FRED DOUGLASS AT THE GOWDEN[A] GATE.
BY REV. J. E. RANKIN, D.D.
Fred Douglass, doffed this mortal state,
Stood waitin’ at the Gowden Gate,
Inquirin’ for St. Peter:
He heard within that gran’ auld hymn,
Like distant waters, breakin’ dim,
Old Hundred, in Long Meter.
He knocked, and knocked, and waitin’ stood
While white folks, a great multitude,
Went in, without cessation:
He thought he heard in undertone:
“This is the white folks’ gate, alone!”
Distract, in consternation.
They hurried through, without a glance—
He was to them na circumstance—
Upon the very canter:
He saw their backs were maistly labeled,
For places in advance they’d cabled,
And hailed doon from Atlanta.
At length, there came one martyr, Glenn,
And pointed to an auld slave-pen,
Fitted for nigger-quarters:
It stood against the city-walls,
Arranged within with auld-time stalls,
Just as before they fought us.
“Your name, I think, is Douglass, Sir,
An’ nigger poisons in you stir,
O hell itsel’ th’ infection!
Ten thousand æons you must wait,
Till you are purged withoot the gate;—
Submit, then, to inspection.
“For, Heaven no place, as well as earth,
Can find for those o’ nigger birth,
For Master or for Madam:
You married, too, on earth a white;—
And that deserves a deeper night,
Than first befell auld Adam!”
And sae the Gowden Gate was slammed,
And in yon pen was Douglass crammed,
For doom sae unrelaxin’:
Till he had passed from state to state,
Been bleached all white, from heel to pate,
An’ made an Anglo-Saxon!