Whereof we shall give up a strait account.
Woe, if we have forgotten them, and left

Those souls that might have grown so fair and glad,
That only wanted a kind word from us,

To be so free and gently beautiful,

Left them to feel their birthright as a curse,

To grow all lean, and cramped, and full of sores,

And last,

sad change, that surely comes to all

Shut out from manhood by their brother-man,
To turn mere wolves, for lack of aught to love!

Hear it, O England! thou who liest asleep
On a volcano, from whose pent-up wrath,
Already some red flashes, bursting up,
Glare bloodily on coronet and crown

And gray cathedral looming huge aloof,

With dreadful portent of o'erhanging doom!

Thou Dives among nations! from whose board,

After the dogs are fed, poor Lazarus,

Crooked and worn with toil, and hollow-eyed,
Begs a few crumbs in vain!

I honor thee

For all the lessons thou hast taught the world,

Not few nor poor, and freedom chief of all;

I honor thee for thy huge energy,

Thy tough endurance, and thy fearless heart:
And how could man, who speaks with English words,
Think lightly of the blessed womb that bare
Shakspeare and Milton, and full many more

Whose names are now our earth's sweet lullabies,
Wherewith she cheers the infancy of those
Who are to do her honor in their lives?
Yet I would bid thee, ere too late, beware,
Lest, while thou playest off thine empty farce
Of Queenship to outface a grinning world,
Patching thy purple out with filthy rags,
To make thy madness a more bitter scoff,

Thy starving millions, who not only pine

For body's bread, but for the bread of life,

The light, which from their eyes is quite shut out

By the broad mockery of thy golden roof,

Should turn to wolves that hanker for thy blood.

Even now their cry, which, o'er the ocean-stream,

Wanders, and moans upon the awe-struck ear,
Clear-heard above the sea's eternal wail,
But deeper far, and mournfuller, than that,
(For nought so fathomless as woe unshared,)
Hath learned a savage meaning of the wolf,
Whose nature now half-triumphs in the heart
Of the world-exiled and despairing Man.

And thou, my country, who to me art dear As is the blood that circles through my heart, To whom God granted it in charge to be Freedom's apostle to a trampled world,

Who shouldst have been a mighty name to shake Old lies and shams, as with a voice from Heaven,

Art little better than a sneer and mock,

And tyrants smile to see thee holding up
Freedom's broad Ægis o'er three million slaves!
Shall God forget himself to humor thee?
Shall Justice lie to screen thine ugly sin?
Shall the eternal laws of truth become
Cobwebs to let thy foul oppression through?
Shall the untiring Vengeance, that pursues,

Age after age, upon the sinner's track,

Roll back his burning deluge at thy beck?

Woe! woe! Even now I see thy star drop down,

Waning and pale, its faint disc flecked with blood,
That had been set in heaven gloriously,

To beacon Man to Freedom and to Home!
Woe! woe! I hear the loathsome serpent hiss,
Trailing, unharmed, its slow and bloated folds
O'er the lone ruins of thy Capitol !

I see those outcast millions turned to wolves,
That howl and snarl o'er Freedom's gory corse,

And lap the ebbing heart's-blood of that Hope,

Which would have made our earth smile back on heaven,

A happy child upon a happy mother,

From whose ripe breast it drew the milk of life.

But no, my country! other thoughts than these
Befit a son of thine: serener thoughts
Befit the heart which can, unswerved, believe
That Wrong already feels itself o'ercome,
If but one soul have strength to see the right,
Or one free tongue dare speak it. All mankind

Look, with an anxious flutter of the heart,
To see thee working out thy glorious doom.
Thou shalt not, with a lie upon thy lips,
Forever prop up cunning despotisms,
And help to strengthen every tyrant's plea,
By striving to make man's deep soul content
With a half-truth that feeds it with mere wind.
God judgeth us by what we know of right,
Rather than what we practise that is wrong,
Unknowingly; and thou shalt yet be bold

To stand before Him, with a heart made clean
By doing that He taught thee how to preach.
Thou yet shalt do thy holy errand; yet,

That little Mayflower, convoyed by the winds
And the rude waters to our rocky shore,

Shall scatter Freedom's seed throughout the world,
And all the nations of the earth shall come,

Singing, to share the harvest-home of Truth.