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396 SELECTED POETRY.

I'll clothe you, feed you, give you rest,
And will a second mother be.

23. "And God will be your father still;
'Twas he in mercy sent me here,
To teach you to obey his will,
Your steps to guide, your hearts to cheer."

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DIFFERENCE OF COLOR.

1. God gave Afric's sons,
A brow of sable die 
And spread the country of their birth
Beneath a burning sky;
And, with a cheek of olive, made
The little Hindoo child,
And darkly stained the forest tribes
That roam our western wild.

2. To me he gave a form
Of fairer, whiter clay, --
But am I, therefore, in his sight,
Respected more than they?
No; 'tis the hue of deeds and thoughts
He traces in his book;
'Tis the complexion of the heart
On which he deigns to look.

3. Not by the tinted cheek,
That fades away so fast,
But the color of the soul,
We shall be judged at last; 


SELECTED POETRY. 397

And God, the Judge, will look at me,
With anger in his eyes,
If I, my brother's darker brow,
Should ever dare despise. 
L.H. SIGOURNEY.

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WASHINGTON CITY PRISON.

1. Thou dark, and drear, and melancholy pile,
Which seemest, like a guilty penitent,
To brood o'er horrors in thy bosom pent,
Until the sunbeams that around thee smile,
And the glad beath of heaven, have become
A hatred and a mockery to thy gloom!
Stern fabric! I will commune with thee awhile!
And from they hollow echoes, and the gale
That means round thy dark cells, win back the tale
Of thy past history. Give thy stones a tongue,
And bid them answer me, and let the sighs
That round thy walls so heavily arise,
Be vocal, and declare from whence they sprung;
And by what passion of intense despair,
What aching throb of life-consuming care,
From the torn heart of anguish they were wrung.

2. Receptacle of guilt. hath guilt alone
Stained with its falling tears thy footworn floor,
When the harsh echo of the closing door
Hath died upon the ear, and flinging prone
His form upon the earth, thy chilling gloom
Seemed to wretch the sentence of his doom?
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