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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117376" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Confessions of The Year</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The gray old year—the dying year,<br>His sands were well nigh run;<br>When there came by one in priestly weed,<br>To ask of the deeds he'd done.<br>“Now tell me, ere thou treadst the path<br>Thy brethren all have trode,<br>The scenes that life has shown to thee<br>Upon thine onward road.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“I've seen the sunbeam rise and set,<br>As it rose and set before<br>And the hearts of men bent earthwardly,<br>As they have been evermore;<br>The Christian raised his hallow'd fanes,<br>And bent the knee to God;<br>But his hand was strong, and guilt and wrong<br>Defaced the earth he trod.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“The Indian, by his forest streams,<br>Still chased the good red deer,<br>Or turn'd away to kneel and pray<br>With the Christian's faith and fear;<br>The hunting-knife he flung aside,<br>He dropp'd the warrior blade,<br>And delved for bread the soil o'er which<br>His fathers idly stray'd.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“The white man saw that gold was there,<br>And sought, with savage hand,<br>To drive his guiltless brother forth,<br>A wanderer o'er the land.<br>I saw—and gave the tale of shame<br>To swell on history's page,—<br>A blot upon Columbia's name<br>For many a future age.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“With aching brow and wearied limb,<br>The slave his toil pursued;<br>And oft I saw the cruel scourge<br>Deep in his blood imbrued;<br>He till'd oppression's soil, where men<br>For liberty had bled,<br>And the eagle wing of Freedom waved<br>In mockery, o'er his head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“The earth was fill'd with the triumph shout<br>Of men who had burst their chains;<br>But his, the heaviest of them all,<br>Still lay on his burning veins;<br>In his master's hall there was luxury,<br>And wealth, and mental light;<br>But the very book of the Christian law<br>Was hidden from him in night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“In his master's halls there was wine and mirth,<br>And songs for the newly free;<br>But his own low cabin was desolate<br>Of all but misery.<br>He felt it all—and to bitterness<br>His heart within him turn'd,<br>While the panting wish for liberty<br>Like a fire in his bosom burn'd.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“The haunting thought of his wrongs grew changed<br>To a darker and fiercer hue,<br>Till the horrible shape it sometimes wore<br>At last familiar grew;<br>There was darkness all within his heart,<br>And madness in his soul,<br>And the demon spark, in his bosom nursed,<br>Blazed up beyond control.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“Then came a scene—oh! such a scene!<br>I would I might forget<br>The ringing sound of the midnight scream,<br>And the hearth-stone redly wet!<br>The mother slain while she shriek'd in vain<br>For her infant's threaten'd life,<br>And the flying form of the frighted child,<br>Struck down by the bloody knife.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“There's many a heart that yet will start,<br>From its troubled sleep, at night,<br>As the horrid form of the vengeful slave<br>Comes in dreams before the sight.<br>The slave was crush'd, and his fetters’ link<br>Drawn tighter than before;<br>And the bloody earth again was drench'd<br>With the streams of his flowing gore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“Ah! know they not, that the tightest band<br>Must burst with the wildest power?—<br>That the more the slave is oppress'd and wrong'd,<br>Will be fiercer his rising hour?<br>They may thrust him back with the arm of might,<br>They may drench the earth with his blood,—<br>But the best and purest of their own,<br>Will blend with the sanguine flood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“I could tell thee more,—but my strength is gone,<br>And my breath is wasting fast;<br>Long ere the darkness to-night has fled,<br>Will my life from the earth have pass'd;<br>But this, the sum of all I have learn'd,<br>Ere I go I will tell to thee;—<br>If tyrants would hope for tranquil hearts,<br>They must let the oppress'd go free.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Elizabeth+Margaret+Chandler">Elizabeth Margaret Chandler</a> from <i>Poetical Works</i><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117376" data-title="The Confessions of The Year de Elizabeth Margaret Chandler" data-description="The gray old year—the dying year,/His sands were well nigh run;/When there came by one in priestly weed,/To ask of the deeds he'd done./“Now tell me, ere thou treadst the path/Thy brethren all have trode,/The scenes that life has shown to thee..."></div>
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