Explore "Free Labor" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I wear an easy garment, / O'er it no toiling slave / Wept tears of hopeless anguish, / In his passage to the grave.
And from its ample folds / Shall rise no cry to God, / Upon its warp and woof shall be / No stain of tears and blood.
Oh, lightly shall it press my form, / Unladened with a sigh, / I shall not 'mid its rustling hear, / Some sad despairing cry.
This fabric is too light to bear / The weight of bondsmen's tears, / I shall not in its texture trace / The agony of years.
Too light to bear a smother'd sigh, / From some lorn woman's heart.
Whose only wreath of household love / Is rudely torn apart.
Then lightly shall it press my form, / Unburden'd by a sigh; / And from its seams and folds shall rise, / No voice to pierce the sky, / And witness at the throne of God, / In language deep and strong, / That I have nerv'd Oppression's hand, / For deeds of guilt and wrong.