John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Appendix I. Early and Uncollected VersesMassachusetts
A
Thou of the old Thirteen!
Whose soil, where Freedom’s blood first poured,
Hath yet a darker green?
To outworn patience suffering long
Is insult added to the wrong?
And fixed the padlock fast?
Dumb as the black slave of the South!
Is this thy fate at last?
Oh shame! thy honored seal and sign
Trod under hoofs so asinine!
Thy chosen ones again,
Unmeet for them the base control
Of Slavery’s curbing rein!
Unmeet for men like them to feel
The spurring of a rider’s heel.
And force is argument,
Call back to Quincy’s shade
Thy old man eloquent.
Why leave him longer striving thus
With the wild beasts of Ephesus!
It is no place for thee!
Beneath the arch of Heaven’s blue wall,
Thy voice may still be free!
What power shall chain thy utterance there,
In God’s free sun and freer air?
From all the martyr graves
Of those stern men, in death made free,
Who could not live as slaves.
The slumberings of thy honored dead
Are for thy sake disquieted.
By freemen’s feet be trod,
And give the echoes of its wall
Once more to Freedom’s God!
And in the midst unseen shall stand
The mighty fathers of thy land.
The soul of Adams near,
And Otis with his fiery zeal,
And Warren’s onward cheer;
And heart to heart shall thrill as when
They moved and spake as living men.
With treason in thy rear,
Can Freedom’s holy cause be tried:
Not there, my State, but here.
Here must thy needed work be done,
The battle at thy hearth-stone won.
Against the foes within;
From bar and pulpit, press and trade,
Cast out the shame and sin.
Then speak thy now-unheeded word,
Its lightest whisper shall be heard.