章节正文
You can mourn o'er the exile of Russia
From kindred and friends doomed to roam.
You can pity the men who have woven
From passion and appetite chains
To coil with a terrible tension
Around their heartstrings and brains.
You can sorrow o'er little children
Disinherited from their birth,
The wee waifs and toddlers neglected,
Robbed of sunshine, music and mirth.
For beasts you have gentle compassion;
Your mercy and pity they share.
For the wretched, outcast and fallen
You have tenderness, love and care.
AN APPEAL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN. 73
But hark! from our Southland are floating
Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain,
And women heart-stricken are weeping
Over their tortured and their slain.
On their brows the sun has left traces;
Shrink not from their sorrow in scorn.
When they entered the threshold of being
The children of a King were born.
Each comes as a guest to the table
The hand of our God has outspread,
To fountains that ever leap upward,
To share in the soil we all tread.
When ye plead for the wrecked and fallen,
The exile from far-distant shores,
Remember that men are still wasting
Life's crimson around your own doors.
Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters,
Just a plea, a prayer or a tear,
For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows
Of agony, hatred and fear?
Men may tread down the poor and lowly,
May crush them in anger and hate,
74 AN APPEAL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN.
But surely the mills of God's justice
Will grind out the grist of their fate.
Oh, people sin-laden and guilty,
So lusty and proud in your prime,
The sharp sickles of God's retribution
Will gather your harvest of crime.
Weep not, oh my well-sheltered sisters,
Weep not for the Negro alone,
But weep for your sons who must gather
The crops which their fathers have sown.
Go read on the tombstones of nations
Of chieftains who masterful trod,
The sentence which time has engraven,
That they had forgotten their God.
'Tis the judgment of God that men reap
The tares which in madness they sow,
Sorrow follows the footsteps of crime,
And Sin is the consort of Woe.
THEN AND NOW. 75
THEN AND NOW.
"Build me a nation," said the Lord.
The distant nations heard the word,
Build me a nation true and strong,
Bar out the old world's hate and wrong;
For men had traced with blood and tears
The trail of weary wasting years,
And torn and bleeding martyrs trod
Through fire and torture up to God.
While in the hollow of his hand
God hid the secret of our land,
Men warred against their fiercest foes,
And kingdoms fell and empires rose,
Till, weary of the old world strife,
Men sought for broader, freer life,
And plunged into the ocean's foam
To find another, better home.
And, like a vision fair and bright
The new world broke upon their sight.
Men grasped the prize, grew proud and strong,
And cursed the land with crime and wrong.
The Indian stood despoiled of lands,
The Negro bound with servile bands,
Oppressed through weary years of toil,
His blood and tears bedewed the soil.
76 THEN AND NOW.
Then God arose in dreadful wrath,
And judgment streamed around his path;
His hand the captive's fetters broke,
His lightnings shattered every yoke.
As Israel through the Red sea trod,
Led by the mighty hand of God,
They passed to freedom through a flood,
Whose every wave and surge was blood.
And slavery, with its crime and shame,
Went down in wrath and blood and flame
The land was billowed-o'er with graves
Where men had lived and died as slaves.
Four and thirty years--what change since
then!
Beings once chattles now are men;
Over the gloom of slavery's night,
Has flashed the dawn of freedom's light.
To-day no mother with anguish wild
Kneels and implores that her darling child
Shall not be torn from her bleeding heart,
With its quivering tendrils rent apart.
The father may soothe his child to sleep,
And watch his slumbers calm and deep.
No tyrant's tread will disturb his rest
Where freedom dwells as a welcome guest.
THEN AND NOW. 77
His walls may be bare of pictured grace,
His fireside the lowliest place;
But the wife and children sheltered there
Are his to defend and guard with care.
Where haughty tyrants once bore rule
Are ballot-box and public school.
The old slave-pen of former days
Gives place to fanes of prayer and praise.
To-night we would bring our meed of praise
To noble friends of darker days;
The men and women crowned with light,
The true and tried in our gloomy night.
To Lundy, whose heart was early stirred
To speak for freedom an earnest word;
To Garrison, valiant, true and strong,
Whose face was as flint against our wrong.
And Phillips, the peerless, grand and brave,
A tower of strength to the outcast slave.
Earth has no marble too pure and white
To enrol his name in golden light.
Our Douglass, too, with his massive brain,
Who plead our cause with his broken chain,
And helped to hurl from his bloody seat
The curse that writhed and died at his feet.
78 THEN AND NOW.
And Governor Andrew, who, looking back,
Saw none he despised, though poor and black;
And Harriet Beecher, whose glowing pen
Corroded the chains of fettered men.
To-night with greenest laurels we'll crown
North Elba's grave where sleeps John Brown,
Who made the gallows an altar high,
And showed how a brave old man could die.
And Lincoln, our martyred President,
Who returned to his God with chains he had rent.*
And Sumner, amid death's icy chill,
Leaving to Hoar his Civil Rights Bill.
And let us remember old underground,
With all her passengers northward bound,
The train that ran till it ceased to pay,
With all her dividends given away.
Nor let it be said that we have forgot
The women who stood with Lucretia Mott;
Nor her who to the world was known
By the simple name of Lucy stone.
A tribute unto a host of others
Who knew that men though black were
brothers,
Who battled against our nation's sin,
Whose graves are thick whose ranks are thin.
Oh, people chastened in the fire,
To nobler, grander things aspire;
MACEO. 79
In the new era of your life,
Bring love for hate, and peace for strife;
Upon your hearts this vow record
That ye will build unto the Lord
A nobler future, true and grand,
To strengthen, crown and bless the land.
A higher freedom ye may gain
Than that which comes from a riven chain;
Freedom your native land to bless
With peace, and love and righteousness,
As dreams that are past, a tale all told,
Are the days when men were bought and sold;
Now God be praised from sea to sea,
Our flag floats o'er a country free.
MACEO.
Maceo dead! a thrill of sorrow
Through our hearts in sadness ran
When we felt in one sad hour
That the world had lost a man.
He had clasped unto his bosom
The sad fortunes of his land--
Held the cause for which he perished
With a firm, unfaltering hand.
80 MACEO.
On his lips the name of freedom
Fainted with his latest breath.
Cuba Libre was his watchword
Passing through the gates of death.
With the light of God around us,
Why this agony and strife?
With the cross of Christ before us,
Why this fearful waste of life?
Must the pathway unto freedom
Ever mark a crimson line,
And the eyes of wayward mortals
Always close to light divine?
Must the hearts of fearless valor
Fail 'mid crime and cruel wrong,
When the world has read of heroes
From kindred and friends doomed to roam.
You can pity the men who have woven
From passion and appetite chains
To coil with a terrible tension
Around their heartstrings and brains.
You can sorrow o'er little children
Disinherited from their birth,
The wee waifs and toddlers neglected,
Robbed of sunshine, music and mirth.
For beasts you have gentle compassion;
Your mercy and pity they share.
For the wretched, outcast and fallen
You have tenderness, love and care.
AN APPEAL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN. 73
But hark! from our Southland are floating
Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain,
And women heart-stricken are weeping
Over their tortured and their slain.
On their brows the sun has left traces;
Shrink not from their sorrow in scorn.
When they entered the threshold of being
The children of a King were born.
Each comes as a guest to the table
The hand of our God has outspread,
To fountains that ever leap upward,
To share in the soil we all tread.
When ye plead for the wrecked and fallen,
The exile from far-distant shores,
Remember that men are still wasting
Life's crimson around your own doors.
Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters,
Just a plea, a prayer or a tear,
For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows
Of agony, hatred and fear?
Men may tread down the poor and lowly,
May crush them in anger and hate,
74 AN APPEAL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN.
But surely the mills of God's justice
Will grind out the grist of their fate.
Oh, people sin-laden and guilty,
So lusty and proud in your prime,
The sharp sickles of God's retribution
Will gather your harvest of crime.
Weep not, oh my well-sheltered sisters,
Weep not for the Negro alone,
But weep for your sons who must gather
The crops which their fathers have sown.
Go read on the tombstones of nations
Of chieftains who masterful trod,
The sentence which time has engraven,
That they had forgotten their God.
'Tis the judgment of God that men reap
The tares which in madness they sow,
Sorrow follows the footsteps of crime,
And Sin is the consort of Woe.
THEN AND NOW. 75
THEN AND NOW.
"Build me a nation," said the Lord.
The distant nations heard the word,
Build me a nation true and strong,
Bar out the old world's hate and wrong;
For men had traced with blood and tears
The trail of weary wasting years,
And torn and bleeding martyrs trod
Through fire and torture up to God.
While in the hollow of his hand
God hid the secret of our land,
Men warred against their fiercest foes,
And kingdoms fell and empires rose,
Till, weary of the old world strife,
Men sought for broader, freer life,
And plunged into the ocean's foam
To find another, better home.
And, like a vision fair and bright
The new world broke upon their sight.
Men grasped the prize, grew proud and strong,
And cursed the land with crime and wrong.
The Indian stood despoiled of lands,
The Negro bound with servile bands,
Oppressed through weary years of toil,
His blood and tears bedewed the soil.
76 THEN AND NOW.
Then God arose in dreadful wrath,
And judgment streamed around his path;
His hand the captive's fetters broke,
His lightnings shattered every yoke.
As Israel through the Red sea trod,
Led by the mighty hand of God,
They passed to freedom through a flood,
Whose every wave and surge was blood.
And slavery, with its crime and shame,
Went down in wrath and blood and flame
The land was billowed-o'er with graves
Where men had lived and died as slaves.
Four and thirty years--what change since
then!
Beings once chattles now are men;
Over the gloom of slavery's night,
Has flashed the dawn of freedom's light.
To-day no mother with anguish wild
Kneels and implores that her darling child
Shall not be torn from her bleeding heart,
With its quivering tendrils rent apart.
The father may soothe his child to sleep,
And watch his slumbers calm and deep.
No tyrant's tread will disturb his rest
Where freedom dwells as a welcome guest.
THEN AND NOW. 77
His walls may be bare of pictured grace,
His fireside the lowliest place;
But the wife and children sheltered there
Are his to defend and guard with care.
Where haughty tyrants once bore rule
Are ballot-box and public school.
The old slave-pen of former days
Gives place to fanes of prayer and praise.
To-night we would bring our meed of praise
To noble friends of darker days;
The men and women crowned with light,
The true and tried in our gloomy night.
To Lundy, whose heart was early stirred
To speak for freedom an earnest word;
To Garrison, valiant, true and strong,
Whose face was as flint against our wrong.
And Phillips, the peerless, grand and brave,
A tower of strength to the outcast slave.
Earth has no marble too pure and white
To enrol his name in golden light.
Our Douglass, too, with his massive brain,
Who plead our cause with his broken chain,
And helped to hurl from his bloody seat
The curse that writhed and died at his feet.
78 THEN AND NOW.
And Governor Andrew, who, looking back,
Saw none he despised, though poor and black;
And Harriet Beecher, whose glowing pen
Corroded the chains of fettered men.
To-night with greenest laurels we'll crown
North Elba's grave where sleeps John Brown,
Who made the gallows an altar high,
And showed how a brave old man could die.
And Lincoln, our martyred President,
Who returned to his God with chains he had rent.*
And Sumner, amid death's icy chill,
Leaving to Hoar his Civil Rights Bill.
And let us remember old underground,
With all her passengers northward bound,
The train that ran till it ceased to pay,
With all her dividends given away.
Nor let it be said that we have forgot
The women who stood with Lucretia Mott;
Nor her who to the world was known
By the simple name of Lucy stone.
A tribute unto a host of others
Who knew that men though black were
brothers,
Who battled against our nation's sin,
Whose graves are thick whose ranks are thin.
Oh, people chastened in the fire,
To nobler, grander things aspire;
MACEO. 79
In the new era of your life,
Bring love for hate, and peace for strife;
Upon your hearts this vow record
That ye will build unto the Lord
A nobler future, true and grand,
To strengthen, crown and bless the land.
A higher freedom ye may gain
Than that which comes from a riven chain;
Freedom your native land to bless
With peace, and love and righteousness,
As dreams that are past, a tale all told,
Are the days when men were bought and sold;
Now God be praised from sea to sea,
Our flag floats o'er a country free.
MACEO.
Maceo dead! a thrill of sorrow
Through our hearts in sadness ran
When we felt in one sad hour
That the world had lost a man.
He had clasped unto his bosom
The sad fortunes of his land--
Held the cause for which he perished
With a firm, unfaltering hand.
80 MACEO.
On his lips the name of freedom
Fainted with his latest breath.
Cuba Libre was his watchword
Passing through the gates of death.
With the light of God around us,
Why this agony and strife?
With the cross of Christ before us,
Why this fearful waste of life?
Must the pathway unto freedom
Ever mark a crimson line,
And the eyes of wayward mortals
Always close to light divine?
Must the hearts of fearless valor
Fail 'mid crime and cruel wrong,
When the world has read of heroes
- passion [´pæʃən]
n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词) - appetite [´æpitait] n.欲望；食欲 (初中英语单词)
- sunshine [´sʌnʃain] n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词)
- wretched [´retʃid] a.可怜的；倒霉的 (初中英语单词)
- hatred [´heitrid] n.憎恨，敌意 (初中英语单词)
- harvest [´hɑ:vist] n.&v.收获；收割 (初中英语单词)
- sentence [´sentəns] n.判决 vt.宣判；处刑 (初中英语单词)
- torture [´tɔ:tʃə] n.&vt.折磨；痛苦；拷问 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- indian [´indiən] a.印度的 n.印度人 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- slavery [´sleivəri] n.奴隶制；奴役 (初中英语单词)
- darling [´dɑ:liŋ] n.爱人 a.亲爱的 (初中英语单词)
- disturb [di´stə:b] vt.扰乱；使不安；打乱 (初中英语单词)
- welcome [´welkəm] a.受欢迎的；可喜的 (初中英语单词)
- earnest [´ə:nist] a.认真的 n.认真；诚恳 (初中英语单词)
- marble [´mɑ:bəl] n.大理石 a.大理石的 (初中英语单词)
- bloody [´blʌdi] a.(流)血的；血腥的 (初中英语单词)
- governor [´gʌvənə] n.总督；州长 (初中英语单词)
- tribute [´tribju:t] n.贡物；献礼；颂词 (初中英语单词)
- strengthen [´streŋθən, ´strenθən] vt.加强 vi.变强 (初中英语单词)
- thrill [θril] v.震惊；激动；刺激 (初中英语单词)
- christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
- fearful [´fiəfəl] a.可怕的；担心的 (初中英语单词)
- kindred [´kindrid] n.亲属关系；同源关系 (高中英语单词)
- tenderness [´tendənis] n.娇嫩；柔软；温柔 (高中英语单词)
- appeal [ə´pi:l] vi.&n.请求；呼吁；上诉 (高中英语单词)
- anguish [´æŋgwiʃ] n.(极度的)痛苦；苦恼 (高中英语单词)
- threshold [´θreʃhəuld] n.门槛；入门；开端 (高中英语单词)
- crimson [´krimzən] a.&n.深(紫)红(的) (高中英语单词)
- madness [´mædnis] n.疯狂；狂热 (高中英语单词)
- israel [´izreiəl] n.以色列 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- soothe [su:ð] vt.安慰；镇定；减轻 (高中英语单词)
- haughty [´hɔ:ti] a.傲慢的，高傲的 (高中英语单词)
- gloomy [´glu:mi] a.昏暗的；忧郁的 (高中英语单词)
- garrison [´gærisən] n.警备队 vt.驻防 (高中英语单词)
- massive [´mæsiv] a.厚实的；魁伟的 (高中英语单词)
- northward [´nɔ:θwəd] ad.&a.向北(的) n.北 (高中英语单词)
- sadness [´sædnis] n.悲哀；悲痛；凄惨 (高中英语单词)
- fearless [´fiələs] a.不怕的，无畏的 (高中英语单词)
- consort [´kɔnsɔ:t] n.&v.配偶；合作；一致 (英语四级单词)
- wasting [´weistiŋ] a.&n.浪费(的) (英语四级单词)
- valiant [´væliənt] a.勇敢的，英勇的 (英语四级单词)
- gallows [´gæləuz] n.绞刑架 (英语四级单词)
- lincoln [´liŋkən] n.林肯 (英语四级单词)
- pathway [´pɑ:θwei] n.小路 (英语四级单词)
- fireside [´faiəsaid] n.炉边；家；家庭生活 (英语六级单词)
- peerless [´piələs] a.无比的；无匹敌的 (英语六级单词)
- wayward [´weiwəd] a.任性的；不易控制的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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