{
 "id": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper/the-slave-auction",
 "title": "The Slave Auction",
 "poet": "Frances Ellen Watkins Harper",
 "poet_slug": "frances-ellen-watkins-harper",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects",
 "book_slug": "poems-on-miscellaneous-subjects",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 5,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1854,
  "venue": "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsonmiscellan00harp",
   "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42194389"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
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  "repo": "standardebooks/frances-ellen-watkins-harper_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
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   "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": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 41,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The sale began⁠—young girls were there,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Defenceless in their wretchedness.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose stifled sobs of deep despair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Revealed their anguish and distress.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And mothers stood with streaming eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And saw their dearest children sold;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Unheeded rose their bitter cries,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While tyrants bartered them for gold.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And woman, with her love and truth⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For these in sable forms may dwell⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Gaz’d on the husband of her youth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With anguish none may paint or tell.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And men, whose sole crime was their hue,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The impress of their Maker’s hand,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And frail and shrinking children, too,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were gathered in that mournful band.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ye who have laid your love to rest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wept above their lifeless clay,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Know not the anguish of that breast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose lov’d are rudely torn away.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ye may not know how desolate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are bosoms rudely forced to part,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And how a dull and heavy weight",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will press the life-drops from the heart.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}