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BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE.

JOHN BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE spake on his dying day :

"I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery's pay;

But let some poor slave-mother whom I have

striven to free,

With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!"

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die ;

And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh:

Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old

harsh face grew mild,

As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro's child!

The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart,

And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the loving heart;

That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the good intent,

And round the grisly fighter's hair the martyr's aureole bent!

WHAT CONSTITUTES A STATE?

WHAT constitutes a State?

Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to
pride.

Nomen, high-minded men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued

In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude, Men who their duties know,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare main tain,

Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain ;
These constitute a State;

And sovereign law, that State's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate

Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.
Smit by her sacred frown,
The fiend, Dissension, like a vapor sinks;

And e'en the all-dazzling crown
Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.

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He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves beside. There's not a chain
That hellish foes confederate for his harm
Can wind around him, but he casts it off
With as much ease as Samson his green withes.
He looks abroad into the varied field

Of nature; and though poor, perhaps, compared
With those whose mansions glitter in his sight,
Calls the delightful scenery all his own.
His are the mountains, and the valley his,
And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel
But who, with filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say, "My Father made them all!"
Are they not his by a peculiar right,
And by an emphasis of interest his,
Whose eyes they fill with tears of holy joy,
Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind
With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love
That planned and built, and still upholds, a
world

So clothed with beauty for rebellious man?
Yes, ye may fill your garners, ye that reap
The loaded soil, and ye may waste much good
In senseless riot; but ye will not find
In feast, or in the chase, in song or dance,
A liberty like his, who, unimpeached
Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong,
Appropriates nature as his Father's work,
And has a richer use of yours than you.
He is indeed a freeman. Free by birth
Of no mean city, planned or e'er the hills
Were built, the fountains opened, or the sea
With all his roaring multitude of waves.
His freedom is the same in every state;
And no condition of this changeful life,
So manifold in cares, whose every day
Brings its own evil with it, makes it less.
For he has wings that neither sickness, pain,
Nor penury can cripple or confine ;

No nook so narrow but he spreads them there

THE REFORMER.

ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path.

The Church beneath her trembling dome Essayed in vain her ghostly charm: Wealth shook within his gilded home With strange alarm.

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