Explore "The Slave Girl's Address to her Mother" by Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Oh! mother, weep not, though our lot be hard, / And we are helpless -- God will be our guard: / For He our heavenly guardian doth not sleep; / He watches o'er us -- mother, do not weep.
And grieve not for that dear loved home no more; / Our sufferings and our wrongs, ah! why deplore?
For though we feel the stern oppressor's rod, / Yet he must yield, as well as we, to God.
Torn from our home, our kindred and our friends, / And in a stranger's land our days to end, / No heart feels for the poor, the bleeding slave; / No arm is stretched to rescue, and to save.
Oh! ye who boast of Freedom's sacred claims, / Do ye not blush to see our galling chains; / To hear that sounding word -- "that all are free" --
When thousands groan in hopeless slavery?
Upon your land it is a cruel stain --
Freedom, what art thou? -- nothing but a name.
No more, no more! Oh God, this cannot be; / Thou to thy children's aid wilt surely flee: / In thine own time deliverance thou wilt give, / And bid us rise from slavery, and live.