strengthened
On God’s robe of love and light;
But if ye trample on His children,
To his ear will float each groan,
Jar the cords that bind them to Him,
And they’ll vibrate at his throne.
And the land that forges fetters,
Binds the weak and poor in chains,
Must in blood or tears of sorrow
Wash away her guilty stains.
Served him right! How could he dare
To touch the idol of our day?
What if its shrine be red with blood?
Why, let him turn his eyes away.
Who dares dispute our right to bind
With galling chains the weak and poor?
To starve and crush the deathless mind,
Or hunt the slave from door to door?
Who dares dispute our right to sell
The mother from her weeping child?
To hush with ruthless stripes and blows
Her shrieks and sobs of anguish wild?
’Tis right to plead for heathen lands,
To send the Bible to their shores,
And then to make, for power and pelf,
A race of heathens at our doors.
What holy horror filled our hearts—
It shook our church from dome to nave—
Our cheeks grew pale with pious dread,
To hear him breathe the name of slave.
Upon our Zion, fair and strong,
His words fell like a fearful blight;
We turned him from our saintly fold;
And this we did to “serve him right.”
The Slave Mother
A Tale of the Ohio
I have but four, the treasures of my soul,
They lay like doves around my heart;
I tremble lest some cruel hand
Should tear my household wreaths apart.
My baby girl, with childish glance,
Looks curious in my anxious eye,
She little knows that for her sake
Deep shadows round my spirit lie.
My playful boys could I forget,
My home might seem a joyous spot,
But with their sunshine mirth I blend
The darkness of their future lot.
And thou my babe, my darling one,
My last, my loved, my precious child,
Oh! when I think upon thy doom
My heart grows faint and then throbs wild.
The Ohio’s bridged and spanned with ice,
The northern star is shining bright,
I’ll take the nestlings of my heart
And search for freedom by its light.
Winter and night were on the earth,
And feebly moaned the shivering trees,
A sigh of winter seemed to run
Through every murmur of the breeze.
She fled, and with her children all,
She reached the stream and crossed it o’er,
Bright visions of deliverance came
Like dreams of plenty to the poor.
Dreams! vain dreams, heroic mother,
Give all thy hopes and struggles o’er,
The pursuer is on thy track,
And the hunter at thy door.
Judea’s refuge cities had power
To shelter, shield and save,
E’en Rome had altars: ’neath whose shade
Might crouch the wan and weary slave.
But Ohio had no sacred fane,
To human rights so consecrate,
Where thou may’st shield thy hapless ones
From their darkly gathering fate.
Then, said the mournful mother,
If Ohio cannot save,
I will do a deed for freedom.
She shall find each child a grave.
I will save my precious children
From their darkly threatened doom,
I will hew their path to freedom
Through the portals of the tomb.
A moment in the sunlight,
She held a glimmering knife,
The next moment she had bathed it
In the crimson fount of life.
They snatched away the fatal knife,
Her boys shrieked wild with dread;
The baby girl was pale and cold.
They raised it up, the child was dead.
Sends this deed of fearful daring
Through my country’s heart no thrill,
Do the icy hands of slavery
Every pure emotion chill?
Oh! if there is any honor.
Truth or justice in the land,
Will ye not, as men and Christians,
On the side of freedom stand?
Rizpah, the Daughter of Ai
Tidings! sad tidings for the daughter of Ai,
They are bearing her prince and loved away,
Destruction falls like a mournful pall
On the fallen house of ill-fated Saul.
And Rizpah hears that her loved must die,
But she hears it all with a tearless eye;
And clasping her hand with grief and dread
She meekly bows her queenly head.
The blood has left her blanching cheek,
Her quivering lips refuse to speak,
Oh! grief like hers has learned no tone—
A world of grief is all its own.
But the deed is done, and the hand is stay’d
That havoc among the brethren made,
And Rizpah takes her lowly seat
To watch the princely dead at her feet.
The jackal crept out with a stealthy tread,
To batten and feast on the noble dead;
The vulture bore down with a heavy wing
To dip his beak in life’s stagnant spring.
The hyena heard the jackal’s howl,
And he bounded forth with a sullen growl,
When Rizpah’s shriek rose on the air
Like a tone from the caverns of despair.
She sprang from her sad and lowly seat,
For a moment her heart forgot to beat,
And the blood rushed up to her marble cheek
And a flash to her eye so sad and meek.
The vulture paused in his downward flight,
As she raised her form to its queenly height,
The hyena’s eye had a horrid glare
As he turned again to his desert lair.
The jackal slunk back with a quickened tread,
From his cowardly search of Rizpah’s dead;
Unsated he turned from the noble prey,
Subdued by a glance of the daughter of Ai.
Oh grief! that a mother’s heart should know,
Such a weary weight of consuming woe,
For seldom if ever earth has known
Such love as the daughter of Ai hath known.
Ruth and Naomi
Turn my daughters, full of woe,
Is my heart so sad and lone?
Leave me children—I would go
To my loved and distant home.
From my bosom death has torn
Husband, children, all my stay,
Left me not a single one,
For my life’s declining day.
Want and woe surround my way,
Grief and famine where I tread;
In my native land they say
God is giving Jacob bread.
Naomi ceased, her daughters wept,
Their yearning hearts were filled;
Falling upon her withered neck,
Their grief in tears distill’d.
Like rain upon a blighted tree,
The tears of Orpah fell;
Kissing the pale and quivering lip,
