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Anti-Slavery Poems II. - From Volume III., the Works of Whittier: Anti-Slavery - Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform by John Greenleaf Whittier
page 31 of 71 (43%)
They leeched him with the "Democrat;"
They blistered with the "Freeman."

Ah! grisly portents! What avail
Your terrors of forewarning?
We wake to find the nightmare Hale
Astride our breasts at morning!
From Portsmouth lights to Indian stream
Our foes their throats are trying;
The very factory-spindles seem
To mock us while they're flying.

The hills have bonfires; in our streets
Flags flout us in our faces;
The newsboys, peddling off their sheets,
Are hoarse with our disgraces.
In vain we turn, for gibing wit
And shoutings follow after,
As if old Kearsarge had split
His granite sides with laughter.

What boots it that we pelted out
The anti-slavery women, [9]
And bravely strewed their hall about
With tattered lace and trimming?
Was it for such a sad reverse
Our mobs became peacemakers,
And kept their tar and wooden horse
For Englishmen and Quakers?

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