Poems On The Slave Trade - Sonnet II

Why dost thou beat thy breast and rend thine hair,

And to the deaf sea pour thy frantic cries?

Before the gale the laden vessel flies;

The Heavens all-favoring smile, the breeze is fair;

Hark to the clamors of the exulting crew!

Hark how their thunders mock the patient skies!

Why dost thou shriek and strain thy red-swoln eyes

As the white sail dim lessens from thy view?

Go pine in want and anguish and despair,

There is no mercy found in human-kind—

Go Widow to thy grave and rest thee there!

But may the God of Justice bid the wind

Whelm that curst bark beneath the mountain wave,

And bless with Liberty and Death the Slave!

Robert Southey

Robert Southey, (born Aug. 12, 1774, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng.—died March 21, 1843, Keswick, Cumberland), English poet and writer of miscellaneous prose who is chiefly remembered for his association with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, both of whom were leaders of the early Romantic movement. He was endlessly curious about human nature but would not face it, whether in others or himself, except in the less volatile form of human culture, most of which he ended up despising as immoral or irrational, seditious or superstitious, dirty or even diabolical. His own mind eventually failed, after a lifetime of repressed passion and herculean compensatory labor, and he died of a stroke on the vernal equinox of 1843. He was buried in Crosthwaite Churchyard in Keswick, alongside his first wife and three of his children.

More poems from same author

Poems On The Slave Trade - Sonnet III Poems On The Slave Trade - Sonnet II Poems On The Slave Trade - Sonnet I Botany Bay Eclogues 04 - John, Samuel & Richard Botany Bay Eclogues 03 - Humphrey And William

Poems On The Slave Trade - Sonnet II

More poems from same author

Subscribe to our newsletter.