Slave In The Dismal Swamp

This little poem, with it's masterful choice of heavy-laden words, and great alliteration that sounds like a drumbeat, or a heartbeat, and rolls off the tongue, conveys much horror in a very few words. Longfellow wrote poetry like John Singer Sargent painted portraits, with "economy of stroke", and this poem shows Longfellow's familiarity with and sympathy for the slavery issues of his day, and the ghastly contrast between nature's beauty and man-made hell. A contemporary of Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin), both used their literary art to raise consciousness of this intolerable practice. (Michele Fry)