“To Toussaint L’Ouverture” (1803)

By William Wordsworth

Toussaint – the most unhappy of men! –                a

Whether the rural milkmaid by her cow                b

Sing in thy hearing, or though liest now                b

Alone in some deep dungeon’s earless den,                a

Oh miserable Chieftain, where and when                a

Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not! Do thou         b        

Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow;                b

Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,                a

Live, and take comfort! Thou hast left behind         c

Powers that will work for thee – air, earth, and skies – d

There’s not a breathing of the common wind                c

That will forget thee! Thou hast great allies:                d

Thy friends are exultations, agonies,                        e

And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.                c

About Toussaint L’Ouverture

The former slave Toussaint L’Ouverture was a charismatic and hugely influential leader of the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804. This was a successful, anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection by self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign nation of Haiti. Toussaint L’Ouverture was imprisoned by the French and died in captivity shortly after Wordsworth wrote this poem which reads as an impassioned tribute to the revolutionary. The sonnet does not attempt to grapple with the complex politics surrounding the revolution but instead offers the imprisoned L’Ouverture the consoling thought that he has inspired others to stand courageously against slavery.

About William Wordsworth:

Wordsworth’s early poems transformed the way in which poets came to express themselves. He published the influential Lyrical Ballads, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1798, rejecting the contrived, self-consciously poetic language that was fashionable at the time. He believed that poetry could use the real language of ordinary people in a state of ‘vivid sensation’. In celebrating nature and human emotions, he was an early leader of the English Romantic movement. Wordsworth had been caught up in the French Revolution, had fathered an illegitimate daughter with a young Frenchwoman and returned to England with radical and democratic ideas (although his views became increasingly conservative in middle age).

His autobiographical poem The Prelude chronicles the spiritual growth and life of the poet, revealing the intense relationship Wordsworth had with nature as he was growing up in the Lake District. He continued to live there for the rest of his life, with his wife, Mary, and his devoted sister, Dorothy.