"Formerly A Slave"

The sufferance of her race is shown,

  And retrospect of life,

Which now too late deliverance dawns upon;

  Yet is she not at strife.

Her children's children they shall know

  The good withheld from her;

And so her reverie takes prophetic cheer--

  In spirit she sees the stir.

Far down the depth of thousand years,

  And marks the revel shine;

Her dusky face is lit with sober light,

  Sibylline, yet benign.

An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the SpringExhibition of the National Academy, 1865