{
 "id": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper/bury-me-in-a-free-land",
 "title": "Bury Me in a Free Land",
 "poet": "Frances Ellen Watkins Harper",
 "poet_slug": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 8,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1871,
  "venue": "Poems (1871)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poems01harp"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-on-miscellaneous-subjects-1857",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsonmiscellan00harp",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-1871",
   "https://archive.org/details/poems01harp",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69249",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007491600",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69248",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100774124",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-poems-full-text-1895",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100488369",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/frances-ew-harper-idylls-of-the-bible-1901",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100319488",
   "https://archive.org/details/historyofafrican00payn",
   "https://archive.org/details/WeeklyAngloAfricanI",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_liberator_1858-05-14_28_20",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000500702",
   "https://archive.org/details/undergroundrailr00stil",
   "https://archive.org/details/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_sketches-of-southern-life-1872",
   "https://archive.org/details/25th-annual-report-of-the-board-of-managers-of-the-home-etc",
   "https://archive.org/details/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_light-beyond-the-darkness",
   "https://archive.org/details/ame-church-review-1900-04"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 32,
  "n_stanzas": 8,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Make me a grave where’er you will,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make it among earth’s humblest graves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But not in a land where men are slaves.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I could not rest if around my grave",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I heard the steps of a trembling slave:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His shadow above my silent tomb",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would make it a place of fearful gloom.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I could not rest if I heard the tread",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the mother’s shriek of wild despair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rise like a curse on the trembling air.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I could not sleep if I saw the lash",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I saw her babes torn from her breast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like trembling doves from their parent nest.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I’d shudder and start if I heard the bay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I heard the captive plead in vain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As they bound afresh his galling chain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If I saw young girls from their mothers’ arms",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My eye would flash with a mournful flame,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can rob no man of his dearest right;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My rest shall be calm in any grave",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where none can call his brother slave.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I ask no monument, proud and high,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To arrest the gaze of the passers by;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All that my yearning spirit craves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is bury me not in a land of slaves.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}