O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness, | |
| Some boundless contiguity of shade, | |
| Where rumor of oppression and deceit, | |
| Of unsuccessful or successful war, | |
| Might never reach me more! My ear is pained, | 5 |
| My soul is sick, with every day’s report | |
| Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. | |
| There is no flush in man’s obdúrate heart; | |
| It does not feel for man; the natural bond | |
| Of brotherhood is served as the flax, | 10 |
| That falls asunder at the touch of fire. | |
| He finds his fellow guilty of a skin | |
| Not colored like his own, and, having power | |
| To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause | |
| Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey. | 15 |
| Lands intersected by a narrow frith | |
| Abhor each other. Mountains interposed | |
| Make enemies of nations, who had else | |
| Like kindred drops been mingled into one. | |
| Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys; | 20 |
| And, worse than all, and most to be deplored | |
| As human nature’s broadest, foulest blot, | |
| Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat | |
| With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart, | |
| Weeps, when she sees inflicted on a beast. | 25 |
| Then what is man? And what man, seeing this, | |
| And having human feelings, does not blush, | |
| And hang his head, to think himself a man? | |
| I would not have a slave to till my ground, | |
| To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, | 30 |
| And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth | |
| That sinews bought and sold have ever earned. | |
| No; dear as freedom is, and in my heart’s | |
| Just estimation prized above all price, | |
| I had much rather be myself the slave, | 35 |
| And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. | |
| We have no slaves at home.—Then why abroad? | |
| And they themselves, once ferried o’er the wave | |
| That parts us, are emancipate and loosed. | |
| Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs | 40 |
| Receive our air, that moment they are free; | |
| They touch our country, and their shackles fall. | |
| That ’s noble, and bespeaks a nation proud | |
| And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then, | |
| And let it circulate through every vein | 45 |
| Of all your empire; that, where Britain’s power | |
| Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too. | |
| |
