  A slave in one of our Southern States, named Mingo, was endowed with uncommon abilities. If he had been a white man, his talents would have secured him an honorable position; but being colored, his great intelligence only served to make him an object of suspicion. He was thrown into prison, to be sold. He wrote the following lines on the walls, which were afterward found and copied. A Southern gentleman sent them to a friend in Boston, as a curiosity, and they were published in the Boston Journal, many years ago. The night after Mingo wrote them, he escaped from the slave-prison; but he was tracked and caught by bloodhounds, who tore him in such a shocking manner that he died. By that dreadful process his great soul was released from his enslaved body. His wife lived to be an aged woman, and was said to have many of his poems in her possession. Here are the lines he wrote in his agony while in prison:— "Good God! and must I leave them now, My wife, my children, in their woe? 'Tis mockery to say I'm sold! But I forget these chains so cold, Which goad my bleeding limbs; though high My reason mounts above the sky. Dear wife, they cannot sell the rose Of love that in my bosom glows. Remember, as your tears may start, They cannot sell the immortal part. Tell me, I pray, is liberty The lot of those who noblest feel, And oftest to Jehovah kneel? Then I may say, but not with pride, I feel the rushings of the tide Of reason and of eloquence, Which strive and yearn for eminence. I feel high manhood on me now, A spirit-glory on my brow; I feel a thrill of music roll, Like angel-harpings, through my soul; While poesy, with rustling wings, Upon my spirit rests and sings. He sweeps my heart's deep throbbing lyre, Who touched Isaiah's lips with fire." May God forgive his oppressors. |
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