Why did all-creating Nature Make the plant for which we toil? Sighs must fan it, tears must water, Sweat of ours must dress the soil. Think, ye masters, iron-hearted, Lolling at your jovial boards; Think how many backs have smarted For the sweets your cane affords. Is there, as ye sometimes tell us, Hark! He answers-wild tornadoes, Strewing yonder sea with wrecks; Wasting towns, plantations, meadows, Are the voice with which He speaks. He, foreseeing what vexations Afric's sons should undergo, Fix'd their tyrants' habitations Where His whirlwinds answer-No. By our blood in Afric wasted, Ere our necks received the chain; By the miseries that we tasted, Deem our nation brutes no longer, PITY FOR POOR AFRICANS. Video meliora proboque, I own I am shock'd at the purchase of slaves, And fear those who buy them and sell them are knaves; What I hear of their hardships, their tortures, and groans, Is almost enough to draw pity from stones. I pity them greatly, but I must be mum, What! give up our desserts, our coffee, and tea? Besides, if we do, the French, Dutch, and Danes, If foreigners, likewise, would give up the trade, Your scruples and arguments bring to my mind A youngster at school, more sedate than the rest, ; He was shock'd, Sir, like you, and answer'd-"Oh no! "You speak very fine, and you look very grave, They spoke, and Tom ponder'd-"I see they will go: Poor man! what a pity to injure him so! Poor man! I would save him his fruit if I could, But staying behind will do him no good. "If the matter depended alone upon me, His apples might hang till they dropp'd from the tree; His scruples thus silenced, Tom felt more at ease, And went with his comrades the apples to seize; He blamed and protested, but join'd in the plan: He shared in the plunder, but pitied the man. THE MORNING DREAM. "Twas in the glad season of Spring, Far hence to the westward I sail'd, In the steerage a woman I saw, Such at least was the form that she wore, Ne'er taught me by woman before. Shed light like a sun on the waves, Then raising her voice to a strain The sweetest that ear ever heard, Some clouds, which had over us hung, Thus, swiftly dividing the flood, To a slave-cultured island we came, Where a demon, her enemy, stoodOppression his terrible name. In his hand, as the sign of his sway, A scourge, hung with lashes, he bore, And stood looking out for his prey From Africa's sorrowful shore. But soon as, approaching the land, That goddess-like woman he view'd, The scourge he let fall from his hand, With blood of his subjects imbrued. I saw him both sicken and die, And, the moment the monster expired, Heard shouts, that ascended the sky, From thousands with rapture inspired. Awaking, how could I but muse At what such a dream should betide? But soon my ear caught the glad news, Which served my weak thought for a guideThat Britannia, renown'd o'er the waves For the hatred she ever has shown To the black-sceptred rulers of slaves, Resolves to have none of her own. |