Imagine sir if you could be
Back in 1793,
Remembering the things that you crave
But cannot hope for - you’re a slave.
Freedom was a dirty word;
Only something that you’d heard.
It certainly don’t apply to you
And there’s nothing you can do.
Just pick that cotton, hoe that corn,
Wish that you were never born.
Your culture has been lost for years
And there you stand reduce to tears.
To be so helpless, yet so strong,
You knew there must be something wrong.
There’s nothing you can do or say,
Except look to the Lord and pray.
These unknown souls who lie with you,
What kind of labor did they do?
I know that some were kitchen hands;
Some worked with wood and some with cans;
Some dug ditches; some fixed fences,
Down where the dismal swamp commences.
With straw and mud they put together
Bricks that have withstood the weather,
And houses they built from the ground
Through all these years are still around.
Oh I’m as proud as I can be.
I know they did it all for me.
I know that I’m a better man
As on their shoulders here I stand.
I know that all the grief and pain
They bore could not have been in vain.
They lived in Faith and died in Hope
That somewhere, sometime they could cope
And find a way to make a stand
Against man’s inhumanity to man.
Alas, alas, ‘t would not be so.
The grass upon their graves did grow
This poem was composed by Lewis Lear Quander in 1984
for the Quander Family Tricentennial Celebration in Washington, DC
