The sale began - young girls were there,
    Defenceless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep dispair
    Revealed their anguish and distress.

And mothers stood with streaming eyes,
    And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
    While tyrants bartered them for gold.

And woman, with her love and truth -
    For these in sable forms may dwell -
Gaz'd on the husband of her youth,
    With anguish none may paint or tell.

And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
    The impress of their Maker's hand,
And frail and shrinking children, too,
    Were gathered in that mournful band.

Ye who have laid your love to rest,
    And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
    Whose lov'd are rudely torn away.

Ye may not know how desolate
    Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
    Will press the life-drops from the heart.

Good Lord,
Make me a grave where'er you will,
    In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
    But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if around my grave
    I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
    Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
    To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
    Is - "Bury me not in a land of slaves!"