Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/46

24 of Hartford, Connecticut, a slave girl who published a book of twenty poems in 1841; nor of Frances Ellen Watkins (afterwards Harper) whose Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects appeared in 1857, reaching a circulation of ten thousand copies; nor of Charles L. Reason, whose poem entitled Freedom, published in 1847, voiced the cry of millions of fellow blacks in bonds.

Thus bursts forth Reason’s poetic cry, not unlike that of the crude Spirituals:

O Freedom! Freedom! Oh, how oft Thy loving children call on Thee! In wailings loud and breathings soft, Beseeching God, Thy face to see. With agonizing hearts we kneel, While ’round us howls the oppressor’s cry,— And suppliant pray that we may feel The ennobling glances of Thine eye.