Arisen at Last

On the passage of the bill to protect the rights and liberties of the people of the State against the Fugitive Slave Act.

I SAID I stood upon thy grave,

My Mother State, when last the moon

Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.

And, scattering ashes on my head,

I wore, undreaming of relief,

The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.

Again that moon of blossoms shines

On leaf and flower and folded wing,

And thou hast risen with the spring!

Once more thy strong maternal arms

Are round about thy children flung,—

A lioness that guards her young!

No threat is on thy closëd lips,

But in thine eye a power to smite

The mad wolf backward from its light.

Southward the baffled robber’s track

Henceforth runs only; hereaway,

The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.

Henceforth, within thy sacred gates,

His first low howl shall downward draw

The thunder of thy righteous law.

Not mindless of thy trade and gain,

But, acting on the wiser plan,

Thou ’rt grown conservative of man.

So shalt thou clothe with life the hope,

Dream-painted on the sightless eyes

Of him who sang of Paradise,—

The vision of a Christian man,

In virtue, as in stature great

Embodied in a Christian State.

And thou, amidst thy sisterhood

Forbearing long, yet standing fast,

Shalt win their grateful thanks at last;

When North and South shall strive no more,

And all their feuds and fears be lost

In Freedom’s holy Pentecost.

6th mo., 1855.