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

OFFICIAL PIETY.

Suggested by reading a state paper, wherein the higher law is invoked to sustain the lower one.

     A Pious magistrate! sound his praise throughout
     The wondering churches. Who shall henceforth doubt
     That the long-wished millennium draweth nigh?
     Sin in high places has become devout,
     Tithes mint, goes painful-faced, and prays its lie
     Straight up to Heaven, and calls it piety!
     The pirate, watching from his bloody deck
     The weltering galleon, heavy with the gold
     Of Acapulco, holding death in check
     While prayers are said, brows crossed, and beads are told;
     The robber, kneeling where the wayside cross
     On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss
     From his own carbine, glancing still abroad
     For some new victim, offering thanks to God!
     Rome, listening at her altars to the cry
     Of midnight Murder, while her hounds of hell
     Scour France, from baptized cannon and holy bell
     And thousand-throated priesthood, loud and high,
     Pealing Te Deums to the shuddering sky,
     "Thanks to the Lord, who giveth victory!"
     What prove these, but that crime was ne'er so black
     As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to lack?
     Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he lays
     His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural phrase
     And saintly posture, gives to God the praise
     And honor of the monstrous progeny.
     What marvel, then, in our own time to see
     His old devices, smoothly acted o'er,—
     Official piety, locking fast the door
     Of Hope against three million soups of men,—
     Brothers, God's children, Christ's redeemed,—and then,
     With uprolled eyeballs and on bended knee,
     Whining a prayer for help to hide the key!

     1853.