The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Poem & Explanation)

 

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

(Poem & Explanation) 

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point

I

I stand on the mark beside the shore

Of the first white pilgrim’s bended knee

Where exile turned to ancestor,

And God was thanked for liberty;

I have run through the night, my skin is as dark,

I bend my knee down on this mark ...

I look on the sky and the sea.

 

II

O pilgrim-souls, I speak to you!

I see you come out proud and slow

From the land of the spirits pale as dew,

And round me and round me ye go!

O pilgrims, I have gasped and run

All night long from the whips of one

Who in your names works sin and woe.

 

III

And thus I thought that I would come

And kneel here where ye knelt before,

And feel your souls around me hum

In undertone to the ocean’s roar;

And lift my black face, my black hand,

Here, in your names, to curse this land

Ye blessed in freedom’s, evermore.

 

IV

I am black, I am black!

And yet God made me, they say;

But if He did so, smiling back

He must have cast His work away

Under the feet of His white creatures,

With a look of scorn, —that the dusky features

Might be trodden again to clay.

 

Since the beginning of her poetic career E. B. Browning had wanted to speak of love as a person, for a person, and also of the value of love in public actions. Social and political themes are found in several of her poems, such as ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point’, the ‘Cry of the Children’, ‘The City of the Children’, ‘A Curse for a Nation’. These poems deal mainly with the oppression of women and children in the rich countries, like England, America and other European countries.

“The Runaway Slave at the Pilgrims’ Point” is one of her most memorable poems that dramatizes a slave woman’s conflict between natural love for her infant and the grim realization of racial hatred and brutalities that thousands of black coloured men, women and children were experiencing all over the world in the 9th century. The slave speaks about the ghastly murder of her child that she has committed so that it may not become another white torturer of the blacks. She a black-coloured woman who has given birth to a child that is white, the colour of the master-owner whose white-colour the child has acquired.

The poem highlights the slave mother’s long suffering under the white master who has forced a sexual relationship with her. Her husband, a black man has been killed as the two of them tried to escape from slavery. The woman narrates the way in which she has taken her child’s life afraid that it will join the white people and act against its mother’s community because of the different colours of their skins. The division of human beings and the discrimination, excessive exploitation using inhuman cruelties have created an America that is contrary to the vision of the Pilgrim Fathers, one of the first batches of European immigrants who came to that country. E. B. Browning uses the spot called Pilgrim’s Point as a symbol of the dream of a new world with which these settlers had come. Standing at that point the slave woman asks some important questions about the grave injustices the white men are committing. Her narrative becomes an appeal for kindness, equal rights and forgiveness. She begins her story in anger and hatred and wants to curse the ‘white’ people for all the brutalities they have committed on the blacks. She remembers “Christ’s seven wounds” received before his death. As he had forgiven his enemies, so does she. At the end she says “white men, I leave you all curse free In my broken heart’s disdain!”

Explanation

The slave woman recounts her life’s misery and the exploitation of all black people. As a woman she has been victim of physical abuse by her master and she has given birth to a white-coloured child. In the first four stanzas we learn about America’s first European settlers, who are known as Pilgrim Fathers. She imagines that the souls of these ancestors (of all Americans, including her) are standing around her at the place where she is now standing - known as the Pilgrim’s Point.

She addresses them to save her from a white man who whips and tortures her, and commits sin. She is so full of anger and hatred against that man, and all the others like him that she wants to curse the whole race, land and all those enjoying their freedom. Even though she has suffered tremendously her faith in God’s will and justice gives her moral strength. At the end of the poem, where she is seen to be gasping for breath and is probably dying, she forgives her tormentors and evil doers. Her image of Christ’s charity helps her to move beyond anger and hatred.

The poem ends on a note of charity and forgiveness, making the slave morally a better person than her oppressors. “The Runaway slave at the Pilgrim’s Point” is one of E. B. Browning’s most moving poems invoking the noble values of kindness among human beings. The poem is in the form of a dramatic monologue. The single speaker, the woman, keeps addressing those around her - the white men who are pursuing her, to catch her again. Their presence is noticed when she says

“For hark! I will tell you low… low…

I am black, you see, —— (xvii),

And when she says:

“Keep off! I brave you all at once —

I throw off your eyes like shakes that sting!

You have killed the black eagle at nest,

I think:

Did you never stand still in your triumph and shrink

From the stroke of her wounded wing!” (xxx)

The speaker expresses her different feelings, of tenderness, shame threat, fear, anger. She questions vehemently the values proclaimed by the American people, and the white people’s countries. The cruel deed that she has performed reflects the extent of degradation that she has suffered along with the other black skinned people in that country.

In the poem, a black woman who is a slave of a white-coloured farmer has run away from the plantation along with her husband, also a black coloured slave, and her child, who has white colour. The poem looks into the tragic division of human beings on the basis of the colour of their skin. As God is the maker of all human beings the woman thinks about His purpose in making the one race subjugated to the other.