Instead, he writes to poem to discuss the essence of Douglass's work. Until true justice is achieved, and until there is true social equity, Douglass's narrative will remain just a work of history. Hayden dreams of a world in which freedom is second-nature and we no longer need to study slave narratives to know why. A focal point of the poem is the term "freedom," which is "beautiful and terrible" and as "needful to man as air." Hayden repeats the word "needful" in the last line of the poem to emphasize the necessity of freedom for human life, thereby implying that a life led without freedom is no life at all. Hayden's poem is empowering, as he focuses on the "dream of the beautiful, needful thing" rather than on the bitterness of the enslavement that prompted the poem in the first place.

Hayden incorporates a number of poetic devices to convey the central theme...

"Frederick Douglass" is a free verse poem with irregular verses and no detectable rhyme scheme. The poem is rhythmic, rising and falling even without the use of a predictable meter. Metaphor and imagery make up many of the most powerful lines of the poem, as when Hayden calls freedom: "truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, / reflex action." The imagery of the body's autonomic circulatory system is a metaphor for the ideal of a freedom that is no longer the "gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians."
3. "How is what was going on in the time period reflected in what the author wrote about?"

Both Hayden's "Frederick Douglass" and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address reflect a particular historical and cultural context. The Gettysburg Address is written specifically about the termination of the American Civil War, and refers to the birth of the nation as well.

Works Cited

Hayden, Robert. "Frederick Douglass."

Lincoln, Abraham. The Gettysburg Address