Quoth the nigger—“Work no more.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly nigger should refuse so plainly
Just to do a little work, for food he craved and needed sore,
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Should decline to labour seeing that he was so deuced poor;
Should refuse to earn a dinner, which he hungered for I’m sure,
And would have damned his soul by stealing had he hoped to make the door;
Escaping thence to—work no more.
Awhile I sat absorbed in musing, what meant he by this refusing,
Till, mad, I turned into abusing the odious, odorous blackamoor.