THE PINE-TREE.
Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Resolves of Stephen C. Phillips had been rejected by the Whig Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 1846.
LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State's
rusted shield,
Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner's
tattered field.
Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles
round the board,
Answering England's royal missive with a firm,
"Thus saith the Lord!"
Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle
in array!
What the fathers did of old time we their sons
must do to-day.
Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltry
pedler cries;
Shall the good State sink her honor that your
gambling stocks may rise?
Would ye barter man for cotton? That your
gains may sum up higher,
Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our children
through the fire?
Is the dollar only real? God and truth and right
a dream?
Weighed against your lying ledgers must our manhood
kick the beam?
O my God! for that free spirit, which of old in
Boston town
Smote the Province House with terror, struck the
crest of Andros down!
For another strong-voiced Adams in the city's
streets to cry,
"Up for God and Massachusetts! Set your feet
on Mammon's lie!
Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton's
latest pound,
But in Heaven's name keep your honor, keep the
heart o' the Bay State sound!"
Where's the man for Massachusetts! Where's
the voice to speak her free?
Where's the hand to light up bonfires from her
mountains to the sea?
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she dumb
in her despair?
Has she none to break the silence? Has she none
to do and dare?
O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her
rusted shield,
And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner's
tattered field
1840.
TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN.
John C. Calhoun, who had strongly urged the extension of slave territory by the annexation of Texas, even if it should involve a war with England, was unwilling to promote the acquisition of Oregon, which would enlarge the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded as an excuse the peril of foreign complications which he had defied when the interests of slavery were involved.
Is this thy voice whose treble notes of fear
Wail in the wind? And dost thou shake to hear,
Actieon-like, the bay of thine own hounds,
Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their bounds?
Sore-baffled statesman! when thy eager hand,
With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack,
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land,
Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling back,
These dogs of thine might snuff on Slavery's track?
Where's now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue,
Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' the Senate flung,
O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan,
Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man?
How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting,
And pointing to the lurid heaven afar,
Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting,
Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star!
The Fates are just; they give us but our own;
Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.
There is an Eastern story, not unknown,
Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skill
Called demons up his water-jars to fill;
Deftly and silently, they did his will,
But, when the task was done, kept pouring still.
In vain with spell and charm the wizard wrought,
Faster and faster were the buckets brought,
Higher and higher rose the flood around,
Till the fiends clapped their hands above their master drowned
So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee,
For God still overrules man's schemes, and takes
Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes
The wrath of man to praise Him. It may be,
That the roused spirits of Democracy
May leave to freer States the same wide door
Through which thy slave-cursed Texas entered in,
From out the blood and fire, the wrong and sin,
Of the stormed-city and the ghastly plain,
Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain,
The myriad-handed pioneer may pour,
And the wild West with the roused North combine
And heave the engineer of evil with his mine.
1846.
AT WASHINGTON.
Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington, in the 12th month of 1845.