And like that ... he's humming an old Creole slave song
/Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed., Bartleby’s: An American Anthology:
Bring Back My Chains
Freedom! I feel it when too late,
Like spring wind on a blasted tree,
A waft of mockery and hate!
Bring back my chains, O cruel Fate!
Bring youth and slavery back to me;
Bring back the lash, the hound, the pain,
So that my own love come again!