Words by Elizur Wright, jr. Music arranged from Cracovienne.
[Music]
The fetters galled my weary soul,--
A soul that seemed but thrown away;
I spurned the tyrant's base control,
Resolved at last the man to play:--
Chorus.
The hounds are baying on my track;
O Christian! will you send me back?
The hounds are baying on my track;
O Christian! will you send me back?
I felt the stripes, the lash I saw,
Red, dripping with a father's gore;
And, worst of all their lawless law,
The insults that my mother bore!
The hounds are baying on my track,
O Christian! will you send me back?
Where human law o'errules Divine,
Beneath the sheriff's hammer fell
My wife and babes,--I call them mine,--
And where they suffer, who can tell?
The hounds are baying on my track,
O Christian! will you send me back?
I seek a home where man is man,
If such there be upon this earth,
To draw my kindred, if I can,
Around its free, though humble hearth.
The hounds are baying on my track,
O Christian! will you send me back!
The Strength of Tyranny.
The tyrant's chains are only strong
While slaves submit to wear them;
And, who could bind them on the strong,
Determined not to wear them?
Then clank your chains, e'en though the links
Were light as fashion's feather:
The heart which rightly feels and thinks
Would cast them altogether.
The lords of earth are only great
While others clothe and feed them!
But what were all their pride and state
Should labor cease to heed them?
The swain is higher than a king:
Before the laws of nature,
The monarch were a useless thing,
The swain a useless creature.
We toil, we spin, we delve the mine,
Sustaining each his neighbor;
And who can hold a right divine
To rob us of our labor?
We rush to battle--bear our lot
In every ill and danger--
And who shall make the peaceful cot
To homely joy a stranger?
Perish all tyrants far and near,
Beneath the chains that bind us;
And perish too that servile fear
Which makes the slaves they find us:
One grand, one universal claim--
One peal of moral thunder--
One glorious burst in Freedom's name,
And rend our bonds asunder!