Then And Now. 77

His walls may be bare of pictured grace, His fireside the lowliest place; But the wife and children sheltered there Are his to defend and guard with care. Where haughty tyrants once bore rule Are ballot-box and public school. The old slave-pen of former days Gives place to fanes of prayer and praise.

To-night we would bring our meed of praise To noble friends of darker days; The men and women crowned with light, The true and tried in our gloomy night. To Lundy, whose heart was early stirred To speak for freedom an earnest word; To Garrison, valiant, true and strong, Whose face was as flint against our wrong.

And Phillips, the peerless, grand and brave, A tower of strength to the outcast slave. Earth has no marble too pure and white To enrol his name in golden light. Our Douglass, too, with his massive brain, Who plead our cause with his broken chain, And helped to hurl from his bloody seat The curse that writhed and died at his feet.

78 THEN AND NOW.

And Governor Andrew, who, looking back, Saw none he despised, though poor and black; And Harriet Beecher, whose glowing pen Corroded the chains of fettered men. To-night with greenest laurels we'll crown North Elba's grave where sleeps John Brown, Who made the gallows an altar high, And showed how a brave old man could die. And Lincoln, our martyred President, Who returned to his God with chains he had rent.* And Sumner, amid death's icy chill, Leaving to Hoar his Civil Rights Bill. And let us remember old underground, With all her passengers northward bound, The train that ran till it ceased to pay, With all her dividends given away. Nor let it be said that we have forgot The women who stood with Lucretia Mott; Nor her who to the world was known By the simple name of Lucy stone. A tribute unto a host of others Who knew that men though black were brothers, Who battled against our nation's sin, Whose graves are thick whose ranks are thin. Oh, people chastened in the fire, To nobler, grander things aspire;