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  THE
  ANTI-SLAVERY HARP:
  COLLECTION OF SONGS
  FOR
  ANTI-SLAVERY MEETINGS.

  COMPILED BY
  WILLIAM W. BROWN.

  THIRD EDITION.

  BOSTON:
  PUBLISHED BY BELA MARSH,
  No. 25 Cornhill.
  1851.




  Press of Bazin & Chandler,
  No. 37 Cornhill.




SONGS.




[Illustration]

FREEDOM’S BANNER.

                    AIR--Freedom’s Banner.


  My country, shall thy honored name,
    Be as a by-word through the world?
  Rouse! for as if to blast thy fame,
    This keen reproach is at thee hurled;
  The banner that above the waves,
    Is floating over three millions slaves.

  That flag, my country, I had thought,
    From noble sires was given to thee;
  By the best blood of patriots bought,
    To wave alone above the Free!
  Yet now, while to the breeze it waves,
  It floats above three millions slaves.

  The mighty dead that flag unrolled,
    They bathed it in the heaven’s own blue;
  They sprinkled stars upon each fold,
    And gave it as a trust to you;
  And now that glorious banner waves
  In shame above three millions slaves.

  O, by the virtues of our sires,
    And by the soil on which they trod,
  And by the trust their name inspires,
    And by the hope we have in God,
  Arouse, my country, and agree
  To set thy captive children free.

  Arouse! and let each hill and glen
    With prayer to the high heavens ring out,
  Till all our land with freeborn men,
    May join in one triumphant shout,
  That freedom’s banner does not wave
  Its folds above a single slave.




O, PITY THE SLAVE MOTHER!

                              AIR--Araby’s Daughter.


  I pity the slave mother, careworn and weary,
    Who sighs as she presses her babe to her breast;
  I lament her sad fate, all so hopeless and dreary,
    I lament for her woes, and her wrongs unredressed.
  O who can imagine her heart’s deep emotion,
    As she thinks of her children about to be sold;
  You may picture the bounds of the rock-girdled ocean,
    But the grief of that mother can never be known.

  The mildew of slavery has blighted each blossom,
    That ever has bloomed in her pathway below;
  It has froze every fountain that gushed in her bosom,
    And chilled her heart’s verdure with pitiless woe;
  Her parents, her kindred, all crushed by oppression;
    Her husband still doomed in its desert to stay;
  No arm to protect from the tyrant’s aggression--
    She must weep as she treads on her desolate way.

  O, slave mother, hope! see--the nation is shaking!
    The arm of the Lord is awake to thy wrong!
  The slave-holder’s heart now with terror is quaking,
    Salvation and Mercy to Heaven belong!
  Rejoice, O, rejoice! for the child thou art rearing,
    May one day lift up its unmanacled form,
  While hope, to thy heart, like the rain-bow so cheering,
    Is born, like the rain-bow, ’mid tempest and storm.




THE BLIND SLAVE BOY.

                                   AIR--Sweet Afton.


  Come back to me, mother! why linger away
  From thy poor little blind boy, the long weary day!
  I mark every footstep, I list to each tone,
  And wonder my mother should leave me alone!
  There are voices of sorrow and voices of glee,
  But there’s no one to joy or to sorrow with me;
  For each hath of pleasure and trouble his share,
  And none for the poor little blind boy will care.

  My mother, come back to me! close to thy breast
  Once more let thy poor little blind one be pressed;
  Once more let me feel thy warm breath on my cheek,
  And hear thee in accents of tenderness speak!
  O mother! I’ve no one to love me--no heart
  Can bear like thine own in my sorrows a part;
  No hand is so gentle, no voice is so kind