To Africa Delivered from Captivity

“He regarded their affliction when he heard their cry.” – Psalm cvi. 44.

   “The Lord looseth the prisoners.” – Psalm cxlvi. 7.

Thy tears are wiped, O captive! And their stain,

The guilt and the disgrace of tyrant lands,

Hath left my country. She hath wash’d her hands.

Was it thy sigh of anguish burst the chain,

When thine heart heaved as doth the swelling main,

Amid the pauses of thy long despair?

No, – ’twas thy suppliant sigh, thy voice of prayer:

Cry of thy meekness, – not of thy disdain.

Then o’er the chaos of earth’s mighty things,

The counsels of the senate and the throne,                                                   10

Came down thine answer from the King of kings.

Yes, – then his voice was heard, and his alone.

He said, and sent the mandate o’er the sea,

“Break Afric’s exile bonds!” – and thou wert free.

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011),  vol. 5, p. 206; Saffery, Poems (1834), p. 203.

Saffery celebrates the passage of the Abolition Bill in August 1833, which took effect in August 1834; she was an active abolitionist in the Salisbury area.