The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag/Frederick Douglas

by Jonathan E. Hoag

Frederick Douglas

He was born a slave, was that dusky boy;
  His bed was a clod of cold, hard clay;
And his naked feet were both rough and bare,
  By the grim old fireplace where he lay.

His eyes were fixed on a beam o'erhead,
  While he fought the flies with a wisp of straw.
Great raindrops fell on his upturned face,
  And his hands were often cut and raw.

And he saw the stars through that old thatched roof,
  While he dreamed of a mother long since dead;
A mother who toiled in the cotton field,
  As she thought of her boy of the curly head.

A coarse sack covered his sturdy loins;
  There were no child-toys for that barefoot boy;
But the singing birds by the cabin door
  And the playful kittens were all his joy.

I touched the latch of that cabin door;
  And I visioned the black man's blood and tears;
And up from the ground whereon I stood,
  I caught the whisper: "A hundred years!"

And I seemed to list to a bitter wail:
  "O spare in mercy my little child!"
While the cruel lash was dripping blood,
  And a mother writhed in her anguish wild!

Then I saw that boy as a stalwart man,
  Though born as a slave of Afric birth;
Harsh truths he spoke of his native land,
  And mourned for the mother it crushed to earth.

I see him now as a fearless soul,
  Who strove for a race held under a ban;
In his upraised hand he grasped the pen,
  That struck the chains from his fellow-man!

1923