RICHARD LOVELACE.

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SLAVERY.

FROM “THE TIMEPIECE”:  “THE TASK,” BK.  II.

    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,
  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 obdurate heart;
  It does not feel for man; the natural bond
  Of brotherhood is served as the flax,
  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. 
  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;
  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. 
  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,
  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,
  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
  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
  Of all your empire; that, where Britain’s power
  Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

WILLIAM COWPER.

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SONG OF THE WESTERN MEN.

[After the English Revolution of 1688, all bishops were compelled to swear allegiance to William and Mary.  Seven of them, adherents of James II., refused and were imprisoned for treason,—­the “Non-Jurors.”  Trelawney of Cornwall was one.]