And with the idle gallows-rope

The young child played.

Where the doomed victim in his cell
Had counted o'er the weary hours,
Glad school-girls, answering to the bell,
Came crowned with flowers.

Grown wiser for the lesson given,
I fear no longer, for I know
That, where the share is deepest driven,
The best fruits grow.

The outworn rite, the old abuse,
The pious fraud transparent grown,
The good held captive in the use
Of wrong alone,—

These wait their doom, from that great law
Which makes the past time serve to-day;
And fresher life the world shall draw
From their decay.

O backward-looking son of time!
The new is old, the old is new,
The cycle of a change sublime
Still sweeping through.

So wisely taught the Indian seer;
Destroying Seva, forming Brahm,
Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear,
Are one, the same.

Idly as thou, in that old day

Thou mournest, did thy sire repine; So, in his time, thy child grown grey Shall sigh for thine.

But life shall on and upward go;

The eternal step of Progress beats To that great anthem, calm and slow, Which God repeats.

Take heart!—the Waster builds again,—
A charmed life old Goodness hath;
The tares may perish,—but the grain
Is not for death.

God works in all things; all obey

His first propulsion from the night:
Wake thou and watch!-the world is grey
With morning light!

CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.

[In the report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in Charleston, S. C., on the 4th of the 9th month, 1835, published in the Courier of that city, it is stated, "The clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene."]

JUST God!—and these are they

Who minister at thine altar, God of Right!

Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay On Israel's Ark of light!

What! preach, and kidnap men?

Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
Bolt hard the captive's door?

What! servants of thy own

Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
The homeless and the outcast,-fettering down
The tasked and plundered slave!

Pilate and Herod friends!

Chief priests and rulers as of old combine!
Just God and holy! is that church, which lends
Strength to the spoiler, thine?

Paid hypocrites, who turn

Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book

Of those high words of truth which search and burn In warning and rebuke;

Feed fat, ye locusts, feed!

And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord
That, from the toiling bondman's utter need,
Ye pile your own full board.

How long, O Lord! how long
Shall such a priesthood barter truth away,
And, in thy name, for robbery and wrong
At thy own altars pray?

Is not thy hand stretched forth Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite? Shall not the living God of all the earth, And heaven above, do right?

Woe then to all who grind

Their brethren of a common Father down!
To all who plunder from the immortal mind
Its bright and glorious crown!

Woe to the priesthood! woe

To those whose hire is with the price of blood,-
Perverting, darkening, changing, as they go,
The searching truths of God!

Their glory and their might

Shall perish; and their very names shall be
Vile before all the people, ir the light

Of a world's liberty.

Oh speed the moment on

When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and Love
And Truth and Right throughout the earth be known,
As in their home above!

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.

[In a late publication of L. T. Tasistro,-Random Shots and Southern Breezes, —is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as "A GOOD CHRISTIAN! ']

"A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!"

Who bids for God's own image?-for his grace,
Which that poor victim of the market-place
Hath in her suffering won?

My God! can such things be?

Hast thou not said that whatsoe'er is done
Unto thy weakest and thy humblest one
Is even done to thee?

In that sad victim, then,

Child of thy pitying love, I see thee stand,—
Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,
Bound, sold, and scourged again!

A Christian up for sale!

Wet with her blood your whips, o'ertask her frame, Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame, Her patience shall not fail!

A heathen hand might deal

Back on your heads the gathered wrong of years:
But her low broken prayer and nightly tears

Ye neither heed nor feel.

Con well thy lesson o'er,

Thou prudent teacher,―tell the toiling slave
No dangerous tale of Him who came to save
The outcast and the poor.

But wisely shut the ray

Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart,
And to her darkened mind alone impart
One stern command,—OLEY!

So shalt thou deftly raise

The market-price of human flesh; and, while
On thee their pampered guest the planters smile,
Thy church shall praise.

Grave, reverend men shall tell

From Northern pulpits how thy work was blest,
While, in that vile South Sodom, first and best
Thy poor disciples sell.

O shame! the Moslem thrall,

Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels,
While turning to the sacred Kebla feels
His fetters break and fall.

Cheers for the turbaned Bey
Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath torn
The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne
Their inmates into day.

But our poor slave in vain

Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes,—
Its rites will only swell his market-price,
And rivet on his chain.

God of all right! how long
Shall priestly robbers at thine altar stand,
Lifting, in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand
And haughty brow of wrong?

Oh, from the fields of cane,

From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cell, — From the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell, And coffle's weary chain,—

Hoarse, horrible, and strong,

Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,
"How long, O God, how long?”