Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete

LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER.

     A pleasant print to peddle out
     In lands of rice and cotton;
     The model of that face in dough
     Would make the artist's fortune.
     For Fame to thee has come unsought,
     While others vainly woo her,
     In proof how mean a thing can make
     A great man of its doer.

     To whom shall men thyself compare,
     Since common models fail 'em,
     Save classic goose of ancient Rome,
     Or sacred ass of Balaam?
     The gabble of that wakeful goose
     Saved Rome from sack of Brennus;
     The braying of the prophet's ass
     Betrayed the angel's menace!

     So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats,
     And azure-tinted hose oil,
     Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets
     The slow-match of explosion—
     An earthquake blast that would have tossed
     The Union as a feather,
     Thy instinct saved a perilled land
     And perilled purse together.

     Just think of Carolina's sage
     Sent whirling like a Dervis,
     Of Quattlebum in middle air
     Performing strange drill-service!
     Doomed like Assyria's lord of old,
     Who fell before the Jewess,
     Or sad Abimelech, to sigh,
     "Alas! a woman slew us!"

     Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise
     The danger darkly lurking,
     And maiden bodice dreaded more
     Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkin.
     How keen to scent the hidden plot!
     How prompt wert thou to balk it,
     With patriot zeal and pedler thrift,
     For country and for pocket!

     Thy likeness here is doubtless well,
     But higher honor's due it;
     On auction-block and negro-jail
     Admiring eyes should view it.
     Or, hung aloft, it well might grace
     The nation's senate-chamber—
     A greedy Northern bottle-fly
     Preserved in Slavery's amber!

     1850.