FORCED from home and all its pleasures
Afric's
coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures
O'er the
raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my
price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds
are never to be sold.
Still in thought as free as ever,
What are
England's rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to
torture, me to task ?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot
forfeit nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells
in white and black the same.
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,
Is there
One who reigns on high?
Has He bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking
from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Matches,
blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
Agents
of his will to use?
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,
Fixed 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,
Crossing
in your barks the main;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
To the
man-degrading mart,
All sustained by patience, taught us
Only by
a broken heart;
Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some
reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard and stronger
Than the
colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
Tarnish
all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you
proudly question ours!