Explore "Lines" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
At the Portals of the Future, / Full of madness, guilt and gloom, / Stood the hateful form of Slavery, / Crying, Give, Oh! give me room -- / Room to smite the earth with cursing, / Room to scatter, rend and slay, / From the trembling mother's bosom / Room to tear her child away; / Room to trample on the manhood / Of the country far and wide; / Room to spread o'er every Eden / Slavery's scorching lava-tide.
Pale and trembling stood the Future, / Quailing 'neath his frown of hate, / As he grasped with bloody clutches / The great keys of Doom and Fate.