Classic Poem

When the stealthy twilight's coming is shadowing the room,
And the cheerful fire leaps upward, the brighter for the gloom,
And a sense of all the blessings that God has made our own,
Seems clearer to the spirit than when the daylight shone;

Then, in that holy season of thankfulness and prayer,
The solemn angel-monitors God stations everywhere,
Draw back the folded curtains whereon our day dreams glow,
And show behind, the miseries that other hearts must know.

And so, last evening, sitting with dear household voices round,
Making their pleasant music, there came a deeper sound,
A voice that called my spirit from the fireside, far away
To where a woman and a slave upon her death-bed lay.

Before her eyes already had passed a dread eclipse,
And her hand groped round for water to wet her fevered lips,
" They have not left me even one, " in anguished tones she said,
" Of all the children I have borne, to hold my dying head.

" My children always cheered me, they were so good and kind,
But sometimes when I looked at them, a thought would cross my mind
That used to make the sunshine of summer days feel cold, —
The thought the dreadful day would come when they should all be sold.

" But I tried hard to forget it and to think it could not be,
For I was everything to them and they were all to me,
And it seemed well-nigh impossible that any human heart
Was cold enough and harsh enough to tear us all apart.

" So they grew up and worked with me under the bright sunshine
Until I dared to look at them and think of them as mine.
It was not long that on my heart this sense of comfort lay,
For very soon they came to take my eldest boy away.

" They rang their silver, coin by coin, under my very eyes,
It sounded louder in their ears than could a mother's cries:
Then I gathered all my children, save the lost one, in despair,
As a hen folds in her chickens when a hawk is in the air.

" They came again, and then again, again, and then again,
They bore off one from me each time, those iron-hearted men,
Till, of the six my God had given, they left to me but one,
And then they bade me bow my head and say, " His will be done!"

" They left my youngest, and for her I toiled with double strength
When master's working-hours were through, that I might earn at length
Enough to buy her freedom back, when the sure day should come
And bring those men to take from me what made my hut a home.

" Ten years of toil has passed away (she was but six years old
When tightly folded in my arms she saw her sister sold);
And now she was a woman grown, so active and so gay,
That light of heart as any bird, she sang the livelong day.

" Ten years of toil had quickly passed and added to our store,
So that each day the certainty of freedom grew still more;
The price was high, too, I had set, for I'd a mother's pride, —
And yet the beauty of my child, I only wished to hide.

" They came at last, we felt prepared, nay, felt even glad,
That I could hold within my hand the only claim I had
To call her daughter, seeing that which, at her hour of birth,
God gave in heaven, was valueless as dust upon the earth.

" They came, and we with trembling hands counted the money out, —
But master hardly looked at it, and said, turning about,
" Ten times the money that lies there was paid for her to-night,
And she must go!" Then everything grew black before my sight.

" And she was gone, and from that time I only wished for death;
Now it has come, how willingly I breathe my latest breath!
But thou hast told me in my heart not long, O Lord, not long
Shall the race be to the swift and the battle to the strong. "

I saw no more, my saddened soul returned to whence it came.
Less brightly then before my eyes leapt up the cheerful flame;
And louder than those voices dear I heard the question sound, —
" Do ye remember those in bonds as ye with them were bound? "