The Christian Slave

By John Greenleaf Whittier 

    A Christian! going, gone!
Who bids for God's own image? for
     his grace,
Which that poor victim of the marketplace
   Hath in her suffering won?

    My God! can such things be?
Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is
     done
Unto Thy weakest and Thy humbles
     one
   Is even done to Thee?

    In that sad victim, then
Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee
     stand;
Once more the jest-word of a mocking
     band,
   Bound, sold, and scourged
     again!

    A Christian up for sale!
Wet with her blood your whips, o'er -
     task her frame,
Make her life loathsome with your
     wrong and shame,
   Her patience shall not fail!

    A heathen hand might deal
Back on your heads the gathered
     wrong of years:
But her low, broken prayer and
     nightly tears,
   Ye neither heed nor feel.

    Con well thy lesson o'er,
Thou prudent teacher, tell the toiling
   slave
No dangerous tale of Him who came to
     save
   The outcast and the poor.

    But wisely shut the ray
Of God's free Gospel from her simple
     heart,
And to her darkened mind alone
     impart
   One stern command, Obey!

    So shalt thou deftly raise
The market price of human flesh; and
     while
On thee, their pampered guest, the
      planters smile,
   Thy church shall praise.

    Grave, reverend men shall tell
From Northern pulpits how thy work
     was blest,
While in that vile South Sodom first
     and best,
   Thy poor disciples sell.

    Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall,
Who, with his master, to the Prophet
     kneels,
While turning to the sacred Kebla
     feels
   His fetter break and fall.

    Cheers for the turbaned Bey
Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath
     torn
The dark slave-dungeons open, and
     hath born
   Their inmates into day:

    But our poor slave in vain
Turns to the Christian shrine his aching
     eyes;
It rites will only swell his market
     price,
   And rivet on his chain.

    God of all right! how long
Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar
     stand,
Lifting in prayer to Thee the bloody
     hand
   And haughty brow of wrong?

    Oh, from the fields of Cain,
From the low rice-swamp, from the
      trader's cell;
From the black slave-ship's foul and
     loathsome hell,
 And coffle's weary chain;

    Hoarse, horrible, and strong,
Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,
   How long, O God, how long?

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