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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420653" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Branded Hand</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray,<br>And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day;<br>With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain<br>Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain!<br>Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal cravens aim<br>To make God's truth thy falsehood, His holiest work thy shame?<br>When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,<br>How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!<br>They change to wrong the duty which God hath written out<br>On the great heart of humanity, too legible for doubt!<br>They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown,<br>Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!<br>Why, that brand is highest honor! than its traces never yet<br>Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set;<br>And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand,<br>Shall tell with pride the story of their father's branded hand!<br>As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back from Syrian wars<br>The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimitars,<br>The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's crimson span,<br>So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of God and man.<br>He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave,<br>Thou for His living presence in the bound and bleeding slave;<br>He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,<br>Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God!<br>For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip o'er him swung,<br>From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery wrung,<br>And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine,<br>Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured the bondman's blood for wine;<br>While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour knelt<br>And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt;<br>Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim,<br>And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!<br>In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below,<br>Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know;<br>God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angels only can,<br>That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man!<br>That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law and creed,<br>In the depth of God's great goodness may find mercy in his need;<br>But woe to him who crushes the soul with chain and rod,<br>And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!.<br>Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of the wave!<br>Its branded palm shall prophesy, 'Salvation to the Slave!'<br>Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads may feel<br>His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.<br>Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air;<br>Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there!<br>Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce's heart of yore,<br>In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before!<br>And the masters of the slave-land shall tremble at that sign,<br>When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan line<br>Can the craft of State avail them? Can a Christless church withstand,<br>In the van of Freedom's onset, the coming of that hand?</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=420653" data-title="The Branded Hand de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray,
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day;
With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of p..."></div>
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