Thou for His living presence in the bound and
bleeding slave;
He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,
Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God.

For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip
o'er him swung,
From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of
slavery wrung,
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-
deserted shrine,
Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured the
bondman's blood for wine;

While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour
knelt,
And spurned, the while, the temple where a present
Saviour dwelt;
Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prison
shadows dim,
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!

In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and
wave below,
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling
schoolmen know;
God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angels
only can,
That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of
heaven is Man!