brother

Of A Virginia Slave Mother To Her Daughters Sold Into Southern Bondage

Gone, gone, -- sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings
Where the noisome insect stings
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air;
Gone, gone, -- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone, -- sold and gone

A star is gone! a star is gone!
There is a blank in Heaven;
One of the cherub choir has done
His airy course this even.

He sat upon the orb of fire
That hung for ages there,
And lent his music to the choir
That haunts the nightly air.

But when his thousand years are pass'd,
With a cherubic sigh
He vanish'd with his car at last,
For even cherubs die!

Hear how his angel-brothers mourn -
The minstrels of the spheres -
Each chiming sadly in his turn

The sun does arise,
And make happy the skies;
The merry bells ring
To welcome the spring;
The skylark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around
To the bell's cheerful sound,
While our sports shall be seen
On the Echoing Green.

Old John with white hair,
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk.
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say:
'Such, such were the joys
When we all, girls and boys,
In our youth time were seen

(Act V, scene i)

And this place our forefathers made for man !
This is the process of our Love and Wisdom,
To each poor brother who offends against us--
Most innocent, perhaps--and what if guilty ?
Is this the only cure ? Merciful God !
Each pore and natural outlet shrivell'd up
By Ignorance and parching Poverty,
His energies roll back upon his heart,
And stagnate and corrupt ; till chang'd to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot ;
Then we call in our pamper'd mountebanks--

A Donkey, whose talent for burdens was wondrous,
So much that you'd swear he rejoic'd in a load,
One day had to jog under panniers so pond'rous,
That -- down the poor Donkey fell smack on the road!

His owners and drivers stood round in amaze --
What! Neddy, the patient, the prosperous Neddy,
So easy to drive, through the dirtiest ways,
For every description of job-work so ready!

One driver (whom Ned might have "hail'd" as a "brother")
Had just been proclaiming his Donkey's renown

LATE at een, drinkin' the wine,
   And ere they paid the lawin',
They set a combat them between,
   To fight it in the dawin'.

'O stay at hame, my noble lord!
   O stay at hame, my marrow!
My cruel brother will you betray,
   On the dowie houms o' Yarrow.'

'O fare ye weel, my lady gay!
   O fare ye weel, my Sarah!
For I maun gae, tho' I ne'er return
   Frae the dowie banks o' Yarrow.'

She kiss'd his cheek, she kamed his hair,
   As she had done before, O;

The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

I

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past -they speak

"Take the world!" Zeus exclaimed from his throne in the skies
To the children of man--"take the world I now give;
It shall ever remain as your heirloom and prize,
So divide it as brothers, and happily live."

Then all who had hands sought their share to obtain,
The young and the aged made haste to appear;
The husbandman seized on the fruits of the plain,
The youth through the forest pursued the fleet deer.

The merchant took all that his warehouse could hold,
The abbot selected the last year's best wine,

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. "Silas is back."
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. "Be kind," she said.
She took the market things from Warren's arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

"When was I ever anything but kind to him?