Poems On The Slave Trade – Sonnet IV

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1. Poems On The Slave Trade – Sonnet I Hold your mad hands! for ever on your plain Must the gorged vulture clog his beak with blood? For ever must your Nigers tainted flood Roll to the ravenous shark his banquet slain? Hold your mad hands! what daemon prompts to rear The arm of Slaughter? on your savage shore Can hell-sprung Glory claim the […]...
2. Poems On The Slave Trade – Sonnet V Did then the bold Slave rear at last the Sword Of Vengeance? drench’d he deep its thirsty blade In the cold bosom of his tyrant lord? Oh! who shall blame him? thro’ the midnight shade Still o’er his tortur’d memory rush’d the thought Of every past delight; his native grove, Friendship’s best joys, and Liberty […]...
3. Poems On The Slave Trade – Sonnet III Oh he is worn with toil! the big drops run Down his dark cheek; hold hold thy merciless hand, Pale tyrant! for beneath thy hard command O’erwearied Nature sinks. The scorching Sun, As pityless as proud Prosperity, Darts on him his full beams; gasping he lies Arraigning with his looks the patient skies, While that […]...
4. Poems On The Slave Trade – Sonnet II Why dost thou beat thy breast and rend thine hair, And to the deaf sea pour thy frantic cries? Before the gale the laden vessel flies; The Heavens all-favoring smile, the breeze is fair; Hark to the clamors of the exulting crew! Hark how their thunders mock the patient skies! Why dost thou shriek and […]...
5. Poems On The Slave Trade – Sonnet VI High in the air expos’d the Slave is hung To all the birds of Heaven, their living food! He groans not, tho’ awaked by that fierce Sun New torturers live to drink their parent blood! He groans not, tho’ the gorging Vulture tear The quivering fibre! hither gaze O ye Who tore this Man from […]...
6. Sonnet 57: Being your slave, what should I do but tend Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do, till you require. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour, Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence […]...
7. Sonnet 58: That god forbid, that made me first your slave That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th’ account of hours to crave, Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure! O, let me suffer, being at your beck, Th’ imprisoned absence of your liberty, And patience tame to sufferance, […]...
8. Where is the Slave Oh, where’s the slave so lowly, Condemn’d to chains unholy, Who, could he burst His bonds at first, Would pine beneath them slowly? What soul, whose wrongs degrade it, Would wait till time decay’d it, When thus its wing At once may spring To the throne of Him who made it? Farewell, Erin, farewell, all, […]...
9. 373. Song-The Slave's Lament IT was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral, For the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O: Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O: Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O. All on […]...
10. Sonnet 01 Go Valentine and tell that lovely maid Whom Fancy still will pourtray to my sight, How her Bard lingers in this sullen shade, This dreary gloom of dull monastic night. Say that from every joy of life remote At evening’s closing hour he quits the throng, Listening alone the ring-dove’s plaintive note Who pours like […]...
11. The Galley-Slave Oh gallant was our galley from her caren steering-wheel To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel; The leg-bar chafed the ankle and we gasped for cooler air, But no galley on the waters with our galley could compare! Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold We […]...
12. Two spanish poems (a) orihuela-time The sun in orihuela calms the dust And people glide about the streets at ease (problems left indoors to cool themselves) Time has grown fat and no one cares To pin each minute to its proper place The day is long tomorrow’s not yet real Doves and old men occupy the squares Nattering […]...
13. The ocean said to me once The ocean said to me once, “Look! Yonder on the shore Is a woman, weeping. I have watched her. Go you and tell her this Her lover I have laid In cool green hall. There is wealth of golden sand And pillars, coral-red; Two white fish stand guard at his bier. “Tell her this And […]...
14. For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold Sweeping the chords of Hellas with firm hand, He wakes lost echoes from song’s classic shore, And brings their crystal cadence back once more To touch the clouds and sorrows of a land Where God’s truth, cramped and fettered with a band Of iron creeds, he cheers with golden lore Of heroes and the men […]...
15. Occasional Poems I Christmas Poem for Nancy Noel, Noel We live and we die Between heaven and hell Between the earth and the sky And all shall be well And all shall be unwell And once again! all shall once again! All shall be well By the ringing and the swinging of the great beautiful holiday bell […]...
16. Sonnet 04 – Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more. And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear To let thy music drop here […]...
17. Sonnet XXVII: Is Not Love Here Is not Love here as ’tis in other climes, And differeth it, as do the several nations? Or hath it lost the virtue with the times, Or in this island altereth with the fashions? Or have our passions lesser power than theirs, Who had less art them lively to express? Is Nature grown less powerful […]...
18. The Trade They bear, in place of classic names, Letters and numbers on their skin. They play their grisly blindfold games In little boxes made of tin. Sometimes they stalk the Zeppelin, Sometimes they learn where mines are laid, Or where the Baltic ice is thin. That is the custom of “The Trade.” Few prize-courts sit upon […]...
19. Trade Winds IN the harbor, in the island, in the Spanish Seas, Are the tiny white houses and the orange trees, And day-long, night-long, the cool and pleasant breeze Of the steady Trade Winds blowing. There is the red wine, the nutty Spanish ale, The shuffle of the dancers, the old salt’s tale, The squeaking fiddle, and […]...
20. What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why (Sonnet XLIII) What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that […]...
21. The Norsemen ( From Narrative and Legendary Poems ) GIFT from the cold and silent Past! A relic to the present cast, Left on the ever-changing strand Of shifting and unstable sand, Which wastes beneath the steady chime And beating of the waves of Time! Who from its bed of primal rock First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, […]...
22. Sonnet LX Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d, Crooked elipses ‘gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave […]...
23. My Spectre Around Me My spectre around me night and day Like a wild beast guards my way. My emanation far within Weeps incessantly for my sin. A fathomless and boundless deep, There we wander, there we weep; On the hungry craving wind My spectre follows thee behind. He scents thy footsteps in the snow, Wheresoever thou dost go […]...
24. The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point I. I stand on the mark beside the shore Of the first white pilgrim’s bended knee, Where exile turned to ancestor, And God was thanked for liberty. I have run through the night, my skin is as dark, I bend my knee down on this mark. . . I look on the sky and the […]...
25. Sonnet III I have a hoard of treasure in my breast; The grange of memory steams against the door, Full of my bygone lifetime’s garnered store – Old pleasures crowned with sorrow for a zest, Old sorrow grown a joy, old penance blest, Chastened remembrance of the sins of yore That, like a new evangel, more and […]...
26. Sonnet FLESH, I have knocked at many a dusty door, Gone down full many a midnight lane, Probed in old walls and felt along the floor, Pressed in blind hope the lighted window-pane, But useless all, though sometimes when the moon Was full in heaven and the sea was full, Along my body’s alleys came a […]...
27. Chorus from Hellas The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faith and empires gleam, Like a wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star. […]...
28. Sonnet 08 Oh, love of woman, you are known to be A passion sent to plague the hearts of men; For every one you bring felicity Bringing rebuffs and wretchedness to ten. I have been oft where human life sold cheap And seen men’s brains spilled out about their ears And yet that never cost me any […]...
29. Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned, Crookèd eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave […]...
30. The Old Man's Comforts and how he gained them You are old, Father William, the young man cried, The few locks which are left you are grey; You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man, Now tell me the reason I pray. In the days of my youth, Father William replied, I remember’d that youth would fly fast, And abused not my health […]...
31. Sonnet XI When among creatures fair of countenance Love comes enformed in such proud character, So far as other beauty yields to her, So far the breast with fiercer longing pants; I bless the spot, and hour, and circumstance, That wed desire to a thing so high, And say, Glad soul, rejoice, for thou and I Of […]...
32. The Song Of The Wage-Slave When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay, I hope that it won’t be hell-fire, as some of the parsons say. And I hope that it won’t be heaven, with some of the parsons I’ve met All I want is just quiet, just to rest and forget. Look […]...
33. The Phantom Horsewoman Queer are the ways of a man I know: He comes and stands In a careworn craze, And looks at the sands And in the seaward haze With moveless hands And face and gaze, Then turns to go… And what does he see when he gazes so? They say he sees as an instant thing […]...
34. Sonnet 09 Fair is the rising morn when o’er the sky The orient sun expands his roseate ray, And lovely to the Bard’s enthusiast eye Fades the meek radiance of departing day; But fairer is the smile of one we love, Than all the scenes in Nature’s ample sway. And sweeter than the music of the grove, […]...
35. THE SLAVE'S DREAM Beside the ungathered rice he lay, His sickle in his hand; His breast was bare, his matted hair Was buried in the sand. Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, He saw his Native Land. Wide through the landscape of his dreams The lordly Niger flowed; Beneath the palm-trees on the plain Once more […]...
36. THE SLAVE IN THE DISMAL SWAMP In dark fens of the Dismal Swamp The hunted Negro lay; He saw the fire of the midnight camp, And heard at times a horse’s tramp And a bloodhound’s distant bay. Where will-o’-the-wisps and glow-worms shine, In bulrush and in brake; Where waving mosses shroud the pine, And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine […]...
37. THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT Loud he sang the psalm of David! He, a Negro and enslaved, Sang of Israel’s victory, Sang of Zion, bright and free. In that hour, when night is calmest, Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist, In a voice so sweet and clear That I could not choose but hear, Songs of triumph, and ascriptions, Such […]...
38. Sonnet 15 – Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear Too calm and sad a face in front of thine; For we two look two ways, and cannot shine With the same sunlight on our brow and hair. On me thou lookest with no doubting care, As on a bee shut in a crystalline; Since sorrow hath […]...
39. Sonnet XIV IT may be for the world of weeds and tares And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty’s rose That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows One from the train of Love’s true courtiers Straightway on him who gazes, unawares, Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows, Reft by that sight of purpose and repose, […]...
40. You Remember Ellen You remember Ellen, our hamlet’s pride, How meekly she bless’d her humble lot, When the stranger, William, had made her his bride, And love was the light of their lowly cot. Together they toil’d through winds and rains, Till William, at length, in sadness said, “We must seek our fortune on other plains;” Then, sighing, […]...