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ELAVE IF THE EYNTIEATE
A PEM
By
W. M. R. F. D. Y.,
CINCINNATI:
Robºt T. Morris, PRINT, 65 Wise STREET,
1887.

CopyRIGHT, 1887, by W.M. R. Fox.

THE SLAVE OF THE SYNDICATE.
Through winding ranks of grove-plumed hills
Ohio's stream of beauty roves,
Swelled by a thousand creeks and rills,
Winding between their hills and groves.
Fair are the fields round hills that frown
On rills and river rolling down;
And life-needs for a million homes
Are germed within those rocks and loams:
They feel the magic touch of Toil,
And start from teeming stone and soil.
Yet, while abundance round him lies,
And o'er him Freedom's banner flies,
How oft', with beggar hands, Toil stands,
Like a born thrall of king-cursed lands!
Yon’ range whereby the river rolls,
A thousand huts are on its knolls

[4]
And in its vales—the homes of thralls!
No sire within those thousand huts
Owns aught of all that wide range shuts
Of wealth within its roomy walls:
Owns not the den to which he crawls:
Owns not himself!—a tyrant's gyves
Is on those lands and on their lives.
Even in the temple of the state
Is shrined the dragon, Syndicate.
He feasts afar, while hirelings draw
For him the law, his robber law,
Which takes from need, and gives to greed,
And Toil has scarcely toil for meed.
The miners rise from weary sleep;
Through portals dark and low they creep;
With strength and skill they delve and drill,
And bare the treasures of the hill;
And barge on barge with these they charge,
And loosen from the river's marge,
To swell the freight that commerce pours,
And warm and light the peopled shores.
What largess win they? garb and fare!
The crusts they eat, the rags they wear!"
Behold their homes, their slavery scan,
Then speak with flame, oh, friend of man.

[5]
Need is that round their evening fires,
Men still recall those mighty sires,
Who proudly spurned the tyrant's rod,
And scorned his steel and trod unshod,
With bleeding feet, through wintry sleet,
And bravely died on field and fleet,
To leave this land to better things
Than lawless savages and kings!
“Yes, we are slaves! Ignoble sons
Of hero sires!” Serf Irwin cried,
To see the valley filled with guns,
And o'er its paths armed strangers stride,
Because the miners cried one day:
“Down with the truck-store-give us pay!”
“Slaves!” and he gazed upon his wife.
“Is there,” he mused, “in all the lands
No land where flowers of love and life
May bloom unculled by tyrant hands?”
He seized the flint-lock as he mused,
The flint-lock that his grandsire used,
Through many a long and hard campaign
From Boston Heights to Yorktown Plain,
He seized it from the wall—in vain :
He saw his cradled child in sleep,
He looked from it along the steep,

[6]
Where armed watch the sentries kept,
And cannon gloomed above the town;
“To slavery born 1" He moaned, and wept,
And dashed the useless weapon down.
Gaunt hunger lashed the slaves to toil;
Soldiers and guns were gone: but ever,
Like seeds within a sun-loved soil,
Thought in Serf Irwin slumbered never.
Where'er he wandered, winds and waves
And grasses whispered: “We are slaves!”
Trees told it to the birds, which sung
The sad words till the forest rung;
And the high stars their watches keeping,
Looked down like eyes in bondage weeping.
He climbed one eve’ the wooded crest;
He saw beneath, the river run;
And there adown its placid breast,
All glorious with the setting sun,
He saw a roofed and ruddered boat,
A floating home, all freely float.
There was the sire, the mother, too,
And children playing full in view.
Thought thrilled again Serf Irwin's brain,
“The river's free!” a new refrain;
And days and nights rung with the glee:
“The river's free! The river's free!”

[7]
His tools were few and old and dull,
Yet day by day he shaped a hull.
Bolt after bolt, and beam by beam,
It grew beside the lapsing stream.
With many a shift from gathered drift,
It slowly grew—at last one day,
From crown to keel the river's gift,
Upon the river's breast it lay
Task of long months! with manly pride
He viewed it riding on the tide,
With all his humble house-ware stored,
And still more precious freight aboard—
A floating home! and all his own!
Strong as his hope to bear afar
His bride and babe where never moan
Of slave should tell what tyrants are!
And, “Oh!” his psalm of triumph rose,
“Speed me, thou flood, that fleetly flows:
With some I love at break of day,
Speed me away! speed me away!
Thy tide which tracks yon' stooping sun
Must sure through nobler regions run;
If not, unfettered by its bounds,
I’ll pass and pass to further grounds.
Though torrents rush from fenceless steeps,
And monsters print the roofless glen,

[8]
I'll trust me where the panther creeps,
But not among the haunts of men!”
A friend came breathless down the sands:
“Away” he cried, “this very hour! |
The lords who claim these mines and lands
Have sworn that none shall mock their power!
To seize your home their tools are sent
I’ve seen them sent, to claim a rent,
For months it grew along the shore-
Even the river's free no more!”
Too true! The minions rushed in view.
Serf Irwin cut the rope atwain;
And, steering, toward the mid-stream drew,
And, jeering, saw them shake in vain
Their perjured warrant as he flew.
What! and shall wealth no more avail?
“Our slave escape?” the masters rave.
A passing tug obeyed their hail:
“Ho, chase and clutch the flying slave!”
With steamy breath, and thews of steel,
And churned wave whitening from the wheel,
And inky trails of smoke behind,
Like pirate banners in the wind,
And ringing bell, and whistle's scream,
The steamer plunges through the stream.

[9]
Serf Irwin sees it come, and stands,
And cries: “I claim no mines nor lands!
But this, the labor of my hands,
This narrow deck I will protect
While life shall hold my form erect.
My heart's wrought in with bolt and beam,
And hope has strengthened every seam.”
They hailed him in the name of law.
Serf Irwin said: “I’ve seen you pluck
The crumbs from age's toothless jaw,
And dry the new-born nursling's suck.
I’ve seen the miner pine in dearth,
And perish by a fireless hearth,
Yet downward where the miner delves,
There's stored upon ten thousand shelves,
God’s coal, enough to warm the earth.
I’ve looked along the sun-lit sod,
Blessed by the generous hand of God.
You took the herds and took the wheat,
Nor left to hundreds bread or meat.
Hence on my heart 'tis written well,
God’s law is God's, but yours of IIell.”
And then they shrieked as tyrants shriek,
When slaves have thoughts and dare to speak:
“Caitiff and clown! ho, run him down!
Small matter if the rascal drown!”

[10]
Serf Irwin cried: “The world is wide!
The world has room and food for all !
I only ask along this tide
A path beyond your hated thrall!
I seek afar for love's dear sake
A roof toward the rain and snow,
The right to keep the things I make,
The right to reap the soil I sow "
He raised the flint-lock to their brows,
And, “Hear,” he cried, “my vow of vows!
Robbers of long-afflicted toil!
Ere I be sire of breadless slaves,
The limbs I drew from yonder soil
Shall wander piecemeal with these waves!”
And then they shrank as tyrants shrink,
When slaves can act as well as think;
For all their age-wrought wiles are naught
If action give the hand to thought.
And, side by side, upon the tide,
They drifted in the setting sun;
And they were many, he but one;
Yet seemed it then that on his side
The majesty of manhood frowned,
With all the virtues ranked around,
And all their force defied.

[11]
And now, like one who scarce resolves,
Slowly their giant wheel revolves,
It takes a backward stride!
An angel might have sworn that right
Had won this battle over might.
But friends of freedom! still mistrust
Your foes, unjust, if fear make just!
Foiled, crushed, and throneless thrust in dust,
One venomed shaft remains to them–
The shaft of lying stratagem!
They after said, 'twas not intent;
That one mistook the signal bell;
'Twas fatal chance, 'twas never meant -
God knows! but here is what befell:
The steamer leaped with wheel reversed
Right on Serf Irwin's little craft,
And struck (if planned, a deed accursed 1)
so hard that all theside was burst,
And all was wreck from fore to aft.
Even the tyrants held their breath,
As round it reeled, hurt unto death;
And fast through gash and seam and rent
Drank deep the drowning element!
Like Ajax on his mid-sea rock,
Up sprang Serf Irwin from the shock,

[12]
For all aboard it prostrate threw,
And far aflood the flint-lock flew.
Raging, he heard the captain call
To lower away and man the yawl:
At him who called and those who lowered,
He shook his clenched hand and roared:
“Cowards! go leave the wreck you made 1
We scorn and hate your pirate aid!”
Then rose the wife in terror wild,
The weeping wife, the screaming mother:
“Oh, Irwin' think of me, the child 1–
And of thyself—we have no other!”
“True feeling burns but in the free!
And even for the child and thee
I cannot feel as I should feel
Since men have made my bosom steel.
Better with life and all to part
Than live a bloated lordling's prey –
This thought has cancered on my heart
"Till it has eat that heart away"
He fiercely spoke, and speaking tore
From hinges bent the cabin door,
And swiftly from the settling boat
Swung her beside the narrow float.

[13]
“We scarcely part—so no farewells!
Cling close and safe, nor dream of harm"
He loosed her to the river swells,
And after plunged, the child in arm.
He plunged, and rose, and shook away
Frºm lips and eyes the river spray.
His sinewy right the waters cleft,
The babe was raised within his left,
His lifted left, his strong left hand,
And thus Serf Irwin swam for land.
His sinewy right in circling laps
Still clasped and climbed the foamy caps,
The while with aiding feet beneath
He walked the stream as o'er a heath
And swam apace with far more grace
Than one might wade a shallow place.
He sees them row, their oars are swift,
And these they ply, and shift, and lift
The pale wife from among the drift.
Swimming he saw it, vexed and wroth,
Foiled in his wish to rescue both
But far more dark his brow to mark
That shattered bark, his sinking ark,
Shaped through weeks in day and dark 1

[14]
High hopes as ever fired the brow
Of noblest liberty and love
Had gathered round its growth, and now-
‘Twas fluttering like a dying dove—
'Twas writhing on its wounded flank-
Before his very eyes it sank.
High o'er it leaped the flood in foam;
In the wide world he had no home!
Had nothing but a hunted life,
A helpless, homeless child and wife.
His foes rode proudly over all,
The steamer there, and there the yawl,
And he and his were yet in thrall!
The strong of hope most strongly strives,
Oh, hope is more than half our lives!
And now, as Irwin's bark went down,
Half seemed with it his powers to drown.
The soul that ruled that frame of brawn,
Its scepter seemed at once withdrawn.
A palsy grew from limb to limb;
He scarce could move—he could not swim
Caught in the fetters of the cramp!—
He felt it, and his brow grew damp
With drops that broke not from the flood;
Yet, true to love and fatherhood,

[15]
Fast as the beating flood prevailed,
High and more high the child he reared;
And strove where hand and foot-way failed.
The wave had clutched his tawny beard
He slipped, like one who climbing slips;
The wave was creeping to his lips!
He dashed it down with sudden strength,
And rose up from it half his length.
One last broad sweep of foot and hand!
He rose up even to his hips,
And looked far over sky and land!
He saw the sun in half eclipse
Upon the wooded summit stand.
Oh, setting sun, and sky afire,
And hills all golden to their tips!–
Oft had he sent his heari's desire
Far over these in glances fond,
And dreamed of liberty beyond
Now in one flash those glances drank
The whole wide scene from sky to bank,
And then he sank, like lead he sank!-
Even while his foes in horror gazed,
And nature all around them smiled,
Heart-struck, amazed, his left hand raised,
His strong left freighted with the child,
He sank, that hand and child the last
That to the whelming current passed.

[16]
On went the surge with sullen roar;
The slave was free—he rose no more!
Still as of old new springs adorn
With flowers the wintry wreck of thorn.
For one all seasons change in vain;
One life shall never bloom again.
Though morns as fair, as lovely eves
Brood o'er those tyrant-ridden dells,
One wretch there is who wandering grieves,
who, ever wandering weeps and tells:
How, drowned, they found them on the sand,
The babe locked in the lifted hand;
So strongly locked force could not strip
The nursling from that rigid grip;
And thus unsevered as they found,
They laid them in the silent ground:
So sleeps Serf Irwin safe and sound;
The babe he holds nor sobs nor stirs.
And, “Oh!” she cries, as o'er the scene
Her memory dwells, the frenzied mien,
And wildest words of madness hers:
“Oh! when the trump of judgment breaks
Earth's coffined sleep, and Irwin wakes,
He'll rise up with it from the sod,
He'll rise, and show the child to God,
And tell who killed it, murderers!”

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