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The Sugar-Plums

No, no, pretty sugar-plums! stay where you are!
Though my grandmother sent you to me from so far;
You look very nice, you would taste very sweet,
And I love you right well, yet not one will I eat.

For the poor slaves have labour'd, far down in the south,
To make you so sweet and so nice for my mouth;
But I want no slaves toiling for me in the sun,
Driven on with the whip, till the long day is done.

Perhaps some poor slave child, that hoed up the ground,
Round the cane in whose rich juice your sweetness was found,
Was flogg'd, till his mother cried sadly to see,
And I'm sure I want nobody beaten for me.

So grandma, I thank you for being so kind,
But your present, to-day, is not much to my mind;
Though I love you so dearly, I choose not to eat
Even what you have sent me by slavery made sweet.

Thus said little Fanny, and skipp'd off to play,
Leaving all her nice sugar-plums just where they lay,
As merry as if they had gone in her mouth,
And she had not cared for the slaves of the south.

poem by Elizabeth Margaret Chandler from Poetical Works (1836)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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