ield shall not lack
Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely back
The wrong which, through his poor ones, reaches Him:
Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torchlights trim,
And wave them high across the abysmal black,
Till bound, dumb millions there shall see them and rejoice.

10th mo., 1847.

THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.

Suggested by a daguerreotype taken from a small French engraving of two
negro figures, sent to the writer by Oliver Johnson.

BEAMS of noon, like burning lances, through the
tree-tops flash and glisten,
As she stands before her lover, with raised face to
look and listen.

Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the ancient
Jewish song
Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her graceful
beauty wrong.

He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal's
garb and hue,
Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his higher
nature true;

Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a freeman
in his heart,
As the gregree holds his Fetich from the white
man's gaze apart.

Ever foremost of his comrades, when the driver's
morning horn
Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the fields of
cane and corn.

Fall the keen and burning lashes never on his back
or limb;
Scarce with look or word of censure, turns the
driver unto him.

Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his eye is
hard and stern;
Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has never
deigned to learn.

And, at evening, when his comrades dance before
their master's door,
Folding arms and knitting forehead, stands he
silent evermore.

God be praised for every instinct which rebels
against a lot
Where the brute survives the human, and man's
upright form is not!

As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral fold
on fold
Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers in
his hold;

Slow decays the forest monarch, closer girds the
fell embrace,
Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is in
its place;

So a base and bestial nature round the vassal's
manhood twines,
And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba
choked with vines.

God is Love, saith the Evangel; and our world of
woe and sin
Is made light and happy only when a Love is
shini