Explore "The Slave Auction" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The sale began -- young girls were there, / Defenceless in their wretchedness.
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair / Revealed their anguish and distress.
And mothers stood with streaming eyes, / And saw their dearest children sold; / Unheeded rose their bitter cries, / While tyrants bartered them for gold.
And woman, with her love and truth -- / For these in sable forms may dwell -- / Gaz'd on the husband of her youth, / With anguish none may paint or tell.
And men, whose sole crime was their hue, / The impress of their Maker's hand, / And frail and shrinking children, too, / Were gathered in that mournful band.
Ye who have laid your love to rest, / And wept above their lifeless clay, / Know not the anguish of that breast, / Whose lov'd are rudely torn away.
Ye may not know how desolate / Are bosoms rudely forced to part, / And how a dull and heavy weight / Will press the life-drops from the heart.