,
As she thinks of her children about to be sold;
You may picture the bounds of the rock-girdled ocean,
But the grief of that mother can never be known.
The mildew of slavery has blighted each blossom,
That ever has bloomed in her pathway below;
It has froze every fountain that gushed in her bosom,
And chilled her heart's verdure with pitiless woe:
Her parents, her kindred, all crushed by oppression;
Her husband still doomed in its desert to stay;
No arm to protect from the tyrant's aggression—
She must weep as she treads on her desolate way.
O, slave-mother, hope! see—the nation is shaking!
The arm of the Lord is awake to thy wrong!
The slave-holder's heart now with terror is quaking
Salvation and Mercy to Heaven belong!
Rejoice, O rejoice! for the child thou art rearing,
May one day lift up its unmanacled form,
While hope, to thy heart, like the rain-bow so cheering,
Is born, like the rain-bow, 'mid tempest and storm.