' Oh, I was dreaming a sweet dream,
Just as we all awoke ! '

' We 're going but a little way,
My children, come along ■

You cannot think a mother's hand
Would lead her loved ones wrong !

' When I was old as you, my son,

I can remember well,
How I was brought across the sea,

With wicked men to dwell !

' They tore me from my mother's arms,
And brought me here to toil,

And every day my tears and blood
Have dewed this hated soil !

' Last evening I was beat again,
Though faint as I could be !

No, children, such a wretched fate
You shall not live to see ! '

They stopped beside a crystal spring,
That in the valley flowed ;

Just as the first faint gleam of dawn
Along the valley glowed !



SLAVE SONGS. 207

The morning showed those Jittle ones

Were like the sable night ;
But well the wretched mother knew

Their gentle souls were white !

She took her little, darling babes,

And put them in the spring !
It would have grieved a human heart

To see so sad a thing !

She held her children in the spring

Until they all were dead !
But though her heart was wrenched outright,

Yet not a tear she shed !

Let none who knows not suffering

That mother cruel call !
It was that she had felt so much,

She did not feel at all !

She laid her little loved ones there,

Three children cold as clay !
And there, beside the meadow spring,

She kissed them where they lay !

The wretched mother turned away,

With none her griefs to heed ;
Then up the valley she returned,

Again to toil and bleed !



208 SLAVE SONGS.
