  How weird a whisper! 'tis from Wallabout. 'Tis glory hoarse with calling: "Raise those hulks Where writhe my faithful." See! the tory skulks Behind the sun who, stooping to fill out Their throats with his god-breath, to swell the shout Of a free people, finds the brave in bulks, Strewn and held fast where Darkness, beaten, sulks That thrall has been forever put to rout. Those mangled thousands are not dead; they live, Refashioned men by freedom. Is the tory Behind the sun, to mock me, who am Glory, Being the lifted life those martyrs give? He creeps beneath the sun and, ghastly gory, Crys out: "Thou yet shall be the fugitive". IIOh, weirder grows the whisper into word, As sharp as lightening, and as broad of reach, As seas, flung down by God to every beach Where thirsts a sparrow, or a bleating herd! There is no soul through out the land, not stirred; For, oh, to glory God gives his own speech When darkness, raised by Gold, declares that each, Hulk-held, is good but for the wolf and bird. Is Gold grown conscious, now the Country's King That, at his beck, the blood for Freedom spilt Shall be accursed, and I, then, for the guilt Of dropping not with thud, as he with ring At Darkness' feet, be shut in mud and silt Forever and with stars, cease, beaconing? IIIOh, as the earth in discord and in dark, When struck by Love on high with will for mace, Keeps rattling till each mote finds its true place, And mountain, fledged with groves, vies with the lark To reach the sunrise; so the madness stark Of gold, dethroning blood as God's best grace, When struck by Glory's voice drops Nadir-base, And blood for Freedom spilt, forms heaven's blue arc. The shouts of millions shake Oblivion's mire And raise Thrall's Hulks. Look! Justice's stooping sun, Seeing in agony's each, a Washington, Breaths life in them, and, over Brooklyn's spire And New York's Babel Tower, they, one by one, Hold Liberty's broading Torch of quenchless fire. |
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