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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420487" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Expostulation</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">OUR fellow-countrymen in chains!<br>Slaves, in a land of light and law!<br>Slaves, crouching on the very plains<br>Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!<br>A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood,<br>A. wail where Camden's martyrs fell,<br>By every shrine of patriot blood,<br>From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By storied hill and hallowed grot,<br>By mossy wood and marshy glen,<br>Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,<br>And hurrying shout of Marion's men!<br>The groan of breaking hearts is there,<br>The falling lash, the fetter's clank!<br>Slaves, slaves are breathing in that air<br>Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What, ho! our countrymen in chains!<br>The whip on woman's shrinking flesh!<br>Our soil yet reddening with the stains<br>Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh!<br>What! mothers from their children riven!<br>What! God's own image bought and sold!<br>Americans to market driven,<br>And bartered as the brute for gold!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Speak! shall their agony of prayer<br>Come thrilling to our hearts in vain?<br>To us whose fathers scorned to bear<br>The paltry menace of a chain;<br>To us, whose boast is loud and long<br>Of holy Liberty and Light;<br>Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong<br>Plead vainly for their plundered Right?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What! shall we send, with lavish breath,<br>Our sympathies across the wave,<br>Where Manhood, on the field of death,<br>Strikes for his freedom or a grave?<br>Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung<br>For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning,<br>And millions hail with pen and tongue<br>Our light on all her altars burning?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France,<br>By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's wall,<br>And Poland, gasping on her lance,<br>The impulse of our cheering call?<br>And shall the slave, beneath our eye,<br>Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain?<br>And toss his fettered arms on high,<br>And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be<br>A refuge for the stricken slave?<br>And shall the Russian serf go free<br>By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave?<br>And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane<br>Relax the iron hand of pride,<br>And bid his bondmen cast the chain<br>From fettered soul and limb aside?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall every flap of England's flag<br>Proclaim that all around are free,<br>From farthest Ind to each blue crag<br>That beetles o'er the Western Sea?<br>And shall we scoff at Europe's kings,<br>When Freedom's fire is dim with us,<br>And round our country's altar clings<br>The damning shade of Slavery's curse?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Go, let us ask of Constantine<br>To loose his grasp on Poland's throat;<br>And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line<br>To spare the struggling Suliote;<br>Will not the scorching answer come<br>From turbaned Turk, and scornful Russ<br>'Go, loose your fettered slaves at home,<br>Then turn, and ask the like of us!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Just God! and shall we calmly rest,<br>The Christian's scorn, the heathen's mirth,<br>Content to live the lingering jest<br>And by-word of a mocking Earth?<br>Shall our own glorious land retain<br>That curse which Europe scorns to bear?<br>Shall our own brethren drag the chain<br>Which not even Russia's menials wear?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Up, then, in Freedom's manly part,<br>From graybeard eld to fiery youth,<br>And on the nation's naked heart<br>Scatter the living coals of Truth!<br>Up! while ye slumber, deeper yet<br>The shadow of our fame is growing!<br>Up! while ye pause, our sun may set<br>In blood, around our altars flowing!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth,<br>The gathered wrath of God and man,<br>Like that which wasted Egypt's earth,<br>When hail and fire above it ran.<br>Hear ye no warnings in the air?<br>Feel ye no earthquake underneath?<br>Up, up! why will ye slumber where<br>The sleeper only wakes in death?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rise now for Freedom! not in strife<br>Like that your sterner fathers saw,<br>The awful waste of human life,<br>The glory and the guilt of war:'<br>But break the chain, the yoke remove,<br>And smite to earth Oppression's rod,<br>With those mild arms of Truth and Love,<br>Made mighty through the living God!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down let the shrine of Moloch sink,<br>And leave no traces where it stood;<br>Nor longer let its idol drink<br>His daily cup of human blood;<br>But rear another altar there,<br>To Truth and Love and Mercy given,<br>And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's prayer,<br>Shall call an answer down from Heaven!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Greenleaf+Whittier">John Greenleaf Whittier</a><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=420487" data-title="Expostulation de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="OUR fellow-countrymen in chains!
Slaves, in a land of light and law!
Slaves, crouching on the very plains
Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!
A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood,
A. wail where Camden's martyrs fell,
By every shrine of patriot b..."></div>
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