JOHN BROWN.
The Great Republic bred her free-born
sons
To smother conscience in the coward's
hush,
And had to have a freedom-champion's
Blood sprinkled in her face to make her
blush.
One will become a passion to avenge
Her shame-a fury consecrate and weird,
As if the old religion of Stonehenge
Amid our weakling worships reappeared.
It was a drawn sword of Jehovah's wrath,
Two-edged and flaming, waved back to a
host
Of mighty shadows gathering on its path,
Soon to emerge as soldiers, when the
ghost
Of John Brown should the lines of battle
form.
When John Brown crossed the Nation's
Rubicon,
Him freedom followed in the
battle-storm,
And John Brown's soul in song went
marching on.
Though John Brown's body lay beneath the
sod,
His soul released the winds and loosed
the flood;
The Nation wrought his will as hest of
God,
And her blood-guiltiness atoned with
blood.
The world may censure and the world
regret;
The present wrath becomes the future
ruth;
For stern old History does not forget
The man who flings his life away for
truth.
In the far time to come, when it shall
irk
The schoolboy to recite our Presidents
Dull line of memorabilia, John Brown's
work
Shall thrill him through from all the
elements.
- Coates Kinney.
July, 1897.
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