Burial of Barber

Bear him, comrades, to his grave;Never over one more braveShall the prairie grasses weep,In the ages yet to come,When the millions in our room,What we sow in tears, shall reap.

Bear him up the icy hill,With the Kansas, frozen stillAs his noble heart, below,And the land he came to tillWith a freeman’s thews and will,And his poor hut roofed with snow!

One more look of that dead face,Of his murder’s ghastly trace!One more kiss, O widowed one!Lay your left hands on his brow,Lift your right hands up, and vowThat his work shall yet be done.

Patience, friends! The eye of GodEvery path by Murder trodWatches, lidless, day and night;And the dead man in his shroud,And his widow weeping loud,And our hearts, are in His sight.

Every deadly threat that swellsWith the roar of gambling hells,Every brutal jest and jeer,Every wicked thought and planOf the cruel heart of man,Though but whispered, He can hear!

We in suffering, they in crime,Wait the just award of time,Wait the vengeance that is due;Not in vain a heart shall break,Not a tear for Freedom’s sakeFall unheeded: God is true.

While the flag with stars bedeckedThreatens where it should protect,And the Law shakes hands with Crime,What is left us but to wait,Match our patience to our fate,And abide the better time?

Patience, friends! The human heartEverywhere shall take our part,Everywhere for us shall pray;On our side are nature’s laws,And God’s life is in the causeThat we suffer for to-day.

Well to suffer is divine;Pass the watchword down the line,Pass the countersign: “Endure.”Not to him who rashly dares,But to him who nobly bears,Is the victor’s garland sure.

Frozen earth to frozen breast,Lay our slain one down to rest;Lay him down in hope and faith,And above the broken sod,Once again, to Freedom’s God,Pledge ourselves for life or death,

That the State whose walls we lay,In our blood and tears, to-day,Shall be free from bonds of shame,And our goodly land untrodBy the feet of Slavery, shodWith cursing as with flame!

Plant the Buckeye on his grave,For the hunter of the slaveIn its shadow cannot rest;And let martyr mound and treeBe our pledge and guarantyOf the freedom of the West!