Let My People Go

A murmur in the midnight! Hark!
     The whispher of a tremulous hope
     That battle’s earthquake-tramp will ope
The Bondman’s dungeon deep and dark.
Old smothered heart-beats leaping out
     Almost to utterance; old despair
     Catching new breath in quickened air,—
The indrawn breath of Freedom’s shout!

A quick thought gleaming in the night—
     Orion’s sword by daylight sheathed;—
     A voice to morning never breathed,
The Lark-song of airward[sic?] light!
Long ere this glo of lurid morn
     One sleepless Eye, one listening Ear,
     In gloom could see, in silence hear
The whispered hope and sword undrawn.

By broad Missouri’s winding wave
     By slow Savannah’s heavy flood,
     On fair Potomac dashed with blood
Sings low the long-enduring slave
Old songs, the heirlooms of old time
     The awful words that smote erewhile
     The crested dragon of the Nile
Preluding Israel’s march sublime.

In Plagues, the tenfold scourge of God,
     Vermin and blight,—all loathsome things
     Commissioned by the King of kings,
Obedient to the Prophet’s rod,—
With blood and hail and lightning-glo
     And darkness deeper than the tomb
     Came down the trumpet verse of doom
“Proud Monarch, let my people go!”

Not till the robber’s land was shorn
     Of all her glory and her power,
     And judgement rung its final hour
Wit death-groans of the earliest-born;—
Nor till the Red Sea’s refluent wave
     Rolled in eternal overthrow
     The pomp and pride of Pharaoh,
Came full deliverance to the slave.

The fire and blood and reptile swarm
     Are on the land of bondage now
     The judgement-Angel’s lowering brow
Portends the final thunder storm,
While mutters in the sulphurous cloud
     The summons “Let my people go!”
     Slaves in their cabin chant it low,
And red-mouthed cannon shout it loud.

How long, avenging God, how long
     Must rise the old predictive wail,
     Must fall the lightning and the hail,
Ere dance the freed to Miriam’s song?
The murmur deepens to a cry,
     Thought leaps to utterance like a sword
     Of fire unsheathing for the Lord,
And Freedom calls to do or die!

The slave has hope! then hope my Soul!
     No steed to slaughter drives amain
     But where God holds the bridle-rein;
He calls from battle’s thunder-roll
“Ere all the first-born feel the blow
     And war’s Red Sea forever embalms[?]
     The glory of your banded realms
Arise and let my people go!”