THY 1 error, Frémont, simply was to act A brave man’s part, without the statesman’s tact, And, taking counsel but of common sense, To strike at cause as well as consequence. O, never yet since Roland wound his horn At Roncesvalles has a blast been blown Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own, Heard from the van of freedom’s hope forlorn! It had been safer, doubtless, for the time, To flatter treason, and avoid offence To that Dark Power whose underlying crime Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence. But, if thine be the fate of all who break The ground for truth’s seed, or forerun their years Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make A lane for freedom through the level spears, Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee, Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free! The land shakes with them, and the slave’s dull ear Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear. Who would recall them now must first arrest The winds that blow down from the free Northwest, Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back The Mississippi to its upper springs. Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack But the full time to harden into things. Note 1. Frémont’s proclamation of martial law in Missouri, in August, 1861, declaring free all slaves of Rebels, was received with ardor by the North, but annulled by President Lincoln as premature. [back]
John Charles Frémont
More from Poet
|
[1876] our fathers’ God! from out whose hand The centuries fall like grains of sand, We meet to-day, united, free, And loyal to our land and Thee, To thank Thee for the era done, And trust Thee for the opening one. Here, where of old, by Thy design, The fathers spake that word of Thine Whose... |
“put up the sword!” the voice of Christ once more Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon’s roar, O’er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped With nameless dead; o’er cities starving slow Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe Down which a groaning... |
Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. Round about them orchards sweep, Apple and peach trees fruited deep, Fair as a garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, On that... |
[On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery.] IT is done! Clang of bell and roar of gun Send the tidings up and down. How the belfries rock and reel! How the great guns, peal on peal, Fling the joy from town to town! Ring, O... |
|
THY 1 error, Frémont, simply was to act A brave man’s part, without the statesman’s tact, And, taking counsel but of common sense, To strike at cause as well as consequence. O, never yet since Roland wound his horn At Roncesvalles has a blast been blown Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine... |