John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Anti-Slavery PoemsThe Branded Hand
W
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day;
With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain!
To make God’s truth thy falsehood, His holiest work thy shame?
When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,
How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!
On the great heart of humanity, too legible for doubt!
They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown,
Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!
Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set;
And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand,
Shall tell with pride the story of their father’s branded hand!
The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimitars,
The pallor of the prison, and the shackle’s crimson span,
So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of God and man.
Thou for His living presence in the bound and bleeding slave;
He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,
Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God!
From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery wrung,
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine,
Broke the bondman’s heart for bread, poured the bondman’s blood for wine;
And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt;
Thou beheld’st Him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim,
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know;
God’s stars and silence taught thee, as His angels only can,
That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man!
In the depth of God’s great goodness may find mercy in his need;
But woe to him who crushes the soul with chain and rod,
And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!
Its branded palm shall prophesy, “Salvation to the Slave!”
Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads may feel
His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.
Lo! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there!
Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce’s heart of yore,
In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before!
When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan line:
Can the craft of State avail them? Can a Christless church withstand,
In the van of Freedom’s onset, the coming of that hand?