John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Anti-Slavery PoemsPæan
N
The dreary night has wellnigh passed,
The slumbers of the North are o’er,
The Giant stands erect at last!
When, faint with watching, few and worn,
We saw no welcome day-star climb
The cold gray pathway of the morn!
What storms our darkling pathway swept,
Where, beating back our thronging fears,
By Faith alone our march we kept.
How mocked before the tyrant train,
As, one by one, the true and kind
Fell fainting in our path of pain!
But, self-forgetful to the last,
In words of cheer and bugle blow
Their breath upon the darkness passed.
Stood waiting for the dawn of day
To crush like reeds our feeble band;
The morn has come, and where are they?
With peace-white banners waving free,
And from our own the glad shout breaks,
Of Freedom and Fraternity!
The hostile cohorts melt away;
Our frowning foemen of the night
Are brothers at the dawn of day!
We open wide our toil-worn ranks,
Along our line a murmur runs
Of song, and praise, and grateful thanks.
Till Slavery’s minions cower and quail;
One charge of fire shall drive them fast
Like chaff before our Northern gale!
Dumb, toiling millions, bound and sold,
Look! stretched o’er Southern vale and plain,
The Lord’s delivering hand behold!
His iron gates and guarded wall,
The bolts which shattered Shinar’s tower
Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall.
It is thy Northern light that shines;
This stirring march of Freedom’s band
The storm-song of thy mountain pines.
And hear, in winds that sweep your lakes
And fan your prairies’ roaring fires,
The signal-call that Freedom makes!