Mike Parker: The Poet of Love and Liberty
If you visit Pittsboro, NC, you are likely to pass George Moses Horton Middle School located at 79 Horton Road. This school bears the name of a man who had been a slave – and became a poet.
George Moses Horton was born around 1797 in Northampton County here in North Carolina. Although no one is quite sure of his date of death, most sources contend he lived until 1883.
Born into slavery, Horton was relocated to a plantation near Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina when he was three years old. When he grew older, he often encountered university students. In the 1820’s, UNC students regularly commissioned Horton to create love poems, usually clever acrostic poems based on the names of their girlfriends.
“An Acrostic on the Pleasures of Beauty” offers a strong example of the type of work Horton produced when composing these poems:
“Joy like the morning breaks from one divine
“Unveiling streams which can not fail to shine
“Long have I strove to magnify her name
“Imperial floating on the breeze of fame—
“Attracting beauty must delight afford
“Sought of the world and of the Bards adored
“Her grace of form and heart alluring pow'rs
“Express her more than fair, the queen of flow'rs
“Pleasure fond nature's stream from beauty sprang
“And was the softest strain the Muses sang
“Reverting sorrows into speachless joys
“Dispeling gloom which human peace destroys—Beauty.”
If you look carefully at the first letter in each line, you will see that those letters spell “Julia Shephard.” UNC students paid Horton to write these love poems for their girlfriends, and, though a slave, his master allowed him to go to the campus most Sundays to practice his craft and earn some pocket money.
Horton used his proximity to the college campus to receive literary training from Caroline Lee Hentz, the wife of a professor. Mrs. Hentz was a writer. She assisted Horton in honing his grammar and literary skills. She also published his poetry in newspapers. She tried to gain his release from slavery but was unsuccessful.
In addition to sentimental love poems, Horton also wrote poems that protested slavery. He wrote in “On Liberty and Slavery”:
“Alas! and am I born for this, / To wear this slavish chain? / Deprived of all created bliss, / Through hardship, toil, and pain!
“How long have I in bondage lain, / And languished to be free! / Alas! and must I still complain – / Deprived of liberty.
“Oh, Heaven! and is there no relief / This side the silent grave – / To soothe the pain – to quell the grief / And anguish of a slave?
“Come, Liberty, thou cheerful sound, / Roll through my ravished ears! / Come, let my grief in joys be drowned, / And drive away my fears.
“Say unto foul oppression, Cease: / Ye tyrants rage no more, / And let the joyful trump of peace, / Now bid the vassal soar.
“Soar on the pinions of that dove / Which long has cooed for thee, / And breathed her notes from Afric's grove, / The sound of Liberty.
“Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize, / So often sought by blood – / We crave thy sacred sun to rise, / The gift of nature's God!
“Bid Slavery hide her haggard face, / And barbarism fly: / I scorn to see the sad disgrace / In which enslaved I lie.
“Dear Liberty! upon thy breast, / I languish to respire; / And like the Swan upon her nest, / I'd to thy smiles retire.
“Oh, blest asylum – heavenly balm! / Unto thy boughs I flee – / And in thy shades the storm shall calm, / With songs of Liberty!”
Horton’s first published book of poetry, “The Hope of Liberty,” appeared in1829. It was published later under the title “Poems by a Slave.” This volume includes several love lyrics originally written for UNC students, as well as poems expressing his hope for freedom.
He composed his last and largest volume, “Naked Genius,” after he left his master’s farm and joined the Union army in 1865. After the Civil War, Horton moved to Philadelphia, where he continued writing until his death.
Horton was posthumously declared “Historic Poet Laureate” of Chatham County in 1997. In 1999, North Carolina placed a historic marker in his honor near the farm where Horton lived, the first marker in the state for an African American.
Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.
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