Classic Poem

Good-bye ye bloody scenes of long ago!
Good-bye to cotton fields and hounds!
From you, vile sources of my earthly woe,
My freed and leaping spirit bounds!

Though free, my work to me no profit yields,
And for my politics, am mobb'd;
No more thank God! upon these bloody fields
Shall I be of my labor robb'd!

Good-bye Aunt Polly! good-bye Uncle Ned!
I am off, and shall not come back;
This land is cursed; we are in rags, half fed,
Bull-dozed and killed by Yellow Jack!

Good-bye! I've sold my little cane and corn!
And am off for the river's banks;
And when I step on board to-morrow morn,
I'll sing and give the good Lord thanks!

How long, O God! how long must I remain
Worse than an alien in my native land?
For long years past I've toiled for other's gain
Beneath Oppression's ruthless iron hand.

Columbia! why art thou so great and fair,
And so false and cruel to thine own?
Goodness and Beauty, a proverbial pair,
They in thy heritage, themselves disown.

So fair and yet so false! thou art a lie
Against both natural and human laws, —
A deformed dwarf, dropp'd from an angry sky
To serve a selfish, and unholy cause!

Ye sun-kiss'd lakes and hills of Liberty!
And silvery flowing streams and fields!
Your teeming gold and grain are not for me,
My birthright only ostracism yields!

My life is burdensome; year suceeds year
With feeble hope: I try to emulate
All that conspire to ennoble manhood's sphere;
And yet I seem to war with angry Fate!

O Liberty! I taste but half thy sweets
In this thy boasted land of Equal Rights!
Although I've fought on land and in thy fleets
Thy foes, by day and by dim camp-fire lights!

What more wouldst have me do? Is not my life —
My blood, an all-sufficient sacrifice?
Wouldst thou have me transformed in the vain strife
To change the fiat of the great Allwise?

Of what avail is life — why sigh and fret,
When manly hopes are only born to fade?
Although declared a man, a vassal yet
By social caste — a crime by heaven made!

Far better for me not to have been born,
Than live and feel the frownings of mankind;
Endure its social hatred and its scorn,
With all my blighting, forlorn hopes combined.

O, cruel fate! — O, struggle which unmans,
And burdens every hope and every sigh!
Thou art a boundless gulf over which spans
Only the arching, storm-foreboding sky!

Ah, woe is me! I feel my yearnings crush'd
Ere they are born within my sighing heart;
All hopes, all manly aspirations hush'd
As with the power of Death's fatal dart!

The rice birds sing as if in mocking glee,
Scorn my long felt sorrows and my burning tears,
Why mock me, birds? I only crave to be
Like you, free to roam the boundless spheres!

But still sing on! your cheerful music gives
My fading hope a gleam of brighter days;
Why should I grieve? the eternal God still lives! —
The sun still shines though clouds obscure his rays!

The darkest hour is just before the break
Of dawning victory of light and life,
When Freedom's hosts with armor bright awake,
To quell Oppression in the deadly strife!

New hope is mine! for now I see the gleam
Of beacon lights of coming liberty!
A continent is shock'd — a crimson stream
Of blood has paid the debt, and I am free!