I.Close to the deep and rapid Zaire
I sat beneath a mangrove tree,
And my young children sported there
In the bright sunshine, gay and free:
I saw their mother's grave, and said,
"How blest a laughing child to be!
How soon their little griefs are fled,
Their joys, their raptures never flee."
She died, she died in peace:--but thought
In all those happy children met
The traces that affection sought;
Their mother's image blessed me yet:
And then I checked my tears awhile,
(Grief e'en a negro's cheek can wet!)
They smiled so like their mother's smile,
O how could I that smile forget!
I looked upon my girls and boys,
Now of a mother's love bereft;
Though heaven had shaded many joys,
Some yet unclouded joys were left:
And I could hope that He who pours
Fresh waters from the rock that's cleft,
He who destroys and who restores,
Would retribute death's cruel theft!
And thus I mused--and thus I taught
Life's energies to wake again:
Alas! death's cruelties are nought,--
Nought to the cruelties of men:--
A fiercer tyrant far than death--
The white man came!--I cried in vain,
No sighs--nor tears--nor smothered breath,
Could soothe or snap the negro's chain.
He tore me from my children's home;
He wrenched me from their mother's grave!
And will no day of vengeance come?
Shall man his God for ever brave?
Shall earth be made a desert still?
Shall heaven be outraged--heaven that gave
A form erect, an upward will,
A heavenly hope, to free and slave?
What! have we not a soul to feel,
And eyes to weep, and hearts to bleed?
Though white man's heart is stone or steel;--
Ours--ours is human flesh indeed.
If hate--revenge--if hope--despair--
Love--memory--all that mind can breed--
Or good and evil angels share,
Be man--of man--enslaved, or freed!
The pangs unuttered thoughts create--
The sweat-drops burning on my brow;
The words of anguish and of hate
That tremble on my lips e'en now,
Are they not human? Are they not
Of passions such as those which bow
The white man's spirit--those which blot
The white man's page of vice and woe?
Yes! He who moulded mortal clay,
And breathed his Spirit there,--who planned
Creation's infinite display,
Hath coloured with a master's hand:
Various and beautiful the race
Of scattered man--He stamped no brand
Of slavery on the negro's face--
Life--Liberty--were His command.
John Bowring
Hackney, 4th Feb. 1826.