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Mary Anne Rawson's The Bow in the Cloud (1834): A Scholarly Edition

Sonnet On the Present Crisis of Affairs, as Regards the Emancipation of the Negroes, by Chauncey Hare Townshend

What can resist a people's virtuous will?
Go, ask departed Ages -- they reply,
"Not all the banded might of Tyranny!"
Then, Britain, with undaunted heart, fulfil
Thy glorious lot -- to break the bonds of ill,
And cleanse the world from base Captivity!
Lo! Freedom watches thee with anxious eye,
While the poor negro's fettered hands are still
Held out to thee for aid! Oh scorn delay,
And wavering counsels planned by selfish men!
Good deeds should be to noble thoughts as near
As thunder to its lightning. Let not then
The righteous debt, Heaven summons thee to pay,
Be meted out with slow and sordid fear.

Chauncey Hare Townshend.

Skiddaw-Lodge, Keswick.

June, 1833.

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Letter from Chauncy Hare Townshend to Mary Anne Rawson, with his 'Sonnet. On the Present crisis of affairs, as regards the Emancipation of Negroes'; some variation between manuscript and published version; Townshend also offered a variant line for line 10, which he said in his letter 'some persons might object ... as too severe upon those who are for half & half measures ... Simply considering the line, as it stands at present, as an expression of my own opinions & feelings, & also viewing it as poetry, I must say that I prefer letting it remain as it is'.
Letter from Chauncy Hare Townshend to Mary Anne Rawson, with his 'Sonnet. On the Present crisis of affairs, as regards the Emancipation of Negroes'; some variation between manuscript and published version; Townshend also offered a variant line for line 10, which he said in his letter 'some persons might object ... as too severe upon those who are for half & half measures ... Simply considering the line, as it stands at present, as an expression of my own opinions & feelings, & also viewing it as poetry, I must say that I prefer letting it remain as it is'.

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Townshend, Chauncey Hare