Date: 1788

"The hollow winds of Night, no more / In wild, unequal cadence pour / On musing Fancy's wakeful ear, / The groan of agony severe / From yon dark vessel, which contains / The wretch new bound in hopeless chains; / Whose soul with keener anguish bleeds, / As AFRIC's less'ning shore recedes."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

Slavery "speculates with skill refin'd, / How deep a wound will stab the mind; / How far the spirit can endure / Calamity, that hopes no cure."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"Of home! dear scene, whose ties can bind / With sacred force the human mind / That feels each little absence pain, / And lives but to return again / To that lov'd spot, however far, / Points, like the needle to its star; / That native shed which first we knew, / Where first the sweet affections ...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"And ah! the blessings valued most / By human minds, are blessings lost / Unlike the objects of the eye, / Enlarging, as we bring them nigh, / Our joys, at distance strike the breast, / And seem diminish'd when possest."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)