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Bury Me in a Free Land

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Bury Me in a Free Land (1858)
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Published in The Anti-Slavery Bugle (20 Nov. 1858)

2264374Bury Me in a Free Land1858Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

For the Bugle.

BURY ME IN A FREE LAND.


BY FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS.


You may make my grave wherever you will,
In a lowly vale or a lofty hill;
You may make it among earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not sleep if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle-gang to the shambles led,
And the mother’s shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not rest if I heard the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I’d shudder and start, if I heard the bay
Of the bloodhounds seizing their human prey;
If I heard the captive plead in vain
As they tightened afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls, from their mothers’ arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave,
Where none calls his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high
To arrest the gaze of the passers by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is—bury me not in the land of slaves.—

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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