Written January 7th 1884 and published in the Hull Weekly Express on the subject of Hull’s William Wilberforce, a figurehead in the abolition of slavery. The year of writing must be taken into account as some language used is of the era, with terms that would now be seen as pejorative.
From humanity tortur’d ascended a wail,
That was caught in the arms of a swift driving gale,
And the cry was so piercing the wind almost died
Into pitying silence, so softly it sigh’d
In the midst of its roaring. Yet rising again
With its anger renew’d by that signal of pain,
To the eastward it rush’d, bearing close to its breast
That complaint from the slave, by his anguish opprest;
For the moan it had heard was from one of that race
Whom their fellows had push’d to the lowermost place
On the ladder of life, who by cruelty driv’n
Had appeal’d to the pitying mercy of Heav’n.
‘Mid the heat and the glare of a tropical sky,
Where the red lights of sunset each evening die,
Is a land where the power of England unfurl’d
Long ago her broad flag o’er a newly-found world;
‘Tis a land rich in treasures of glittering gold,
But far more in the wealth that its soil can unfold;
All the produce of earth it brings readily forth,
Either fruits of the south, or the grain of the north,
But the prize of its produce must certainly fall
On tobacco and cotton the richest of all.
‘Tis far south, where the sunlight is burning the soil,
That the poor branded negro is bidden to toil,
Where the sweat of his brow wets the soil that he turns,
Whilst his heart with the bitterest memory burns;
For he sees as he bends with the hoe in his hand,
The wild home of his childhood, that far away land
Where the banyan tree offers its shelter at noon
By the side of the Congo or restless Gaboon.
He can see his fond mother with love quite as deep,
As could e’er in the bosom of white mother sleep,
Raise him up, and impress on his shining black face
The warm kiss of a parent, unmindful of race.
He remembers that kiss as the last she bestow’d
On his brow e’er her blood on the yellow sand flow’d;
When a rough hand assail’s them and bore him away
To the slaving ship anchor’d far out in the bay.
What a terrible memory with him remains,
Of his father and sister there weeping in chains;
With his mother laid dead on the blood-sprinkled ground,
And the rest of his tribe in captivity bound.
Then again is the picture before him unroll’d
Of the ship, and the horrors within its dark hold:
How they died off sometimes by a dozen a day
In the darkness and filth – without ever a ray
Of the pure light of heaven to brighten the gloom
Of their terrible prison, that dark moving tomb;
Until time seem’d unnoticed, the days were as years
As they pass’d unrecorded, excepting by tears.
And tho’ years have swept by since that day he stood
In the market, and saw how men barter’d his blood,
Which was rushing just then through as feeling a heart
As e’er throb’d in the white bosoms using the mart,
Yet the scene often flashes again to his soul,
And he feels all its agony over it roll;
Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters – no matter the tie
That might bind them together, some rough hand was nigh,
And the keen strength of cruelty sever’d the chain,
And dispersed them abroad with their separate pain.
Then the years are remember’d when fiercely the sun
Has blazed down on the toilers, and seen one by one,
As they paused for a moment to rest in the glare,
Get a lash from the whip of the manager there,
That would leave on the place where it fell a red track,
Where the skin would be torn in a strip from the back.
And the poor tortur’d slave gives a terrible cry
Only heard by the pitying angels on high:
But they whisper’d it down, and the story then rang
O’er the ocean to England with soul-stirring clang.
To a dark narrow street of a mercantile town
In old England, that whisper from heaven came down
In the charge of an Infant, who there was endow’d
With the great gift of life, and his future was vow’d
To a purpose that made him oft smile in his sleep,
As he dreamed of the future, and saw his hand sweep
From that flowery land in the far distant west,
The terrible burden that on it was prest.
On to manhood he grown by the Humber’s dark wave,
As he constantly ponders how best he can save
From the doom of their fathers, the negroes who toil
For an owner who reaps all the fruits of the soil.
And he knows that his voice, to be heard with effect,
Must be raised in the chamber of England’s elect.
Then the moment arrived; and he stood on the floor
Of St. Stephen’s, his heart with its love brimming o’er;
And while charity prompted the words of his tongue,
For some hours the old walls with his eloquence rung.
“It is thus,” said he boldly, “that strong is the cause
I appeal tho the simplest of heavenly laws;
Should we treat these – our brothers – as beasts of the field,
With our hearts ‘gainst their loud cry of agony steel’d;
Or obey the great law that Scriptures have giv’n,
Where we read that all men are alike unto heav’n,
And behave unto them as we’d have them to do
Unto us, were we trying their pity to woo?
Shall those cries rise unheeded from morning to night
And their lives still remain ‘neath that terrible blight?
Can you sleep in your beds now as fathers and sons,
Whilst you know that out yonder a cruelty runs
O’er the back of the slave, that is heavier far
Than the wheels of the thundering Juggernaut car?
Can you picture the lash, that a look may provoke
To come down on their backs with a blood-letting stroke,
Or the fetters of iron; the dark filthy cell,
That are ready if ever they dare to rebel?
Go then, think of the old Inquisition of Spain:
For the worst of its horrors are with us again.
And away in the cotton plantations, the slave
Is released from them only when laid in the grave.
I may plead to dead walls, to deaf ears, but I ne’er,
Whilst the power remains will give way to despair.
For the cause is not mine; but belongs to the whole
Of my fellow-men boasting a Christian soul.
And I trust in the time that will open all eyes
To the evil that causes those piteous cries,
That e’en now sem to ring in my ears, and to say
‘We are men! we are brothers! Lord, God, hear us pray!'”
This he speaks, and he rises again and again,
In his place in the Senate, but ever in vain;
Yet tho’ baffled, he is not subdued, for the length
Of the years that elapse seem to add to his strength,
And a day comes at last when his purpose is blest,
For the death-knell of slavery tolls in the west.
And, wherever the flag of Great Britain might wave,
There was freedom and liberty given the slave.
What a thrill of the heart Wilberforce must have felt,
When in thankfulness next in his chamber he knelt,
For he knew that the freedom for which he had striv’n,
Was a stepping-stone leading dark souls up to Heav’n;
‘Twas a work that for ever has written his name
In bright letters of gold on the records of fame,
And had added one more to the crowns that adorn
The old town by the Humber in which he was born,
For he struggled so nobly, so long, in the cause,
That the passing at last of the slavery laws
Was a triumph of qualities such as have made
Beloved Kingston-on-Hull take a high rank in trade.
A right honest intent, and a strong mind and will,
Are the qualities owned by the merchants there still.