Introduction
The poem: The Sorrows of Yamba; or The Negro Woman’s Lamentation, published in 1795 by famous playwright and abolitionist, Hannah More, became “one of the most popular and frequently reprinted antislavery poems in the early history of the anti-slavery movement in the British Sugar Colonies:
Cease, ye British Sons of murder!
Cease from forging Afric’s Chain;
Mock your Saviour’s name no further,
Cease your savage lust of gain.
Ye that boast “Ye rule the waves,”
Bid no Slave Ship soil the sea,
Ye that “never will be slaves,”
Bid poor Afric’s land be free.
Ye gave to war its birth,
Where your traders fix’d their den,
There go publish “Peace on Earth,”
Go proclaim “good-will to men.”
Where ye once have carried slaughter,
Vice, and Slavery, and Sin;
Seiz’d on Husband, Wife, and Daughter,
Let the Gospel enter in.
Date: 4th October 2022
Title: THE SORROWS OF YAMBA -The Negro Woman’s Lamentation
Source: A Heritage of Faith: A History of Christianity in Nigeria
Author: Ayodeji Abodunde
Tale Tuesday 011
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