Poetry Codex

American

George Moses Horton

c. 1798–c. 1883

George Moses Horton was born into slavery in North Carolina around 1798 and spent most of his life on the farm of his owner in Chatham County. Unable at first to write, he composed verses in his head and, on Sundays, walked to Chapel Hill, where students of the University of North Carolina paid him to compose love poems for them.

His first book, The Hope of Liberty (1829), is generally recognised as the first book of poetry by a Black author published in the South. Its poems were reissued in Philadelphia in 1837 as Poems by a Slave, the edition from which these pieces are taken. He remained enslaved until 1865, when Union forces arrived in North Carolina and he gained his freedom.

Poems (21)

  1. Praise of Creation
  2. On the Silence of a Young Lady, on account of the imaginary flight of her suitor
  3. The Lover's Farewell
  4. On Liberty and Slavery
  5. To Eliza
  6. Love
  7. On the Death of an Infant
  8. The Slave's Complaint
  9. On the Truth of the Saviour
  10. On Spring
  11. On Summer
  12. On Winter
  13. Heavenly Love
  14. On the Death of Rebecca
  15. On Death
  16. On the Evening and Morning
  17. On the Poetic Muse
  18. Consequences of Happy Marriages
  19. Lines, on hearing of the intention of a gentleman to purchase the Poet's freedom
  20. To the Gad-Fly
  21. The Loss of Female Character

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