THE SLAVE TRADER

THE SLAVE TRADER.

From ocean's wave a wanderer came,
With visage tanned and dun;
His mother, when he told his name,
Scarce knew her long lost son;
So altered were his face and frame,
By the ill course he had run.

"There's blood upon my hands," he said,
"Which water cannot wash;
It was not shed where warriors bled,
But dropped from the gory lash,
As I whirled it o'er and o'er my head,
And with each stroke left a gash.

"With every stroke I left a gash,
While negro blood sprang high,--
And now all ocean cannot wash
My soul from murder's dye;
Not e'en thy prayer, dear mother, stop
That woman's wild death-cry!

"Her cry is ever in my ear
And will not let me pray,
Her look I see--her voice I hear--
As when in death she lay,
And said, 'with me thou must appear,
On God's great Judgment Day!'"

The SLAVE'S FRIEND, NO VIII, front cover for 1836 featured a white man teaching young black boys to read.[http://www.merrycoz.org/slave/slave11/SLAVE11.HTM]