Rises to heaven that agonizing cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,
How long, O Lord, how long!
THE SLAVE MINGO’S POEM.
To the Editor of the Boston Journal:
[The following remarkable poem was sent me from the South by a friend, who informs me that the author of it was a slave named Mingo, a man of wonderful talents, and on that account oppressed by his master. While in the slave-prison, he penciled this poetic gem on one of the beams, which was afterwards found and copied. My friend adds that Mingo did escape, at night, but was recaptured and destroyed by the bloodhounds. My friend promises to send other poems of his, which, he says, are in possession of Mingo’s aged wife.]
C. W.
Good God! and must I leave them now—
My wife, my children, in their woe?
’Tis mockery to say I’m sold—