“AND this is freedom!” cried the serf; “At last
I tread free soil, the free air blows on me;”
And, wild to learn the sweets of liberty,
With eager hope his bosom bounded fast.
But not for naught had the long years amassed
Habit of slavery; among the free
He still was servile, and, disheartened, he
Crept back to the old bondage of the past.
Long did I bear a hard and heavy chain
Wreathëd with amaranth and asphodel,
But through the flower-breaths stole the weary pain.
I cast it off and fled, but ’t was in vain;
For when once more I passed by where it fell,
I took it up and bound it on again.
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It's not about the slaves wanting to put the chains back on. It's about the way that Reconstruction after the Civil War failed to give the freed slaves the means to become equals. "Sharecropping" was essentially a method of slavery where whites technically didn't own the slaves anymore, and slave codes were replaced with segregational laws. The slaves also didn't have any choice but to find work as sharecroppers or other menial jobs, since most Southerners would give them work elsewhere. Again, my point is that the slave does not return to bondage because of habit. The fact that the slave in the poem "with eager hope...bounded fast" before returning to slavery shows that other options were explored. That's the sad truth about the Civil War and the reason modern white supremacists and neo-nazis argue that the South won the civil war. It took almost 100 years for the U.S. to pass the Civil Rights Act.
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Just as many long-term prisoners become institutionalised and long for the security and routine of prison life upon relief I think the poet is saying that a slave who is freed to look after and decide things for himself would often long for the certainty of being told what to do and when.
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The serf would have perhaps preferred a freeing of the mind as well as freeing of the body. I have written a poem similar in meaning to this.
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Nothing but the truth
Alas, the chains of slavery are not so easily cast off, for we become accustomed to their weight...what Ms. Jennison has penned here, you can still see evidence of in today's society; it was as true then as it is true now. One of these days, Lord, one of these days... -
Strangely enough I can see what this serf means. The habits of life cannot be easily removed. I think he was content with his lot as a serf and could not cope with the huge responsibilities of ' freedom.' It's like a foreign culture he does not understand.
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