Robert Southey's 170/VI (Analysis)

Robert Southey’s Poems on the Slave Trade is a sequence of poems that discuss his complete disregard to England’s part in the capture and selling of Africans into servitude. The poem VI or 170, discusses the horrendous hanging of a slave and balances the cruelty of the hanging of a slave with gracious and merciful nature of the slave.

In the very first line Southey introduces a slave that is being hung. He then begins to vividly paint an image, by stating that the slave is the birds “living food”. It is simple, but terrible, to visualize birds eating flesh off a body. From the poem we can tell that the slave is strong-willed, because of the repetitious statement that Southey uses “He groans not”. Southey describes the slave’s last moments as painful, disturbing and full of pain, though “He groans not”, even when faced with “the gorging vulture”, and “New torturers”. He then continues to discuss the cruelty occuring and is outraged about how this man was tore “from peace and liberty”. He then takes a very sarcastic tone in the line “Gaze hither ye who weigh with scrupulous care, The right and prudent”. In that line he is basically saying the English people that took him chose “carefully” those who are right and just regular people. Also he states how the hanging of the slave is like a message “to all mankind, [that] Murder is legalized”. From this statement it is easy to see his passion and yearning for slavery, and the cruel treatment of people to stop.

He then switches to discuss the afterlife and the kindness of the slave by saying “for beyond the grave, There is another world”. He does this because he is letting all know that there is a time that everyone will be judged for what they have done in the world. The last three lines are very powerful and show the merciful nature of the slave. Southey states “that there the slave, before the Eternal, ‘thunder-tongued shall plead, against the deep damnation of your deed”. These lines are simply saying that in the afterlife, the slave will boldly (thunder-tongued) plead against your harsh punishment even though he was tortured and treated cruelly.

In the poem you can tell how Southey is completely opposed to the idea of slavery and cruelty towards one another. Robert Southey’s balance of cruelty and forgiveness is a powerful message, and it is what makes this poem splendid!