The Negro Burial Ground, by James Baldwin Brown
The stone upon the White-man's grave
Had told us slumber nigh:--
And why not here? Their darker hue
Upon the Negro's fortunes threw
As dark a destiny.
They toiled, but not as others toil,
To gain from the productive soil
The wages of the free:
The toil--the cord--the whip--were theirs--
Their children's--call them not their heirs--
Heirs but of misery:--
The gain was theirs who cooly tell
Of power, and will, and right to sell
The living form of man:--
To trade in it, as they would trade
In silks, and satins, and brocade,
And make just what they can:--
To point to form, and face, and limb,
Not as the bounteous gifts of Him
Whose every work is good;
But as mere items of account
To swell or lessen the amount
Of money paid for blood.
And yet beneath this humble sod,
Despised of men--beloved of God,
Full many a Slave's at rest:
And at the last great day shall rise,
To claim their mansions in the skies,
Their glory with the blest.
And in that day, amidst the crowd
Of rich, and merciless, and proud,
Who laughed their chains to scorn,
How many in the altered scene,
Would even be as they had been,
Or never have been born.
James Baldwin Brown