Take courage, ye that languish beneath the withering anguish Of open wrong, or tyrannous deceit ; There comes a swift redresser to punish your oppressor, And lay him prostrate, helpless, at your feet! O, Champion strong! Righter of wrong! Justice, equality, to thee belong, Death! Where Conquest crowns his quarrel, and the victor, wreathed with laurel, While trembling Nations bow beneath his rod, On his guarded throne reposes, in living apotheosis, What form of fear croaks in his ear "The victor's car is but a funeral bier"? Death! Who, spite of guards and yeomen, steel phalanx and cross-bowmen, The tyrant's crown down dashes, his sceptre treads to ashes, His breath out-wrings, and his corse down flings To the dark pit where grave-worms feed on kings?. Death! When the murderer 's undetected, when the robber 's unsuspected, And night has veiled his crime from every eye, When nothing living daunts him, and no fear of justice haunts him, Who wakes his conscience-stricken agony? Who makes him start, with his withering dart, And wrings the secret from his bursting heart? Death! To those who pine in sorrow, whose wretchedness can borrow No moment's ease from any human act, To the widow comfort-spurning, to the slave for freedom yearning, To the diseased, with cureless anguish racked, Who brings release, and whispers peace, And points to realms where pain and sorrow cease ?- 9. LACHRYMOSE WRITERS. - Horace Smith. YE human screech-owls, who delight Be Mutes and publish not your cries and groans. Ye say that Earth's a charnel; Life, Where ye may rail unheard at Heaven and Earth! Earth! on whose stage, in pomp arrayed, Earth with thy pageants ever new and bright, To see and bless thy beauties infinite! Man! whose high intellect supplies Of holy and enrapturing pursuits; Whose heart's a fount of fresh delight, Thy godlike gifts, and rank thee with the brutes! O, Woman! who from realms above No pains, no penalties, dispense Is its own punishment, most sharp and sure. Father and God! whose love and might Earth, Sea, Sky, Pardon the impugners of Thy laws, Expand their hearts, and give them cause To bless the exhaustless grace they now deny! 10. THE SANCTUARY. Horace Smith. Adapted. Who seek'st a sure asylum from thy foes, There is a solemn sanctuary, founded By God himself; not for transgressors meant; But that the man oppressed, the spirit-wounded, And all beneath the world's injustice bent, Might turn from outward wrong, turmoil and din, To peace within. Each bosom is a temple, when its altar, The living heart, is unprofaned and pure, O, Bower of Bliss! O, sanctuary holy! E'en in the flesh, the spirit disembodied, How sweet to turn from anguish, guilt and madness, And, sheltered from the storm, the soul may rest When, spleenful as the sensitive Mimosa, We shrink from Winter's touch and Nature's gloom, There may we conjure up a Vallombrosa, Where groves and bowers in Summer beauty bloom, And the heart dances in the sunny glade Fancy has made. But, would we dedicate to nobler uses This bosom sanctuary, let us there Hallow our hearts from all the world's abuses; May teach us gratitude to God, combined With love of kind. |