long have I in bondage lain,
And languished to be free!
Alas! and must I still complain,
Deprived of liberty?

* * * * *

Come, Liberty, thou cheerful sound,
Roll through my ravished ears;
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears.

Some of Horton's friends undertook to help him publish a volume of his
poems so that from the sale of these he might purchase his freedom and
go to the new colony of Liberia. The young man now became fired with
ambition and inspiration. Thrilled by the new hope he wrote

'Twas like the salutation of the dove,
Borne on the zephyr through some lonesome grove,
When spring returns, and winter's chill is past,
And vegetation smiles above the blast.

Horton's master, however, demanded for him an exorbitant price, and
when the booklet, _The Hope of Liberty_, appeared in 1829 it had
nothing of the sale that was hoped for. He lived for years as a
janitor at the University, executed small commissions for verse from
the students, who treated him kindly, and in later years even went to
Philadelphia; but his old dreams had faded. Several reprintings of his
poems were made, however, and one of these was bound with the 1838
edition of Phillis Wheatley's poems. He died in 1880 (by other
accounts 1883). A scholarly article about him was written for the
_Southern Workman_ of October, 1914, by Mr. Stephen B. Weeks, who in
turn owed much to the researches of Prof. George S. Wills.

Horton's work showed readily the influence of his models. He used
especially the meter of the common evangelical hymns, and cultivated
the vague personification of the poets of the eighteenth century. He
himself, however, was essentially a romantic poet, as was evinced by
his fondness for Byron and Marlowe. His common style is represented by
the following lines from his poem entitled _On the Evening and
Morning_:

When Evening bids the Sun to rest retire,
Unwearied Ether sets her lamps on fire;
Lit by one torch, each is supplied in turn,
Till all the candles in the concave burn.

* * * * *

At length the silver queen begins to rise,
And spread her glowing mantle in the skies,
And from the smiling chambers of the east,
Invites the eye to her resplendent feast.

The passion in the heart of this man, his undoubted gifts as a poet,
and the bitter d