Oh! if the young enthusiast bears,

O'er weary waste and sea, the stone
Which crumbled from the Forum's stairs,
Or round the Parthenon;

Or olive bough from some wild tree
Hung over old Thermopyla:

If leaflets from some hero's tomb,

Or moss-wreath torn from ruins hoary,-
Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom
On fields renowned in story, -
Or fragment from the Alhambra's crest,
Or the grey rock by Druids blessed;

Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growing
Where Freedom led her stalwart kern,
Or Scotia's "rough bur thistle" blowing
On Bruce's Bannockburn

Or Runnymede's wild English rose,
Or lichen plucked from Sempach's snows!-

If it be true that things like these

To heart and eye bright visions bring, Shall not far holier memories

To this memorial cling?

Which needs no mellowing mist of time
To hide the crimson stains of crime !

Wreck of a temple, unprofaned

Of courts where Peace with Freedom trod, Lifting on high, with hands unstained,

Thanksgiving unto God;

Where Mercy's voice of love was pleading
For human hearts in bondage bleeding!-

Where midst the sound of rushing feet
And curses on the night air flung,
That pleading voice rose calm and sweet
From woman's earnest tongue;
And Riot turned his scowling glance,
Awed, from her tranquil countenance !

That temple now in ruin lies! —
The fire-stain on its shattered wall,
And open to the changing skies
Its black and roofless hall,
It stands before a nation's sight,
A grave-stone over buried Right!

But from that ruin, as of old,

The fire-scorched stones themselves are crying, And from their ashes white and cold

Its timbers are replying!

A voice which slavery cannot kill
Speaks from the crumbling arches still!

And even this relic from thy shrine,
Oh, holy Freedom! hath to me
A potent power, a voice and sign
To testify of thee;

And, grasping it, methinks I feel
A deeper faith, a stronger zeal.

And not unlike that mystic rod,

Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian wave, Which opened, in the strength of God,

A pathway for the slave,

It yet may point the bondman's way,
And turn the spoiler from his prey.

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES-1844.

[WRITTEN on reading the sentence of JOHN L. BROWN, of South Carolina, to be executed on the 25th of Fourth month, 1844, for the crime of assisting a female slave to escape from bondage. The sentence was afterwards commuted.]

Ho! thou who seekest late and long

A license from the Holy Book
For brutal lust and hell's red wrong,
Man of the pulpit look! —

Lift up those cold and atheist eyes,

This ripe fruit of thy teaching see;
And tell us how to Heaven will rise
The incense of this sacrifice

This blossom of the Gallows Tree!.

--

Search out for SLAVERY's hour of need
Some fitting text of sacred writ ;*
Give Heaven the credit of a deed
Which shames the nether pit.
Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him.
Whose truth is on thy lips a lie,
Ask that His bright-winged cherubim
May bend around that scaffold grim
To guard and bless and sanctify!

Ho! champion of the people's cause-
Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke
Of foreign wrong and Old World laws,
Man of the Senate, look! —

*Three new publications, from the pens of Dr. Junkin, President of Miami College, Alexander McCaine of the Methodist Protestant church, and of a clergyman of the Cincinnati Synod, defending Slavery on Scriptural ground, have recently made their appearance.

Was this the promise of the free,

The great hope of our early time,
That Slavery's poison vine should be
Upborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed tree,
O'erclustered with such fruits of crime? -

Send out the summons, east and west,
And south and north, let all be there,
Where he who pitied the oppressed
Swings out in sun and air.
Let not a democratic hand

The grisly hangman's task refuse;
There let each loyal patriot stand
Awaiting Slavery's command

To twist the rope and draw the noose!

Its cold rebuke for deeds which start

In fiery and indignant beat

The pulses of the heart.

Leave studied wit, and guarded phrase;
And all that kindled heart can feel
Speak out in earnest words which raise,
Where'er they fall, an answering blaze,
Like flints which strike the fire from steel.

Still let a mousing priesthood ply

Their garbled text and gloss of sin,

And make the lettered scroll deny

Its living soul within ;

Still let the place-fed titled knave

Plead Robbery's right with purchased lips,

And tell us that our fathers gave

For Freedom's pedestal, a slave,

For frieze and moulding, chains and whips!

But ye who own that higher law

Whose tables in the heart are set,

Speak out in words of power and awe
That God is living yet!

Breathe forth once more those tones sublime

Which thrilled the burthened prophet's lyre,

And in a dark and evil time

Smote down on Israel's fast of crime

And gift of blood, a rain of fire!

Oh, not for us the graceful lay,

To whose soft measures lightly move
The Dryad and the woodland Fay,
O'erlooked by Mirth and Love;
But such a stern and startling strain

As Britain's hunted bards flung down
From Snowden, to the conquered plain,
Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain
On trampled field and smoking town.

By Liberty's dishonored name,

By man's lost hope, and failing trust, By words and deeds, which bow with shame Our foreheads to the dust,

By the exulting tyrant's sneer,

Borne to us from the Old World's thrones, And by their grief, who pining hear, In sunless mines and dungeons drear,

How Freedom's land her faith disowns ;

Speak out in acts; the time for words
Has passed, and deeds alone suffice;
In the loud clang of meeting swords
The softer music dies!

Act - act, in God's name, while ye may,

Smite from the church her leprous limb,

Throw open to the light of day

The bondman's cell, and break away

The chains the State has bound on him.

Ho! every true and living soul,

To Freedom's periled altar bear

The freeman's and the Christian's whole,
Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer!

-