Read the following poem carefully before you choose your answer.
This poem was written for The North Star, a nineteenth-century antislavery newspaper. The North Star was founded and edited by African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who had escaped slavery in Maryland by fleeing to the North.
The North Star
Star of the North! whose steadfast ray
Pierces the sable pall of night,
Forever pointing out the way
That leads to freedom's hallowed light:
(5) The fugitive lifts up his eye
To where thy rays illume the sky.
That steady, calm, unchanging light,
Through dreary wilds and trackless dells,
Directs his weary steps aright
(10) To the bright land where freedom dwells;
And spreads, with sympathizing breast,
Her aegis over the oppressed;
Though other stars may round thee burn,
With larger disk and brighter ray,
(15) And fiery comets round thee turn,
While millions mark their blazing way;
And the pale moon and planets bright
Reflect on us their silvery light.
Not like that moon, now dark, now bright,
(20) In phase and place forever changing;
Or planets with reflected light,
Or comets through the heavens ranging;
They all seem varying in our view,
While thou art ever fixed and true.
(25) So may that other bright North Star,
Beaming with truth and freedom's light,
Pierce with its cheering ray afar;
The shades of slavery's gloomy night;
And may it never cease to be
(30) The guard of truth and liberty.
(1853)
The poem as a whole features all of the following oppositions EXCEPT
Group of answer choices
consistency vs. changeability
liberty vs. oppression
old age vs. youth
optimism vs. despondency
the North Star vs. other stars