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To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat

circling camps;

They have builded him an altar in the evening

dews and damps;

I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps :

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel :

"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal ;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
Weeps, when she sees inflicted on a beast.
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned.
No; dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home. Then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall That parts us are emancipate and loosed.

never call retreat;

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs He is sifting out the hearts of men before his Receive our air, that moment they are free;

judgment-seat:

They touch our country, and their shackles fall.

O, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud

my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across
the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you

and me;

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FROM "THE TIMEPIECE."

O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdúrate heart;
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax,
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not colored like his own, and, having power

And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire; that, where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

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POEMS OF THE

SEA

+

This is love, who, deaf to prayers,
Floods with blessing unawares.
Draw, if then cauft, the mystic live
Severing rightly his from themes

Which is human, which divine.

Rev. Emerson.

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