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The Anti-slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-slavery Meetings

Chapter 30: LAMENT OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE.
By William Wells Brown
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About This Book

A compilation of abolitionist songs and lyric pamphlets intended for anti-slavery gatherings, offering moral appeals, narratives of suffering, and calls to collective action. Poems dramatize the anguish of enslaved mothers, the fate of separated families, and the experiences of fugitives guided by the North Star, while urging political and religious solidarity against slavery. Several pieces adapt their words to familiar popular airs to facilitate communal singing, and the collection blends emotional testimony, exhortation, and patriotic imagery to mobilize audiences for emancipation.

LAMENT OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE.

“My child, we must soon part to meet no more this side of the grave. You have ever said that you would not die a slave; that you would be a freeman. Now try to get your liberty!”—W. W. Brown’s Narrative.

I’ve wandered out beneath the moon-lit heaven,
Lost mother! loved and dear,
To every beam a magic power seems given
To bring thy spirit near;
For though the breeze of freedom fans my brow,
My soul still turns to thee! oh, where art thou?
Where art thou, mother? I am weary thinking;
A heritage of pain and woe
Was thine,—beneath it art thou slowly sinking,
Or hast thou perished long ago?
And doth thy spirit ’mid the quivering leaves above me,
Hover, dear mother, near, to guard and love me?
I murmur at my lot; in the white man’s dwelling
The mother there is found;
Or he may tell where spring buds first are swelling
Above her lowly mound;
But thou,—lost mother, every trace of thee
In the vast sepulchre of Slavery!
Long years have fled, since sad, faint-hearted,
I stood on Freedom’s shore,
And knew, dear mother, from thee I was parted
To meet thee never more;
And deemed the tyrant’s chain with thee were better
Than stranger hearts and limbs without a fetter.
Yet blessings on thy Roman-mother spirit;
Could I forget it, then,
The parting scene, and struggle not to inherit
A freeman’s birth-right once again?
O noble words! O holy love which gave
Thee strength to utter them, a poor, heart-broken slave!
Be near me, mother, be thy spirit near me,
Wherever thou may’st be,
In hours like this bend near that I may hear thee,
And know that thou art free;
Summoned at length from bondage, toil and pain,
To God’s free world, a world without a chain!