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help myself. While my mind was in this situation, the fleet sailed on, and in one day's time I lost sight of the wished-for land. In the first expressions of my grief I reproached my fate, and wished I had never been born. I was ready to curse the tide that bore us, the gale that wafted my prison, and even the ship that conducted us; and I called on death to relieve me from the horrors I felt and dreaded, that I might be in that place
"Where slaves are free, and men oppress no more.
"Fool that I was, inur'd so long to pain,
"To trust to hope, or dream of joy again.
" * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Now dragg'd once more beyond the western main,
"To groan beneath some dastard planter's chain;
"Where my poor countrymen in bondage wait
"The long enfranchisement of a ling'ring fate:
"Hard lingering fate! while ere the dawn of day,
"Rous'd by the lash, they go their cheerless way;
"And as their soul with shame and anguish burn,
"Salute with groans unwelcome morn's return,
"And, chiding ev'ry hour the slow-paced sun,
"Pursue their toils till all his race is run.
"No eye to mark their sufferings with a tear;
"No friend to comfort, and no hope to cheer:
"Then, like the dull unpity'd brutes, repair
"To stalls as wretched, and as coarse a fare;
"Thank heaven one day of mis'ry was o'er,
"Then sink to sleep, and wish to wake no more."[1]
- ↑ "The dying Negro," a poem originally published in 1773. Perhaps it may not be deemed impertinent here to add, that this elegant and pathetic little poem was occasioned, as appears by the advertisement prefixed to it, by the following incident: "A black who a few days before, had run away from his master, and got
