Appeal

Lo! the Spirit of oppression,
     Clanks her fetters o'er our land, 
And the children of transgression
     Bind their weight on soul and hand;
Unredeemed the captive sigheth, 
     In the prison, darkly bound;
And a brother's life-blood crieth
     To Jehovah, from the ground.

Where the Southern sky is spanning
     Slavery's desolate domain;
On the breezes that are fanning 
     Fair Iberia’s [?] fields of cane ;
By the broad Missouri's waters, 
     And the waves of Tennessee;
And where Afric's mourning daughters
     Linger by the bright Santee;

Mid Virginia’s frowning mountains,
     Upwards the land of Penn;
O'er their plains and hills and fountains
     Swells the wail of sorrowing men.
Heart and spirit crushed and broken,
     Fettered limb and fireless eye, 
Slavery's blighting curse betoken;
     Tell the tyrant's victory.

Feebly doth the voice of pity
     Fall upon the victim's ear;
Faint, from haunted ville and city,
     Comes the word, his soul to cheer:—
Yet, while human hearts are beating
     ‘Neath oppression's iron heel;
Brethren, who in love once meeting
     "Felt for man, as men should feel;"

Mingle now in strife unholy, 
     All their early love forgot;
While the bondman, sad and lowly,
     Pours his sorrows, heeded not.
Ye who, for yourselves contending, 
     Cannot hear the prisoner's cries;
Pause and think how crime is rending
     Nature's fondest, holiest ties:

Friends and kindred parting, —never 
     More to meet while life remains:
Bonds that Death alone should sever, 
     Sundering for corroding gains:* 
Mark the sable mother's anguish,
     As her children, one by one, 
Far away are borne, to languish 
     ‘Neath the Mississippian sun.

There, as all the untold horrors 
     Of oppression rise in light, 
And the bondman's fears and sorrows
     Are veiled before your sight,
Can ye turn away unheeding;—
     While beneath the oppressor’s heel
Lies his victim, crushed and bleeding;—
     To the paltry griefs ye feel?

Oh, return, departed brothers!
     Let the heart be moved alone
For the wrongs and griefs of others;
     Not for trials all our own.
Soul with soul, in high communion, 
     For the truth of God unite;
Hand to hand, in stronger union, 
     Join ye for the moral fight.

Then the triumph of the scorner 
     Shall be lost to him in shame, 
And a more enduring honor
     Crown the temple of your fame:
And o'er all the vast Savannas
     Where the bondman's wailings rise,
Freedom's unrestrained hosannas,
     Upward borne, shall greet the skies.