Revision narrative: First three stanzas of 'The Voice from the Land of Bondage'
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?