The Anti-Slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings
History
The Anti-Slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings
Antislavery movements -- Songs and music; Slavery -- United States -- Poetry; Songs, English -- United States -- Texts
I am an Abolitionist!
Then urge me not to pause;
For joyfully do I enlist
In FREEDOM'S sacred cause:
A nobler strife the world ne'er saw,
Th' enslaved to disenthral;
I am a soldier for the war,
Whatever may befall!
I am an Abolitionist!
Oppression's deadly foe;
In God's great strength will I resist,
And lay the monster low;
In God's great name do I demand,
To all be freedom given,
That peace and joy may fill the land,
And songs go up to heaven!
I am an Abolitionist!
No threats shall awe my soul,
No perils cause me to desist,
No bribes my acts control;
A freeman will I live and die,
In sunshine and in shade,
And raise my voice for liberty,
Of nought on earth afraid.
THE BEREAVED MOTHER.
Air--Kathleen O'More.
O, deep was the anguish of the slave mother's heart,
When called from her darling for ever to part;
So grieved that lone mother, that heart broken mother,
In sorrow and woe.
The lash of the master her deep sorrows mock,
While the child of her bosom is sold on the block;
Yet loud shrieked that mother, poor heart broken mother,
In sorrow and woe.
The babe in return, for its fond mother cries,
While the sound of their wailings, together arise;
They shriek for each other, the child and the mother,
In sorrow and woe.
The harsh auctioneer, to sympathy cold,
Tears the babe from its mother and sells it for gold;
While the infant and mother, loud shriek for each other,
In sorrow and woe.
At last came the parting of mother and child,
Her brain reeled with madness, that mother was wild;
Then the lash could not smother the shrieks of that mother
Of sorrow and woe.
The child was borne off to a far distant clime,
While the mother was left in anguish to pine;
But reason departed, and she sank broken hearted,
In sorrow and woe.
That poor mourning mother, of reason bereft,
Soon ended her sorrows and sank cold in death;
Thus died that slave mother, poor heart broken mother,
In sorrow and woe.
O, list ye kind mothers to the cries of the slave;
The parents and children implore you to save;
Go! rescue the mothers, the sisters and brothers,
From sorrow and woe.
THE CHASE.
AIR--Sweet Afton.
Quick, fly to the covert, thou hunted of men!
For the bloodhounds are baying o'er mountain and glen;
The riders are mounted, the loose rein is given,
And curses of wrath are ascending to heaven.
O, speed to thy footsteps! for ruin and death,
Like the hurricane's rage, gather thick round thy path;
And the deep muttered curses grow loud and more loud,
As horse after horse swells the thundering crowd.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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