O Pity the Slave Mother

O Pity the Slave Mother

I pity the slave mother, careworn and weary,

Who sighs as she presses her babe to her breast:

I lament her sad fate, all so hopeless and dreary,

I lament for her woe, and her wrongs unredressed.

You may picture the bonds of the rock-girded ocean.

But the grief of that mother can never be known,

O who can imagine her heart's deep emotion,

As she thinks of her children about to be sold.

The mildew of slavery has blighted each blossom.

That has ever has bloomed in the path-way below;

It has froze every fountain that gushed in her bosom,

And chilled her heart's verdure with pitiless woe:

Her parents, her kindred, all crushed by oppression;

Her husband still doomed in its desert to stay.

No arm to protect from the tyrant's aggression--

She must weep as she treads on her desolate way.

O, slave-mother, hope! see--the nation is shaking!

The arm of the Lord is awake to thy wrong!

The slave-holder's heart now with terror is quaking

Salvation and Mercy to Heaven belong!

Rejoice, O rejoice: for the child thou art rearing,

May one day lift up its unmanacled form.

While hope, to thy heart, like the rainbow so cheering.

Is born, like the rainbow, 'mid tempest and storm.

Unattributed

1:14, p. 4

11.2.1861