From “Twasinta’s Seminoles” (Canto IV, XLVI)
Who finds this country now, exulting finds
That nature sounds the anthems of the free,—
The boundless prairie swept by restless winds,
Great forests shouting on tumultuously,
Rivers that send their greetings to the sea,
Peace-loving vales, where weed-brimmed waters run,
Broad lakes, whose shade-fringed margins lisp their glee,
Mountains, that prop their green heights in the sun,
And herded slopes that winter never looks upon!
From Twasinta's Seminoles; or, Rape of Florida (Nixon-Jones Printing Co., 1885) by Albery A. Whitman. This poem is in the public domain.
Albery Allson Whitman
Albery Allson Whitman was born into slavery on May 30, 1851, on a farm near Munfordville, Kentucky, in Hart County, what Whitman called “the Green River country.” He had at least one sibling, a sister. His mother died in 1862, and his father died soon after emancipation, leaving Whitman an orphan at age twelve. He remained on the farm where he was born and continued to labor there until he moved, first to Louisville, Kentucky, then to Cincinnati. He later relocated to Troy, Ohio, where he worked and, for five months, attended grammar school.