4.5.1: “To the First Slave Ship” (1827)

First of that train which cursed the wave
And from the rifled cabin bore
Inheritor of wo,—the slave
To bless his palm tree’s shade no more

Dire engine!—o’er the troubled main
Borne on in unresisted state,—
Know’st thou within thy dark domain
The secrets of thy prison’d freight?—

Hear’st thou their moans whom hope hath fled?—
Wild cries in agonizing starts?—
Know’st thou thy humid sails are spread
With ceaseless sighs from broken hearts?—

The fetter’d chieftain’s burning tear,—
The parted lover’s mute despair,—
The childless mother’s pang severe,—
The orphan’s misery are there

Ah!—could’st thou from the scroll of fate
The annal read of future years
Stripes,—tortures,—unrelenting hate,
And death-gasps drown’d in slavery’s tears,

Down,—down,—beneath the cleaving main
Thou fain would’st plunge where monsters lie,
Rather than ope the gates of pain
For time and for Eternity.—

Oh Afric!—what has been thy crime?—
That thus like Eden’s fratricide,
A mark is set upon thy clime,
And every brother shuns thy side.—

Yet are thy wrongs thou long distrest!—
Thy burdens, by the world unweigh’d,
Safe in that Unforgetful Breast
Where all the sins of earth are laid.—

Poor outcast slave!—Our guilty land
Should tremble while she drinks thy tears,
Or sees in vengeful silence stand,
The beacon of thy shorten’d years;—

Should shrink to hear her sons proclaim
The sacred truth that heaven is just,—
Shrink even at her Judge’s name,—
“Jehovah,—Saviour of the opprest.”

The Sun upon thy forehead frown’d,
But Man more cruel far than he,
Dark fetters on thy spirit bound:—
Look to the mansions of the free!

Look to that realm where chains unbind,—
Where the pale tyrant drops his rod,
And where the patient sufferers find
A friend,—a father in their God