A voice from Harper's Ferry/John Brown of Osawatomie
[From the Boston Liberator.]
JOHN BROWN OF OSAWATOMIE.
BY G. D. WHITMORE.
So you've convicted old John Brown! brave old Brown of Osawatomie!
And you gave him a chivalrous trial, lying groaning on the floor,
With his body ripped with gashes, deaf with pain from sabre slashes,
Over the head received, when the deadly fight was o'er;
Bound him guns with lighted matches, judge and lawyers pale as ashes—
For he might, perhaps, come to again, and put you all to flight,
Or surround you, as before!
You think, no doubt, you've tried John Brown, but he's laid there trying you,
And the world has been his jury, and its judgment's swift and true:
Over the globe the tale has rung, back to your hearts the verdict's flung,
That you're found, as you've been always found, a brutal, cowardly crew!
At the wave of his hand to a dozen men, two thousand slunk like hounds;
He kennelled you up, and kept you too, till twice you saw through the azure blue,
The day-star circle round.
No longer the taunt, our history's new, "our hero is yet to come"—
We've suddenly leaped a thousand years beyond the rolling sun!
And, sheeted round with a martyr's glory, again on earth's renewed the story
Of bravery, truth, and righteousness, a battle lost and won;
A life laid down for the poor and weak, the immortal crown put on;
The spark of Luther's touched to the pile—swords gleam—black smoke obscures the sun—
And the slave and his master are gone!
Ages hence, when all is over that shocks the sense of the world to-day,
Pilgrims will mount the western wave, seeking the new Thermopylæ;
Then, for that brave old man with many sons, mangled and murdered, one by one,
Whose ghosts rise up from Harper's gorge, Missouri's plains, and far away
Where Kansas' grains wave tinged with their blood, will the column rise!
The Poet's song and History's page will the deeds prolong of John of Osawatomie,
The Martyr to Truth and Right!