Collected Works (Vol. I)

AN APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 137 Let all the world keep silence and behold The wrath of two great nations that are friends Against who bartered Poland, and who sold Italy, weighed out Hungary for gold, And shattered Greece to serve no noble ends. The traitors and the peoples and the kings That love not righteous things ; They shall behold our wrath, and find our anger stings. White slaves shall look up and behold a hight Grow in the islands of the sacred sea, And on the land whose forehead kisses night And has the dawn upon its wings, whose might Is mightier for the lips of Liberty Pressed on its new-born cheek, when Church and State Drove forth to baffle Fate Our sires and yours, whose fame is grown this year so great. That morning of deliverance is at hand; The world requickens, and all folk rejoice, Seeing our kingdom look toward your land, And both catch hands, indissolubly grand In the proud friendship of a better choice. Your winds that wrought wild wreckage on our shore Shall sink and be no more, Or waft your barks, with wheat gold-laden, swiftly o’er. Our foamcaps, that your rocks disdainful flung Back to the waves that left our beaten coast, Shall be like echoes of sweet songs unsung, And all the ocean noises find a tongue To voice the clamour of a righteous boast— That friendship and dominion shall be wrought Out of the womb of thought, And all the bygone days be held for things of nought. What matter though our fathers did you wrong ? Though brave sons brake our bitter yoke? Though we Strove to compel you to a cruel thong? What, though the stronger did defeat the strong? Both, wild and patient as the steep strong sea ? What matter that some strive to waken hate, Traitors to either state, Hang them inchains! Our way to Freedom cannot wait ! The petty partisans of party war, The hireling quillmen, and the jingo crowd, The well-paid patriots, scenting from afar Silence, their doom—shall they eclipse the Star Now crescent in the sky, whose music loud Rejoices humble hearts and true men all, And sounds the funeral Dirge of slave, tyrant, priest, that snarl, and snarling fall ? These we forget—remembering only this : Ye are blood-brothers, and our tongues are one ; Our hopes and conquests in one splendid kiss Unite and struggle not for empire. Is Our land and yours too little for the sun To gladden, to illume, to bid increase, Bound by two mighty seas In one fraternal clasp of admirable peace? Ye are our brothers; ye have spurned the power That bound the islands of your eastern shore 3 Ye have restored to freedom that fair flower; Cuba, in her most agonising hour, And east and west have thundered with red war. We freed us from the slavery of Spain, And laid upon the main Our hand three centuries back—and ye have struck again.