the cap blow off her head, Her face was of a dark dark red Her eyes were starting wide:  I think they could not have been closed So widely did they strain. I never saw so dreadful a sight, And it often made me wake at night, For I saw her face again. They laid her here where four roads meet. Beneath this very place, The earth upon her corpse was prest, This post is driven into her breast, And a stone is on her face. 

 

The Sailor

 who had served in the Slave Trade In September, 1798, a Dissenting Minister of Bristol, discovered a Sailor in the neighbourhood of that City, groaning and praying in a hovel. The circumstance that occasioned his agony of mind is detailed in the annexed Ballad, without the slightest addition or alteration. By presenting it as a Poem the story is made more public, and such stories ought to be made as public as possible. 

 He stopt,—it surely was a groan That from the hovel came! He stopt and listened anxiously Again it sounds the same. It surely from the hovel comes! And now he hastens there, And thence he hears the name of Christ Amidst a broken prayer. He entered in the hovel now, A sailor there he sees, His hands were lifted up to Heaven And he was on his knees. Nor did the Sailor so intent His entering footsteps heed, But now the Lord’s prayer said, and now His half-forgotten creed. And often on his Saviour call’d With many a bitter groan, In such heart-anguish as could spring From deepest guilt alone. He ask’d the miserable man Why he was kneeling there, And what the crime had been that caus’d The anguish of his prayer. Oh I have done a wicked thing! It haunts me night and day, And I have sought this lonely place Here undisturb’d to pray. I have no place to pray on board So I came here alone, That I might freely kneel and pray, And call on Christ and groan. If to the main-mast head I go, The wicked one is there, From place to place, from rope to rope, He follows every where. I shut my eyes,—it matters not— Still still the same I see,— And when I lie me down at night ’Tis always day with me. He follows follows every where, And every place is Hell! O God—and I must go with him In endless fire to dwell. He follows follows every where, He’s still above—below, Oh tell me where to fly from him! Oh tell me where to go! But tell me, quoth the Stranger then, What this thy crime hath been, So haply I may comfort give To one that grieves for sin. O I have done a cursed deed The wretched man replies, And night and day and every where ’Tis still before my eyes. I sail’d on board a Guinea-man And to the slave-coast went; 

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