Hold your mad hands! for ever on your plain <br /> Must the gorged vulture clog his beak with blood? <br /> For ever must your Nigers tainted flood <br />Roll to the ravenous shark his banquet slain? <br />Hold your mad hands! what daemon prompts to rear <br /> The arm of Slaughter? on your savage shore <br /> Can hell-sprung Glory claim the feast of gore, <br />With laurels water'd by the widow's tear <br />Wreathing his helmet crown? lift high the spear! <br /> And like the desolating whirlwinds sweep, <br /> Plunge ye yon bark of anguish in the deep; <br />For the pale fiend, cold-hearted Commerce there <br />Breathes his gold-gender'd pestilence afar, <br />And calls to share the prey his kindred Daemon War.<br /><br />Robert Southey<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poems-on-the-slave-trade-sonnet-i/
