And make just laws below the sun,

As planets faithful be.

And ye shall succor men;

’Tis nobleness to serve;

Help them who cannot help again:

Beware from right to swerve.

I break your bonds and masterships,

And I unchain the slave:

Free be his heart and hand henceforth

As wind and wandering wave.

I cause from every creature

His proper good to flow:

As much as he is and doeth,

So much he shall bestow.

But, laying hands on another

To coin his labor and sweat,

He goes in pawn to his victim

For eternal years in debt.

To-day unbind the captive,

So only are ye unbound;

Lift up a people from the dust,

Trump of their rescue, sound!

Pay ransom to the owner,

And fill the bag to the brim.

Who is the owner? The slave is owner,

And ever was. Pay him.

O North! give him beauty for rags,

And honor, O South! for his shame;

Nevada! coin thy golden crags

With Freedom’s image and name.

Up! and the dusky race

That sat in darkness long, –

Be swift their feet as antelopes,

And as behemoth strong.

Come, East and West and North,

By races, as snow-flakes,

And carry my purpose forth,

Which neither halts nor shakes.

My will fulfilled shall be,

For, in daylight or in dark,

My thunderbolt has eyes to see

His way home to the mark.

LOVE AND THOUGHT

Two well-assorted travellers use

The highway, Eros and the Muse.

From the twins is nothing hidden,

To the pair is naught forbidden;

Hand in hand the comrades go

Every nook of nature through:

Each for other they were born,

Each can other best adorn;

They know one only mortal grief

Past all balsam or relief,

When, by false companions crossed,

The pilgrims have each other lost.

LOVER’S PETITION

Good Heart, that ownest all!

I ask a modest boon and small:

Not of lands and towns the gift, –

Too large a load for me to lift, –

But for one proper creature,

Which geographic eye,

Sweeping the map of Western earth,

Or the Atlantic coast, from Maine

To Powhatan’s domain,

Could not descry.

Is ’t much to ask in all thy huge creation,

So trivial a part, –

A solitary heart?

Yet count me not of spirit mean,

Or mine a mean demand,

For ’t is the concentration

And worth of all the land,

The sister of the sea,

The daughter of the strand,

Composed of air and light,

And of the swart earth-might.

So little to thy poet’s prayer

Thy large bounty well can spare.

And yet I think, if she were gone,

The world were better left alone.

UNA

Roving, roving, as it seems,

Una lights my clouded dreams;

Still for journeys she is dressed;

We wander far by east and west.

In the homestead, homely thought;

At my work I ramble not;

If from home chance draw me wide,

Half-seen Una sits beside.

In my house and garden-plot,

Though beloved, I miss her not;