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Is he not man, by sin and suffering tried ? Is he not man, for whom the Saviour died ? Belie the Negro's powers : — In headlong will. Christian ! thy brother thou shalt prove him still ; Belie his virtues ; since his wrongs began. His follies and his crimes have stampt him Man.
The Spaniard found him such : — the island-race
His foot had spurn'd from earth's insulted face ;
Among the waifs and foundlings of mankind.
Abroad he look'd, a sturdier stock to find ;
A spring of life, whose fountains should supply
His channels as he drank the rivers dry :
That stock he found on Afric's swarming plains,
That spring he open'd in the Negro's veins ;
A spring, exhaustless as his avarice drew,
A stock that like Prometheus' vitals grew
Beneath the eternal beak his heart that tore,
Beneath the insatiate thirst that drain'd his gore.
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