A winter sunshine, still and bright,
The Blue Hills bathed with golden light,
And earth was smiling to the sky,
When calmly he went forth to die.
Infernal passions festered there,
Where peaceful Nature looked so fair;
And fiercely, in the morning sun,
Flashed glitt'ring bayonet and gun.
The old man met no friendly eye,
When last he looked on earth and sky;
But one small child, with timid air,
Was gazing on his hoary hair.
As that dark brow to his upturned,
The tender heart within him yearned;
And, fondly stooping o'er her face,
He kissed her for her injured race.
The little one she knew not why
That kind old man went forth to die;
Nor why, 'mid all that pomp and stir,
He stooped to give a kiss to her.
But Jesus smiled that sight to see,
And said, "He did it unto me."
The golden harps then sweetly rung,
And this the song the angels sung:
"Who loves the poor doth love the Lord;
Earth cannot dim thy bright reward:
We hover o'er yon gallows high,
And wait to bear thee to the sky."
John Brown, on his way to the scaffold, stooped to take up a slave-child. That closing example was the legacy of the dying man to his country. That benediction we must continue and fulfil. In this new order, equality, long postponed, shall become the master-principle of our system, and the very frontispiece of our Constitution.—Hon. Charles Sumner.