APRIL IS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!
Written by Wymond and published on March
1851.
I present the poem…
THE
SLAVE'S SOLILOQUY
How sweet is freedom to
the free! Then what
Would not the wretched,
horror-stricken slave
Endure, that might
purchase freedom too?
Oh, listen to his
heart-heaved signs and groans,
As he bewails his wretched
lot, and bear
His sad soliloquy!
O, let me have
My liberty! Though I might
wander up
And down the earth, a
by-word on the tongues
Of men, and friendless
live and die, yet let
Me have my LIBERTY. Though I were sure
That the wild wilderness
would be my home,
Where none should be more
kind and merciful
Than howling wild beasts,
thirsting for my blood,
And naught but fruitless
forest trees should shield
Me from the storms of
night, yet let me have
My LIBERTY! O, let me
wither 'neath
The torrid, summer sun, or
wander lost
Upon a springless,
shrubless, sandy plain;
Or let me shiver, freeze
and die amid
The winds and drifting
storms that beat upon
Spitzbergen's frozen brow,
if I may have
My LIBERTY! Or let me say
farewell,
Forever, to the land that
gave me birth,
And let me choose old
ocean for my home;
And not a word I'll
murmur, when the night
Is black with tempest, and
the howling blasts
And hissing waves shall
leave the rushing storm,
"While mountains
billows rise-ten billows heaped
In one, then rush down, an
avalanche
Of brine." And the
rattling thunders rule
The tempest with their
deaf'ning roar, and let
The lightning ploug the
reeling masts. All these
I'll bear, if I may have
my LIBERTY.
The friendless world, the
wilderness, the heat
Of blazing suns, the
frosts of icy North,
Have, all combined, no
terrors like the woes
Of Slavery.
O, then creation's lord,
High-gifted tyrant,
boasting of thy love
Of liberty, yet robbing
Freedom of
Her rights, by chaining
down thy equal and
Thy brother, to unending
slavery,
Unheeding all his woes, as
though thy heart
Were adamant, throw off
thy lethargy.
If thou art yet a man, let
sympathy--
Let manhood's common
ties--let fear of woe,
Thy well-earned due, and
which eternity
Shall pay--let justice,
shame, and conscience plead
With thee, and urge thee
grant the slave that gift,
With which, he loves to
live--without which, longs
To die--his rightful Human
Liberty.
