Longfellow

When I was a child, my grandmother had a card game we loved to play called, "Authors." It highlighted a number of poets and authors of classical literature, mostly American authors like Poe, Hawthorne and Longfellow. She always told a joke when we slapped Longfellow on the table. "You are a poet, you didn't know it, but your feet show it, their Longfellows!" As an adult, I have grown to love these three authors as well as Dickens, who I recall was also in the deck. I can't remember if Thoreau was in it, but I think Emily Dickinson and Louisa Mae Alcott were. Hmmm...I'd like to get my hands on a deck.

My point is, I've had the pleasure of reading enough works by these authors to be able to say that I "get it." I particularly love the short stories of Hawthorne and Poe, and love the poetry of Longfellow. I've started reading Tennyson, but need more time to concentrate on his poetry before I can reasonably discuss his work. He's more complex than some of the others. But Longfellow...I get him. And I would like to share one of his poems that I remember reading when I was young. I might have been in high school at the time, but I'm pretty certain I found the poem in one of my dad's books. I remember the line, They cry from unknown grave, "we are the witnesses!" I did not yet know the history of the slave ships that carried the Africans to America. It has been as an adult that I have digested the message of the poem and it has deeper meaning every time I read it.

"We are the witnesses!" Longfellow made a bold statement here-that many others of his day could not agree with. This was written at a time when it was acceptable to place value on a man according to his color. That the Africans were allowed this proclamation validated them as human-a much debated issue of the day. This is about as political a poem as one can read and I hope that all who do, will stop and consider how very far we have come in regard to race. I paste it below.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

The Witnesses

In Ocean’s wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.

Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.

There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.

These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
"We are the Witnesses!"

Within Earth’s wide domains
Are markets for men’s lives;
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves.

Dead bodies, that the kite
In deserts makes its prey;
Murders, that with affright
Scare school-boys from their play!

All evil thoughts and deeds;
Anger, and lust, and pride;
The foulest, rankest weeds,
That choke Life’s groaning tide!

These are the woes of Slaves;
They glare from the abyss;
They cry, from unknown graves,
"We are the Witnesses!"