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User Rating:
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7.7
/10
(23 votes)
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Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.
If I saw young girls from their mother's arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.
I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.
I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
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Monday, January 20, 2003 |
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Read poems about / on: mother, sleep, brother, despair, red, death, rose, friend, girl
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Comments about this poem (Bury Me in a Free Land
by
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
) |
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Cheryl Earl (1/6/2009 5:13:00 AM)
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This poem made me cry for those who were enslaved. I have loved dearly a man (my childs Grandfather) who had been a baby born into slavery. Still through life & the short time we had him and his Mother they never once were angry at what had once been.
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