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

BURIAL OF BARBER.

Thomas Barber was shot December 6, 1855, near Lawrence, Kansas.

     BEAR him, comrades, to his grave;
     Never over one more brave
     Shall the prairie grasses weep,
     In the ages yet to come,
     When the millions in our room,
     What we sow in tears, shall reap.

     Bear him up the icy hill,
     With the Kansas, frozen still
     As his noble heart, below,
     And the land he came to till
     With a freeman's thews and will,
     And his poor hut roofed with snow.

     One more look of that dead face,
     Of his murder's ghastly trace!
     One more kiss, O widowed one
     Lay your left hands on his brow,
     Lift your right hands up, and vow
     That his work shall yet be done.

     Patience, friends! The eye of God
     Every path by Murder trod
     Watches, lidless, day and night;
     And the dead man in his shroud,
     And his widow weeping loud,
     And our hearts, are in His sight.

     Every deadly threat that swells
     With the roar of gambling hells,
     Every brutal jest and jeer,
     Every wicked thought and plan
     Of the cruel heart of man,
     Though but whispered, He can hear!

     We in suffering, they in crime,
     Wait the just award of time,
     Wait the vengeance that is due;
     Not in vain a heart shall break,
     Not a tear for Freedom's sake
     Fall unheeded: God is true.

     While the flag with stars bedecked
     Threatens where it should protect,
     And the Law shakes Hands with Crime,
     What is left us but to wait,
     Match our patience to our fate,
     And abide the better time?

     Patience, friends! The human heart
     Everywhere shall take our part,
     Everywhere for us shall pray;
     On our side are nature's laws,
     And God's life is in the cause
     That we suffer for to-day.

     Well to suffer is divine;
     Pass the watchword down the line,
     Pass the countersign: "Endure."
     Not to him who rashly dares,
     But to him who nobly bears,
     Is the victor's garland sure.

     Frozen earth to frozen breast,
     Lay our slain one down to rest;
     Lay him down in hope and faith,
     And above the broken sod,
     Once again, to Freedom's God,
     Pledge ourselves for life or death,

     That the State whose walls we lay,
     In our blood and tears, to-day,
     Shall be free from bonds of shame,
     And our goodly land untrod
     By the feet of Slavery, shod
     With cursing as with flame!

     Plant the Buckeye on his grave,
     For the hunter of the slave
     In its shadow cannot rest; I
     And let martyr mound and tree
     Be our pledge and guaranty
     Of the freedom of the West!

     1856.