Poems on the Slave Trade - Sonnet 2 - Robert Southey

Song Meaning

This sonnet opens with a stark, almost accusatory address to a grieving figure, demanding to know why they lament so loudly. The scene is set with a departing ship, its sails shrinking against a favorable wind and sky, accompanied by the "clamors of the exulting crew." The contrast between the mourner's "frantic cries" and the crew's "thunders" mocking the "patient skies" immediately establishes a jarring disconnect. The central tension arises from the narrator's brutal dismissal of the mourner's pain, suggesting "no mercy found in human-kind." The narrator urges the mourner to "pine in want and anguish and despair," even to go "Widow to thy grave." This harshness seems to stem from a deep-seated anger, a conviction that the world offers no solace to those suffering, particularly in the context of the slave trade implied by the final lines. The poem's power lies in its sudden, violent turn towards divine retribution. After the initial condemnation and despair, the narrator invokes "the God of Justice." This plea for divine intervention transforms the poem from a lament of human cruelty to a curse against it, wishing for the ship to be "Whelm[ed]" and for the enslaved to find "Liberty and Death." This shift creates a potent emotional impact. The initial depiction of helplessness and the narrator's cold pronouncements of despair are shattered by a fervent hope for cosmic justice. The final lines offer a grim, yet powerful, resolution: if human mercy fails, then divine wrath will bring an end to the "curst bark" and the suffering it represents, offering a final, albeit violent, form of liberation.