And Karagwe had only reached the marsh,
When on his track he heard the savage dogs.
He knew the paths and windings many miles,
And even in the darkness found his way,
And gained a covert island, where a hut,
Built by some poor and friendless fugitive,
Afforded shelter and secure abode.
He tarried here until along the hills
The red-lipped whisper of the morning ran.
Then, when he would have ventured from the door,
A large black hound arose, and licked his hand.
The dog was Dalton Earl's; he started back.
The dream of freedom nourished many years
Seemed withering, and for the moment lost.
For long the slave had thought of liberty,
And worshipped her, as in that elder time
A tyrant's subjects worshipped, praying her
That she would not delay, but hasten forth,
And bridge the hated gulf 'twixt rich and poor,
By freeing all the mass from ignorance,
By lifting up the worthy of the earth,
And making knowledge paramount to wealth.
III.
O strange, that in our age, and in a land
Where liberty was laid the corner-stone,
A slave, perforce, should be obliged to dream,
And dote on freedom, like the poor oppressed
Who lived and hoped two thousand years ago!
And slavery to this slave was like a fruit—
A bitter and a hateful fruit to taste—
The fruit of error and of ignorance,
Made rank with superstition and with crime.
Yet though the fruit was bitter to the core,
Many there were who died for love of it.
O, many they who listen through long nights
To hear a footstep that will never come.
There is not a flower along the border blown,
From Lookout Mountain to the Chesapeake,
But has in it the blood of North and South.
IV.
Karagwe went back, and on a paper wrote,—
"Your dog has harmed me not, and why should you,
That I have never wronged, plot harm to me?
You made me slave, you sold away my bride,
And now you set your hounds upon my track,
Because I seek the freedom that is mine.
Though you have wronged me, still I do you good,
For in an oak, the largest of the grove,
Upon the cotton-field of Richard Wain,
Hid in a hollow near the second limb,
Is the lost deed that holds your house and lands."
The paper fastened round the hound's strong neck,
The negro bade him go, and forth he went;
And Earl read what the slave had written down,
And that day found the deed hid in the tree,
And that day ceased pursuing any more.
For two long weeks the negro in the swamps
Wandered toward the North, living at times
On berries and on fruit. Above him leaned
The tall trees, bower-like 'neath their wrestling arms;
Beneath, the murky waters, black as death,
Stirred only to the plunge of venomed things.
The long, seared grasses clung to every bough
Whose trailing robe hung near the sluggish lymph.
And here and there, among the savage moss,
Blossomed alone some snowy gold-spired flower,
Like God's own church found in a heathen land.
The birds o'erhead, that, plumaged like the morn,
Caroled their sweetness, sang the holy psalms.