- The Negro's Complaint
- William Cowper
- Exported from Wikisource on 03/05/20
- Forced from home and all its pleasures,
- Afric's coast I left forlorn;
- To increase a stranger's treasures,
- O'er the raging billows borne.
- Men from England bought and sold me,
- Paid my price in paltry gold;
- But, though slave they have enroll'd me
- Minds are never to be sold.
- Still in thought as free as ever,
- What are England's rights, I ask,
- Me from my delights to sever,
- Me to torture, me to task?
- Fleecy locks and black complexion
- Cannot forfeit nature's claim;
- Skins may differ, but affection
- Dwells in white and black the same.
- Why did all-creating Nature
- Make the plant for which we toil?
- Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
- Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
- Think, ye masters iron-hearted,
- Lolling at your jovial boards,
- Think how many backs have smarted
- For the sweets your cane affords.
- Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
- Is there One who reigns on high?
- Has he bid you buy and sell us,
- Speaking from his throne, the sky?
- Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
- Matches, blood-extorting screws,
- Are the means that duty urges
- Agents of his will to use?
- Hark! he answers—wild tornadoes,
- Strewing yonder sea with wrecks;
- Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
- Are the voice with which he speaks.
- He, foreseeing what vexations
- Afric's sons should undergo,
- Fix'd their tyrants' habitations
- Where his whirlwinds answer—no.
- By our blood in Afric wasted,
- Ere our necks received the chain;
- By the miseries that we tasted,
- Crossing in our barks the main;
- By our sufferings, since ye brought us
- To the man-degrading mart,
- All sustain'd by patience, taught us
- Only by a broken heart;
- Deem our nation brutes no longer,
- Till some reason ye shall find
- Worthier of regard, and stronger
- Than the colour of our kind.
- Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
- Tarnish all your boasted powers,
- Prove that you have human feelings,
- Ere you proudly question ours!
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