O, FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage, with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart;
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own; and, having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man ?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earned.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I would much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home; then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England: if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it, then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire, that, where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.
THE broken heart, which kindness never heals,
The home-sick passion which the negro feels,
When toiling, fainting in the land of canes,
His spirit wanders to his native plains;
His little, lovely dwelling there he sees,
Beneath the shade of his paternal trees, -
The home of comfort: then before his eyes
The terrors of captivity arise.
"Twas night, - his babes around him lay at rest, Their mother slumbered on their father's breast; A yell of murder rang around their bed,
They woke, - their cottage blazed, - the victims
Forth sprang the ambushed ruffians on their prey,
They caught, they bound, they drove them far
The white man bought them at the mart of
In pestilential barks they crossed the flood;
Then were the wretched ones asunder torn,
To distant isles, to separate bondage borne,
Denied, though sought with tears, the sad relief
That misery loves - the fellowship of grief,
The negro, spoiled of all that Nature gave, -
The freeborn man thus shrunk into a slave;
His passive limbs to measured tasks confined,
Obeyed the impulse of another mind,-
A silent, secret terrible control,
That ruled his sinews, and repressed his soul.
Not for himself he waked at morning light,
Toiled the long day, and sought repose at night;
His rest, his labor, pastime, strength, and health,
Were only portions of a master's wealth:
His love-O, name not love, where Britons doom
The fruit of love to slavery from the womb!
Thus spurned, degraded, trampled, and op
The negro-exile languished in the west,
With nothing left of life but hated breath,
And not a hope except the hope in death, -
To fly forever from the creole strand,
And dwell a freeman in his father's land.
Lives there a savage ruder than the slave?
Cruel as death, insatiate as the grave,
False as the winds that round his vessel blow,
Remorseless as the gulf that yawns below,
Is he who toils upon the wafting flood,
A Christian broker in the trade of blood:
Boisterous in speech, in action prompt and bold,
He buys, he sells, - he steals, he kills, for gold.
At noon, when sky and ocean, calm and clear,
Bend round his bark, one blue unbroken sphere;
When dancing dolphins sparkle through the brine,
And sunbeam circles o'er the waters shine,
He sees no beauty in the heaven serene,
No soul-enchanting sweetness in the scene;
But, darkly scowling at the glorious day,
Curses the winds that loiter on their way.
When swoll'n with hurricanes the billows rise,
To meet the lightning midway from the skies;
When from the unburdened hold his shrieking
Are cast, at midnight, to the hungry waves;
Not for his victims strangled in the deeps,
Not for his crimes the hardened pirate weeps,
But, grimly smiling, when the storm is o'er,
Counts his sure gains, and hurries back for more.
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