The Fugitive Slave To The Christian

The fetters galled my weary soul--
A soul that seemed but thrown away;
I spurned the tyrant's base control,
Resolved at last the man to play:--
The hounds are baying on my track;
O Christian! will you send me back?

I felt the stripes, the lash I saw,
Red, dripping with a father's gore;
And worst of all their lawless law,
The insults that my mother bore!
The hounds are baying on my track,
O Christian! will you send me back?

Where human law o'errules Divine,
Beneath the sheriff's hammer fell
My wife and babes,--I call them mine,--
And where they suffer, who can tell?
The hounds are baying on my track,
O Christian! will you send me back?

I seek a home where man is man,
If such there be upon this earth,
To draw my kindred, if I can,
Around its free, though humble hearth.
The hounds are baying on my track,
O Christian! will you send me back?