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ed Wakarusa, Or squatting by the mellow-bottomed Kansas; The pioneers of mightier multitudes, The small rain-patter, ere the thunder shower Drowns the dry prairies. Hope from man is not. Oh, for a quiet berth at Washington, Snug naval chaplaincy, or clerkship, where These rumors of free labor and free soil Might never meet me more. Better to be Door-keeper in the White House, than to dwell Amidst these Yankee tents, that, whitening, show On the green prairie like a fleet becalmed. Methinks I hear a voice come up the river From those far bayous, where the alligators Mount guard around the camping filibusters "Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn to Cuba-- (That golden orange just about to fall, O'er-ripe, into the Democratic lap;) Keep pace with Providence, or, as we say, Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow The message of our gospel, thither borne Upon the point of Quitman's bowie-knife, And the persuasive lips of Colt's revolvers. There may'st thou, underneath thy vine and figtree, Watch thy increase of sugar cane and negroes, Calm as a patriarch in his eastern tent!" Amen: So mote it be. So prays your friend. BURIAL OF BARBER. Thomas Barber was shot December 6, 1855, near Lawrence, Kansas. BEAR him, comrades, to his grave; Never over one more brave Shall the prairie grasses weep, In the ages yet to come, When the millions in our room, What we sow in tears, shall reap. Bear him up the icy hill, With the Kansas, frozen still As his noble heart, below, And the land he came to till With a freeman's thews and will, And his poor hut roofed with snow. One more look of that dead face, Of his murder's ghastly trace! One more kiss, O widowed one Lay your left hands on his brow, Lift your right hands up, and vow That his work shall yet be done. Patience, friends! The eye of God Every path by Murder trod Watches, lidless, day and night; And the dead man in his shroud, And his widow weeping loud, And our hearts, are in His sight. Every deadly threat that swells With the roar of gambling hells, Every brutal jest and jeer, Every wicked thought and plan Of the cruel heart of man, Though but whispered, He can hear!
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