John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Anti-Slavery PoemsYorktown
F
Two lines stretch far o’er vale and hill:
Who curbs his steed at head of one?
Hark! the low murmur: Washington!
Who bends his keen, approving glance,
Where down the gorgeous line of France
Shine knightly star and plume of snow?
Thou too art victor, Rochambeau!
Shook with the war-charge yesterday,
Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel,
Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel;
October’s clear and noonday sun
Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun,
And down night’s double blackness fell,
Like a dropped star, the blazing shell.
Stand moveless as the neighboring pines;
While through them, sullen, grim, and slow,
The conquered hosts of England go:
O’Hara’s brow belies his dress,
Gay Tarleton’s troop rides bannerless:
Shout, from thy fired and wasted homes,
Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes!
Let all thy sister States rejoice;
Let Freedom, in whatever clime
She waits with sleepless eye her time,
Shouting from cave and mountain wood
Make glad her desert solitude,
While they who hunt her quail with fear;
The New World’s chain lies broken here!
Within the shattered fortress gate?
Dark tillers of Virginia’s soil,
Classed with the battle’s common spoil,
With household stuffs, and fowl, and swine,
With Indian weed and planters’ wine,
With stolen beeves, and foraged corn,—
Are they not men, Virginian born?
Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier grave!
Sons of the Northland, ye who set
Stout hearts against the bayonet,
And pressed with steady footfall near
The moated battery’s blazing tier,
Turn your scarred faces from the sight,
Let shame do homage to the right!
The Gallic bugles stirred the air,
And, through breached batteries, side by side,
To victory stormed the hosts allied,
And brave foes grounded, pale with pain,
The arms they might not lift again,
As abject as in that old day
The slave still toils his life away.
Old days of pride, old names of glory,
Old marvels of the tongue and pen,
Old thoughts which stirred the hearts of men,
Ye spared the wrong; and over all
Behold the avenging shadow fall!
Your world-wide honor stained with shame,—
Your freedom’s self a hollow name!
Where flows its stripe? Where burns its star?
Bear witness, Palo Alto’s day,
Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey,
Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak,
Fleshes the Northern eagle’s beak;
Symbol of terror and despair,
Of chains and slaves, go seek it there!
Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva’s banks!
Brave sport to see the fledgling born
Of Freedom by its parent torn!
Safe now is Speilberg’s dungeon cell,
Safe drear Siberia’s frozen hell:
With Slavery’s flag o’er both unrolled,
What of the New World fears the Old!