The Freed Slave

Another figure from William Blake’s mythology. America a Prophecy

The poem runs, 

Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field. 

Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright air. 

Let the unchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing, 

whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years. 

Rise and look out, his chains are loose. 

His dungeon doors are open.