<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117393" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>What Is A Slave, Mother</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">What is a slave, mother?—I heard you say<br>That word with a sorrowful voice, one day;<br>And it came again to my thoughts last night,<br>As I laid awake in the broad moonlight;<br>Methinks I have heard a story told,<br>Of some poor men, who are bought and sold,<br>And driven abroad with stripes to toil,<br>The live-long day on a stranger's soil;<br>Is this true mother?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">May children as young as I be sold,<br>And torn away from their mother's hold—<br>From home—from all they have loved and known,<br>To dwell in the great wide world alone,<br>Far, far away in some distant place,<br>Where they never may see their parents’ face?<br>Ah! how I should weep to be torn from you!<br>Tell me, dear mother, can this be true?<br>Alas, yes, my child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Does the master love the slave child well,<br>That he takes away in his house to dwell?<br>Does he teach him all that he ought to know,<br>And wipe his tears when they sometimes flow—<br>And watch beside him in sickness and pain,<br>Till health comes back to his cheek again—<br>And kneel each night by his side to pray,<br>That God will keep him through life's rough way?<br>Alas, no, my child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, then must the tales I have heard be true,<br>Of the cruel things that the masters do;<br>That the poor slaves often must creep to bed,<br>On their scatter'd straw, but scantily fed;<br>Be sometimes loaded with heavy chains;<br>And flogg'd till their blood the keen lash stains;<br>While none will care for their bitter cry,<br>Or soothe their hearts when their grief is high.<br>It is so, my child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And is it not, mother, a sinful thing,<br>The bosoms of others with pain to wring—<br>To bid them go labour and delve the soil,<br>And seize the reward of their weary toil—<br>For men to tear men from their homes away,<br>And sell them for gold, like a lawful prey!<br>Oh surely the land where such deeds are done,<br>Must be a most savage and wicked one!<br>It is this, my child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Elizabeth+Margaret+Chandler">Elizabeth Margaret Chandler</a> from <i>Poetical Works</i><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117393" data-title="What Is A Slave, Mother de Elizabeth Margaret Chandler" data-description="What is a slave, mother?—I heard you say/That word with a sorrowful voice, one day;/And it came again to my thoughts last night,/As I laid awake in the broad moonlight;/Methinks I have heard a story told,/Of some poor men, who are bought and sol..."></div> </div> </div>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black