To Englishmen

You flung your taunt across the wave     We bore it as became us,     Well knowing that the fettered slave     Left friendly lips no option save     To pity or to blame us.     You scoffed our plea. Mere lack of will,     Not lack of power, you told us     We showed our free-state records; still     You mocked, confounding good and ill,     Slave-haters and slaveholders.     We struck at Slavery; to the verge     Of power and means we checked it;     Lo!presto, change! its claims you urge,     Send greetings to it oer the surge,     And comfort and protect it.     But yesterday you scarce could shake,     In slave-abhorring rigor,     Our Northern palms for conscience sake     To-day you clasp the hands that ache     With walloping the nigger!*     O Englishmen!in hope and creed,     In blood and tongue our brothers!     We too are heirs of Runnymede;     And Shakespeares fame and Cromwells deed     Are not alone our mothers.     Thicker than water, in one rill     Through centuries of story     Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still     We share with you its good and ill,     The shadow and the glory.     Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave     Nor length of years can part us     Your right is ours to shrine and grave,     The common freehold of the brave,     The gift of saints and martyrs.     Our very sins and follies teach     Our kindred frail and human     We carp at faults with bitter speech,     The while, for one unshared by each,     We have a score in common.     We bowed the heart, if not the knee,     To Englands Queen, God bless her     We praised you when your slaves went free     We seek to unchain ours. Will ye     Join hands with the oppressor?     And is it Christian England cheers     The bruiser, not the bruised?     And must she run, despite the tears     And prayers of eighteen hundred years,     A-muck in Slaverys crusade?     Oh, black disgrace! Oh, shame and loss     Too deep for tongue to phrase on     Tear from your flag its holy cross,     And in your van of battle toss     The pirates skull-bone blazon!