I.
They stood together on a hoary peak
Of the mid-mountains; famine in their eyes,
And the deep lines of want on brow and cheek,
A ghastly brotherhood, grown pale and weak,
In their long battle with the rocks and skies!
"Swear!" cried their Chieftain's voice, above the shriek
Of antheming winds, resounding through the bleak
Rock-chambers of the hills; old memories
That wakened sights of horror and despair,
Deepened the solemn cadence of his speech;
"Ye bold companions of my perils, swear,
That come what may, in hunger's utmost reach,
Ye lift no hand of brother upon brother,
But rather will die with, than live upon, each other."
II.
"So help me God !" Their mountain altar rung
As with one voice to that wild covenant.
The icy crags, like horns of silver, flung
The vow to their far brothers, out among
The caverns, where the wolf coiled, cold and gaunt,
Who heard and shuddered with new dreams of want;
The hollow caves, with their sepulchral tongue,
Proclaimed it to the desert, and it stung
The desert with more famine. "Help me God!"
And God did help them in the wilderness.
Desert and crag, and wolves athirst for blood,
Howled their unsated hunger and distress.
As the pale band moved firmly to their goal,
Where to the vine-clad hills Pacific's waters roll.
III.
Swear! ye who feed upon our human life,
Who have drawn out the red blood from the veins
Of haggard women, by your godless gains—
The pale, thin maiden and the blighted wife,
Starving upon your justice! thou whose knife
Is at the throat of the robbed emigrant,
To carve still deeper what scant flesh remains —
Swear! ye who, when the hounded fugitives pant
Northward, still clanking their half-shattered chains,
Bark on their track, the veriest hounds of all;
And you who keep your savage carnival,
Fed fat on unbought labor's blood and brains!
Swear, that no more ye will pollute earth's sod
With anthropophagy ; and so help you God!
The Oath