"Fires not the social blood within your veins, / To make the White Man feel the Negro's pains? / Beat not your hearts the miscreant arms to bind, / Of the proud Christian with a savage mind?"
— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for T. Cadell
Date
1788
Metaphor
"Fires not the social blood within your veins, / To make the White Man feel the Negro's pains? / Beat not your hearts the miscreant arms to bind, / Of the proud Christian with a savage mind?"
Metaphor in Context
Ye friends of Man! whose souls with mercy glow,
Swell not your bosoms with this weight of woe?
Fires not the social blood within your veins,
To make the White Man feel the Negro's pains?
Beat not your hearts the miscreant arms to bind,
Of the proud Christian with a savage mind?
Dost thou not pant to snap the impious chain,
And rush to succour the insulted train?
From servile bonds, to free the hapless race,
And fix the haughty tyrants in their place?
Make them the weight of Slav'ry to know,
Till their hard natures melt at social woe,
Nor till they humanize to social men,
Would ye restore them to their rights again!
(p. 86-7)
Swell not your bosoms with this weight of woe?
Fires not the social blood within your veins,
To make the White Man feel the Negro's pains?
Beat not your hearts the miscreant arms to bind,
Of the proud Christian with a savage mind?
Dost thou not pant to snap the impious chain,
And rush to succour the insulted train?
From servile bonds, to free the hapless race,
And fix the haughty tyrants in their place?
Make them the weight of Slav'ry to know,
Till their hard natures melt at social woe,
Nor till they humanize to social men,
Would ye restore them to their rights again!
(p. 86-7)
Categories
Provenance
Searching in HDIS (Poetry)
Citation
At least 7 entries in ESTC (1788, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798, 1800).
Samuel Jackson Pratt, Humanity, or the Rights of Nature, a Poem; in Two Books. By the Author of Sympathy (London: T. Cadell, 1788). <Link to ESTC><Link to Google Books>
Added to Gleanings through Wales, Holland and Westphalia (1795, 1796, 1798, 1800).
Samuel Jackson Pratt, Humanity, or the Rights of Nature, a Poem; in Two Books. By the Author of Sympathy (London: T. Cadell, 1788). <Link to ESTC><Link to Google Books>
Added to Gleanings through Wales, Holland and Westphalia (1795, 1796, 1798, 1800).
Date of Entry
07/18/2011
