Slavery, by A. H. Smith
O ye who hate oppression,
On the land or on the wave,
Think, O think of St. Domingo,
When they tell you that the Slave
Can never bear his freedom, and that the galling chain,
In phrensy snapt asunder, will reunite again.
Go read its glorious history
In the infamy of Gaul,
In Napoleon's humbled legions,
And the overthrow of all
The tyrant's base endeavours to quench, ere it was yet
Fanned to its true sublimity, the wild-fire he had lit.
And now that half a century
Of liberty hath smiled
O'er a country once degraded,
A paradise run wild,
And only rendered fruitful by the scarring whip and chain --
Hath want e'er traced on freedom's brow, "my manacles again?"
Then away, away for ever,
With the impious thought that dare,
In the face of God and nature,
And their witness every where,
The universal sun, and heaven's blue arch sublime
Bending o'er all, deny man's right in every clime.
Then, noble-minded Britons,
Shall Afric's sons be slaves?
Shall your tarnished banner float
O'er the blood-complaining waves?
Shall the orphan's cry for ever, and the widow's frantic wail,
From that living charnel-house arise, like poison on the gale?
When ye, whose voice hath oft
Made tyranny to feel,
That ye were not the victims
To grace his chariot wheel,
Can waft your mandate o'er the main, and grant to every isle
That boon which else shall yet be snatched from slavery's funeral pile.
And will ye tamely give
Twenty millions of your gold?
Or acknowledge, e'en, a mart
Where man is bought and sold?
And unto him who promised bread, but gave a scorpion, bow?
And slaves, will ye? No; look to God, and to your right arms now.
No; look to God alone,
The Christian meek responds,
Though still the seal of blood
Be on your altered bonds,
Assured that He, who often turns the labyrinth of guilt
Unto some deep mysterious good, when avarice has built --
A shrine, which bears alike,
Both the symbol of the free,
And the soul-debasing stain
Of thrice-cursed slavery,
Shall scan a fane, where, traced in light, creation's glorious plan
Shall lead to all, of every hue, love to his fellow-man.
A. H. S.
Newcastle,
6th Mo. 1833.