[Our Hearts, Like the Head of John Baptist] · The Burleigh Family of Plainfield, Connecticut: An Anti-Racist Abolitionist Legacy

[Our Hearts, Like the Head of John Baptist]

Our Hearts, like the Head of John Baptist, we bring

Laid here on a charge, a metalsome thing!

If fortune wait on and the waiter should suit

Good taste, let it pass, on heir-loom to the future.

If she bring a reverse and cut of the reversion,

Keep the Verse to revert to, and in her desertion

To win your dessert, show your mettle, have at her!

Sell your plate for your bread, and still feed from the platter!

Title: [Our Hearts, Like the Head of John Baptist]
Alternative Title: Our Heads, like the head of John Baptist, we bring
Creator: George Shepard Burleigh; George Shepard Burleigh
Bibliographic Citation: "Unpublished Poems from the Manuscript Collection of Miss Bessy Grey of Little Compton," in Spies, Minnie Lee, George Shepard Burleigh. Masters’ Thesis, Department of English, Brown University, 1934, p. 58
Date: The "Unpublished Poems from the Manuscript Collection of Miss Bessy Grey of Little Compton" date from October 19, 1868 through March 29, 1899; Spies, Minnie Lee, George Shepard Burleigh. Masters’ Thesis, Department of English, Brown University, 1934, p. 32.
Subject: Word play
Fate
comment: This poem bares comparison to George S. Burleigh's most famous word-play tour-de-force, "The Domicile Erected by John"; The Domicile Erected by John; Domicile Erected by John, The; Domicile Erected by John, The; Lucas Cranach the Elder, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist