Mary Anne Rawson's The Bow in the Cloud (1834): A Scholarly EditionMain MenuEditor's IntroductionEditor's IntroductionThe Published AnthologyContains all of the pieces published in the anthology, with an editor's noteSelected Unpublished PiecesTranscriptions of some unpublished pieces sent to RawsonText analysisResults of analysing the anthology and its manuscriptsNetwork AnalysisNetwork analysis prototypes, including a network graph of connections in the archiveMap of PlacenamesA map of all places associated with pieces in the anthologyPeople MentionedBow in the Cloud: PersonographyFurther ReadingsA Bibliography of sources relating to this projectThis project was supported by an NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication in 2023/2024 (FEL-289788). Find project data on GitHub.
Letter from Sarah Joanna Williams to Mary Anne Rawson (English MS 415/127)
12023-10-24T17:17:40+00:00Christopher Ohge67a4fbaba4797c94aa865988788fca89b5c3761611Letter from Sarah Joanna Williams to Mary Anne Rawson with her work 'A Voice from the Land of Bondage'. The first three stanzas of the work are not included - shows asterisks in publication.plain2023-10-24T17:17:40+00:00Ink
Letter from Sarah Joanna Williams to Mary Anne Rawson with her work 'A Voice from the Land of Bondage'. The first three stanzas of the work are not included - shows asterisks in publication.
Christopher Ohge67a4fbaba4797c94aa865988788fca89b5c37616
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12023-10-24T17:03:27+00:00Christopher Ohge67a4fbaba4797c94aa865988788fca89b5c37616A Voice from the Land of Bondage, by Sarah J. WilliamsChristopher Ohge18Poem by S. J. W.plain2025-01-08T12:31:11+00:00Christopher Ohge67a4fbaba4797c94aa865988788fca89b5c37616
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12023-10-24T17:19:32+00:00Revision narrative: First three stanzas of 'A Voice from the Land of Bondage'15plain2025-01-02T16:43:05+00:00At the suggestion of J. W. H. Pritchard (English MS 414/63), Rawson did not publish the first three stanzas of Williams's poem. Pritchard concluded on page 3 of his letter, 'On looking over the first three stanzas I do not see how they can be altered so as to render them tolerable either in verse or [prose?]'.
Below are the three opening stanzas in Williams's original manuscript version (English MS 414/127):
The die was cast––the envoy had gone forth, Once more of promise to the Slave to tell, To fix the date of Freedom’s distant birth, And loose the chain of bondage ere it fell. To curb a power, which soon must cease to be, Luring the despots to relax their hold, And deal out to their bondsmen generously, Straw for their bricks, like Egypt’s sons of old, Preparing from the wreck of slavery, A willing and industrious peasantry.
A free, englighten'd people had obtain'd That mercy for their brethren, and they saw Emancipation, then in prospect gain'd, And hailed the working of a juster law. Proudly they sent the mandate from their shore, And follow'd it in thought across the deep; The spirit of that people hover'd o'er, Like a good angel, faithful watch to keep 'Till freedom -- perfect freedom were possess'd Through all the sunny islands of the west.
And what beheld it there? The abject formation Crouching before the pow'r it long'd to brave The hollow smile, the welcome seeming warm The mean, base artifice that mark'd the slave, The unfaithful service, the unwilling toil Extorted only by the scourge of power, Deeds of revenge which make the heart recoil, Thoughts of revenge in the dark brow that low’r, All these things still that spirit look'd upon And askèd, what humanity had won?