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• 1 2023-06-26T09:36:40-04:00 Frances E.W. Harper, "Bury Me in a Free Land' (1858) 4 plain 2024-06-26T14:13:13-04:00
  Make me a grave where'er you will,
  In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill,
  Make it among earth's humblest graves,
  But not in a land where men are slaves.
  
  I could not rest if around my grave
  I heard the steps of a trembling slave:
  His shadow above my silent tomb
  Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
  
  I could not rest if I heard the tread
  Of a coffie gang to the shambles led,
  And the mother's shriek of wild despair
  Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
  
  I could not sleep if I saw the lash
  Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
  And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
  Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
  
  I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
  Of blood-hounds seizing their human prey,
  And I heard the captive plead in vain
  As they bound afresh his galling chain.
  
  If I saw young girls from their mothers' arms
  Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
  My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
  My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.
  
  I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
  Can rob no man of his dearest right;
  My rest shall be calm in any grave
  Where none can call his brother slave.
  
  I ask no monument, proud and high,
  To arrest the gaze of the passers by;
  All that my yearning spirit craves,
  Is bury me not in a land of slaves.
  
  
  
  First Published in 1858 in Anti-Slavery Bugle, November 20, 1858
  Also published in Weekly Anglo-African, June 2, 1860
  Also published in The Liberator, 1864
  Also published in Frances Harper's Poems, 1871