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[55] Speak in a slumbering nation's ear
As thou hast ever spoken,
Until the dead in sin shall hear,--
The fetter's link be broken!

I love thee with a brother's love,
I feel my pulses thrill,
To mark thy spirit soar above
The cloud of human ill.
My heart hath leaped to answer thine,
And echo back thy words,
As leaps the warrior's at the shine,
And flash of kindred swords!1


This was his first feeling toward his early friend and his last; but there were to follow long years when the internal contests of the antislavery body were scarcely less vehement and far more personally bitter than those waged with the supporters of slavery; and these cannot be passed by unnoticed. In the meantime, Whittier was enlisted for the war.

1 Works, III. 9.

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J. G. Whittier (1)
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