Poet
printed 1911
Known so far only by this sonnet, printed in the Sierra Leone Weekly News in 1911. It calls Bai Bureh a “patriot king”, beside Toussaint Louverture of Haiti and Samori Touré, who fought the French.
Source ↗“Exoriare aliquis” (Virgil) The haughty nations once did love to think The Negro’s ultra-patience but a sign For thraldom he was made – a plan divine From altering which they did devoutly shrink. They gull’d themselves to blissful ignorance Of Aethiop’s peerless past magnificence Till a Toussaint, a Samudu did wake The haughty dreamers from their fond mistake. But, soon secure, the dreamers slept and dreamt, While, mid our nation’s sobs, from out the grave Of many a Freedom martyred Negro brave Upwent “some one, arise!” – then, with contempt, Proud might awoke to crush, he thought, a paltry thing But found a foe in thee, Bai Bureh, patriot King.
Transcribed by Gabriella Ekman (2014), from the Sierra Leone Weekly News at the British Library. Line 2 follows her own later quotation of it (“ultra-patience”), which keeps the sonnet's metre.