وجود‎‎

March the 21st, 1788

To the QUEEN's Most Excellent Majesty.

Madam

Your Majesty's well known benevolence and humanity embolden me to approach your royal presence, trusting that the obscurity of my situation will not prevent your Majesty from attending to the sufferings for which I plead. Yet I do not solicit your royal pity for my own distress: my sufferings, although numerous, are in a measure forgotton. I supplicate your Majesty's campassion for millions of my African countrymen, who groan under the lash of tyranny in the West Indies.

The oppression and cruelty exercised to the unhappy negroes there, have at length reached the British legislature, and they are now deliberating on its redress; even several persons of property in slaves in the West Indies have petitioned parliament against its continuance, sensible that it is as impolitic as it is unjust and what is inhuman must ever be unwise.

Your majesty's reign has been hitherto distinguished by private acts of benevolence and bounty; surely the more extended the misery is, the greater claim it has to your Majesty's compassion, and the greater must be your majesty's pleasure in administering to its relief.

I presume, therefore, gracious Queen, to implore your interposition with your royal consort, in favour of the wretched Africans; that, by your Majesty's benevolent influence, a period may now be put to their misery; and that they may be raised from the condition of brutes, to which they are at present degraded, to the rights and situation of men, and be admitted to partake of the blessings of his Majesty's happy government; so shall your Majesty enjoy the heart-felt pleasure of procuring happiness to millions, and be rewarded in the grateful prayers of themselves, and of their posterity.

And may the all-bountiful Creator shower on your Majesty, and the Royal Family, every blessing that this world can afford, and every fulness of joy which divine revelation had promised us in the next.

I am your Majesty's most dutiful and devoted servant to command,

                             GUSTAVUS VASSA

Vinho! O meu coração enfermo quer este remédio!

Vinho de perfume almiscarado! Vinho cor de rosas!

Vinho, para extinguir o incêndio da minha tristeza!

Vinho e o teu alaúde de cordas de seda, ó minha bem-amada!

É madrugada. Levanta-te, ó essência de deleite!

Bebe suavemente, tocando a harpa.

Deixa aqueles que estão adormecidos. Eles não encontrarão a verdade.

Deixa aqueles que foram. Eles nunca voltarão.


Não me digas mais nada. O resto é vida.

Sob onde a uva está amadurecida

moram os meus sonos, que não querem nada.

Que é o mundo? Uma ilusão vista e sentida.



Sob os ramos que falam com o vento,

inerte, abdico do meu pensamento.

Tenho esta hora e o ócio que está nela.

Levem o mundo: deixem-me o momento!



Se vens, esguia e bela, deitar vinho

em meu copo vazio, eu, mesquinho

ante o que sonho, morto te agradeço

que não sou para mim mais que um vizinho.



Quando a jarra que trazes aparece

sobre o meu ombro e a sua curva desce

a deitar vinho, sonho-te, e, sem ver-te,

por teu braço teu corpo me apetece.



Não digas nada que tu creias. Fala

como a cigarra canta. Nada iguala

Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyam