Warning Poem by Alfred Gibbs Campbell

Suggested By The Christiana (Pa.) Treason Trials.


Treason? yes, make it treason, if ye will;
Build up your gallows, and your victims bring
Forth from their gloomy dungeon; bind their hands;
Tie, with your pious fingers, round their necks,
The consecrated rope; touch then the spring
And let the traitors drop! there let them hang,
A solemn sacrifice unto your god;
Call in your priests. Let Stuart, Dewey, Lord,
Spencer and Spring, and all their train attend
To join your holy sacrament, and chant,
In pleasing concord, praise unto the great
And most puissant deity whose throne
Is built on human souls, and laved with seas
Of human blood. Aye! let their thankful songs
With Hell's hoarse shouts of diabolic joy
Ascend in unison, - precious indeed
To Modern Moloch as the agony
Of the fond mother when her child is snatched
From her maternal grasp, to be no more
Clasped lovingly upon her bosom, or
The piercing shriek of the poor hunted slave
Torn piecemeal by his bloodhounds.


But take heed!
Know that a day of reckoning is at hand,
For God is just! His Justice will not sleep
Forever! Even now behold how shakes
This guilty nation from its centre round
Unto its broad circumference. In wrong
Were its foundations laid, and crime in wrought
Into its structure. It must fall! The slave
Shall o'er its ruins make his exodus
From curséd bondage: and as Israel's hosts
Saw their oppressors utterly destroyed,
(When God had wrought deliverance from their foes,)
And sang His great salvation, - so the bound
And stricken millions of our land shall stand
Freed from their shackles, and the arm of God,
Made bare in their deliverance, they shall see
Strike sorely their oppressors.


Then shall they
Exult and sing - 'God is our strength and song!
In glory hath He triumphed o'er our foes,
And led us forth in mercy and redeemed!'