On our way back from Philadelphia, we stopped at National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg. This has been something that I’ve been wanting to do for at least fifteen years, ever since I started travelling on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and passing the museum’s billboards.

The long wait did not disappoint; although not large, the museum had one of the best collections of Civil War artifacts that I have personally seen. More importantly – in my opinion – they were laid out in such a way as to tell a cohesive story of the War Between the States from the causes that launched the war through to reconstruction.

War is never pretty, and the museum does little to hide or gloss over that fact. Yet for me, the most emotionally disturbing part of the museum was the slavery exhibit. It’s one thing to read about slavery, but it’s another thing entirely to come face to face with the actual collars and shackles that were used to bind a slave or the whips and truncheons that were used to control them. It’s a cliched and overused phrase, but this would be one of the times that “man’s inhumanity to man” fits the bill exactly.

In that theme, today’s poem comes from one of America’s greatest poets, and one of her most zealous abolitionists.

The Slave’s Dream

Beside the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his Native Land.
Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode;
And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain-road.
He saw once more his dark-eyed queen
Among her children stand;
They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks,
They held him by the hand!–
A tear burst from the sleeper’s lids
And fell into the sand.
And then at furious speed he rode
Along the Niger’s bank;
His bridle-reins were golden chains,
And, with a martial clank,
At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel
Smiting his stallion’s flank.
Before him, like a blood-red flag,
The bright flamingoes flew;
From morn till night he followed their flight,
O’er plains where the tamarind grew,
Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts,
And the ocean rose to view.
At night he heard the lion roar,
And the hyena scream,
And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds
Beside some hidden stream;
And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums,
Through the triumph of his dream.
The forests, with their myriad tongues,
Shouted of liberty;
And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud,
With a voice so wild and free,
That he started in his sleep and smiled
At their tempestuous glee.
He did not feel the driver’s whip,
Nor the burning heat of day;
For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep,
And his lifeless body lay
A worn-out fetter, that the soul
Had broken and thrown away!

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow