Explore "Fifteenth Amendment" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Beneath the burden of our joy / Tremble, O wires, from East to West!
Fashion with words your tongues of fire, / To tell the nation's high behest.
Outstrip the winds, and leave behind / The murmur of the restless waves; / Nor tarry with your glorious news, / Amid the ocean's coral caves.
Ring out! ring out! your sweetest chimes, / Ye bells, that call to prayer and praise; / Let every heart with gladness thrill, / And songs of joyful triumph raise.
Shake off the dust, O rising race!
Crowned as a brother and a man; / Justice to-day asserts her claim, / And from thy brow fades out the ban.
With freedom's chrism upon thy head, / Her precious ensign in thy hand, / Go place thy once despisèd name / Amid the noblest of the land.
O ransomed race! give God the praise, / Who led thee through a crimson sea, / And 'mid the storm of fire and blood, / Turned out the war-cloud's light to thee.