THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.

Thou, who to thy Church hast given | Golden streets for idle knave, Keys alike, of hell and heaven, Make our word and witness sure, Let the curse we speak endure !”

Holding still his spirit's birthright, to | In the veins of whose affections kindred his higher nature true;

Scarce with look or word of censure, turns All around the desert circles, underneath

But she looks across the valley, where

her mother's hut is seen,

THE CRISIS.

Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and WRITTEN ON LEARNING THE TERMS OF the lemon-leaves so green.

And she answers, sad and earnest: "It

were wrong for thee to stay; God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and his finger points the way.

"Well I know with what endurance, for the sake of me and mine,

Thou hast borne too long a burden never meant for souls like thine.

"Go; and at the hour of midnight, when our last farewell is o'er,

THE TREATY WITH MEXICO.

ACROSs the Stony Mountains, o'er the
desert's drouth and sand,
The circles of our empire touch the West-
ern Ocean's strand;
From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila,
wild and free,

Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to Cali

fornia's sea;

And from the mountains of the East, to
Santa Rosa's shore,

The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air

no more.

Kneeling on our place of parting, I will O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple

bless thee from the shore.

"But for me, my mother, lying on her sick-bed all the day,

Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming

through the twilight gray.

"Should I leave her sick and helpless, even
freedom, shared with thee,
Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely
toil, and stripes to me.

"For my heart would die within me, and

my brain would soon be wild; I should hear my mother calling through the twilight for her child!"

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines

the sun of morning-time, Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and green hedges of the lime.

Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the lover and the maid; Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, lean

ing forward on his spade?

Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is the

Haytien's sail he sees,
Like a white cloud of the mountains,

driven seaward by the breeze!

But his arm a light hand presses, and he hears a low voice call:

Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightier than all.

children weep;

Close watch about their holy fire let maids of Pecos keep;

Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines,

And Algodones toll her bells amidst her
corn and vines;

For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with
eager eyes of gain,
Wide scattering, like the bison herds on
broad Salada's plain.

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what
sound the winds bring down
Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from
cold Nevada's crown!
Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with
rein of travel slack,

And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the
sunrise at his back;

By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and pine,

On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires shine.

O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and plain,

Of salt wastes alternating with valleys
fat with grain ;

Of mountains white with winter, looking
downward, cold, serene,
On their feet with spring-vines tangled
and lapped in softest green;
Swift through whose black volcanic gates,
o'er many a sunny vale,
Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bi-
son's dusty trail!

Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes | Great Heaven!
whose mystic shores

The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of
Saxon oars;

Great herds that wander all unwatched,
wild steeds that none have tamed,
Strange fish in unknown streams, and
birds the Saxon never named ;
Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles,
where Nature's chemic powers
Work out the Great Designer's will;-
all these ye say are ours!

Is this our mission? End in this the prayers and tears, The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger, better years?

Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall
ours in shadow turn,

A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through
outer darkness borne ?
Where the far nations looked for light, a
blackness in the air?

Where for words of hope they listened,
the long wail of despair?

The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands,

With

This

This

Even

solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands! day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin ;

day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin;

now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown,

We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down!

By all for which the martyrs bore their
agony and shame;

By all the warning words of truth with
which the prophets came;
By the Future which awaits us; by all
the hopes which cast
Their faint and trembling beams across
the blackness of the Past;
And by the blessed thought of Him who
for Earth's freedom died,

O my people! O my brothers! let us
choose the righteous side.

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way;

To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's bay;

To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain;

And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong of man ?

And

mountain unto mountain call,

PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE!

For since the day when Warkworth wood I see upon another rest
Closed o'er my steed and I,

An alien from my name and blood,
A weed cast out to die,