OUR fellow-countrymen in chains!
Slaves, in a land of light and law!
Slaves, crouching on the very plains
Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!
A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood,

A wail where Camden's martyrs fell,

1 Dr. Charles Follen, a German patriot, who had come to America for the freedom which was denied him in his native land, allied himself with the abolitionists, and at a convention of delegates from all the anti-slavery organizations in New England, held at Boston in May, 1834, was chairman of a committee to prepare an address to the people of New England. Toward the close of the address occurred the passage which suggested these lines: -

The despotism which our fathers could not bear in their native country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her reformed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the United States - the free United States, which could not bear the bonds of a king cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?' (WHITTIER.)

The original title of the poem was simply' Stanzas,' and later it was called Follen.' Garrison said of it when it first appeared:

Our gifted Brother Whittier has again seized the great trumpet of Liberty, and blown a blast that shall ring from Maine to the Rocky Mountains.'

The poem became popular throughout the North and West, and was for many years a favorite at declamation contests and anti-slavery meetings.

By every shrine of patriot blood,
From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's wel
By storied bill and hallowed grot,
By mossy wood and marshy glen,
Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,
And hurrying shout of Marion's men!
The groan of breaking hearts is there,
The falling lash, the fetter's clank!
Slaves, slaves are breathing in that air
Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank

What ho! our countrymen in chains!
The whip on woman's shrinking flesh!
Our soil yet reddening with the stains
Caught from her scourging, warm an
fresh!

What! mothers from their children river
What! God's own image bought and sol
Americans to market driven,

And bartered as the brute for gold!

Speak! shall their agony of prayer

Come thrilling to our hearts in vain ? To us whose fathers scorned to bear The paltry menace of a chain; To us, whose boast is loud and long Of holy Liberty and Light; Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong Plead vainly for their plundered Right

What! shall we send, with lavish breath, Our sympathies across the wave, Where Manhood, on the field of death,

Strikes for his freedom or a grave? Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning And millions hail with pen and tongue Our light on all her altars burning?

Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France, By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's wal And Poland, gasping on her lance,

The impulse of our cheering call? And shall the slave, beneath our eye, Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain? And toss his fettered arms on high, And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain?

Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be

A refuge for the stricken slave? And shall the Russian serf go free

By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave? And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane Relax the iron hand of pride,

ΙΟ

Its sparkling waters blend with thine.
There's not a tree upon thy side,
Nor rock, which thy returning tide
As yet hath left abrupt and stark
Above thy evening water-mark;
No calm cove with its rocky hem,
No isle whose emerald swells begem
Thy broad, smooth current; not a sail
Bowed to the freshening ocean gale;
No small boat with its busy oars,
Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores;
Nor farm-house with its maple shade,
Or rigid poplar colonnade,
But lies distinct and full in sight,
Beneath this gush of sunset light.
Centuries ago, that harbor-bar,
Stretching its length of foam afar,
And Salisbury's beach of shining sand,
And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand,
Saw the adventurer's tiny sail,

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Flit, stooping from the eastern gale;
And o'er these woods and waters broke
The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak, 30
As brightly on the voyager's eye
Weary of forest, sea, and sky,
Breaking the dull continuous wood,
The Merrimac rolled down his flood;
Mingling that clear pellucid brock,
Which channels vast Agioochook

When spring-time's sun and shower unlock
The frozen fountains of the rock,

And more abundant waters given

From that pure lake, 'The Smile of

Heaven,' 1

Tributes from vale and mountain-side, With ocean's dark, eternal tide !

On yonder rocky cape, which braves
The stormy challenge of the waves,
Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood,
The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood,2
Planting upon the topmost crag
The staff of England's battle-flag;
And, while from out its heavy fold
Saint George's crimson cross unrolled,
Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare,
And weapons brandishing in air,
He gave to that lone promontory

1 Winnipesaukee. The Indian name was thought to mean The Smile of the Great Spirit.' See 'The Lakeside' and 'Summer by the Lakeside.'

2 The celebrated Captain Smith, after resigning the government of the Colony in Virginia, in his capacity of Admiral of New England,' made a careful survey of the coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, in the summer of 1614. (WHITTIER.)

3 Captain Smith gave to the promontory now called

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Home of my fathers! I have stood Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood: Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade Along his frowning Palisade; Looked down the Appalachian peak On Juniata's silver streak; Have seen along his valley gleam The Mohawk's softly winding stream; The level light of sunset shine Through broad Potomac's hem of pine; And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna; Yet wheresoe'er his step might be, Thy wandering child looked back to thee! Heard in his dreams thy river's sound Of murmuring on its pebbly bound, The unforgotten swell and roar Of waves on thy familiar shore; And saw, amidst the curtained gloom And quiet of his lonely room, Thy sunset scenes before him pass; As, in Agrippa's magic glass, The loved and lost arose to view, Remembered groves in greenness grew, Bathed still in childhood's morning dew, Along whose bowers of beauty swept Whatever Memory's mourners wept, Cape Ann, the name of Tragabizanda, in memory of his young and beautiful mistress of that name, who, while he was a captive at Constantinople, like Desdemona, 'loved him for the dangers he had passed.' (WHITTIER.)

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100

bower,

Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright,
And stainless in its holy white,

Unfolding like a morning flower:
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute,
With every breath of feeling woke,
And, even when the tongue was mute,
From eye and lip in music spoke.

How thrills once more the lengthening chain

Of memory, at the thought of thee! Old hopes which long in dust have lain, Old dreams, come thronging back again, And boyhood lives again in me;

I feel its glow upon my cheek,

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1 It was not without thought and deliberation, that in 1888 he directed this poem to be placed at the head of his Poems Subjective and Reminiscent. He had never before publicly acknowledged how much of his heart was wrapped up in this delightful play of poetic fancy. The poem was written in 1841, and although the romance it embalms lies far back of this date, possibly there is a heart still beating which fully understands its meaning. The biographer can do no more than make this suggestion, which has the sanction of the poet's explicit word. To a friend who told him that Memories was her favorite poem, he said, 'I love it too; but I hardly knew whether to publish it, it was so personal and near my heart.' (Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. i, p. 276.)

See also Pickard's Whittier-Land, pp. 66-67, and the poem My Playmate.'

2 Whittier was especially fond of these two opening stanzas. He had already used the lines to describe an ideal character in Moll Pitcher,' published in 1832, but not now included in his collected works.