Dr Livingstone Presumed

A man with a mission in land afar To take his faith, become a star And show the Afrikan the straight and narrow Highlight slavery and end its sorrow From Scottish gray town he did hail And joined the child force in the mill To work long hours and even school Learn religion and science, that was cool The paternal impact was very strong Religious roots and sense of wrong To reflect his own childhood labor And equate it with that in Africa Impelled to seek trade routes there And rid slave trade ones, that was fair To map the Nile, new places to search And quit mission ties with the kirk Missing for six years, his absence felt To find lost Dave, Stanley’s intent Robbed, humiliated and four years sick Livingston’s adventure was not quite so slick Stanley found him by a lake It was the doctor, no mistake The only white for miles around There was David safe and sound No need for Stanley’s assumption Nor the teeniest bit of presumption Stanley’s request for him to return Was refused and decidedly spurned Africa was his lifetime’s vision Conversion and discovery, his mission Africa’s greatest missionary remained With only one convert to his name His convert Sechel was taught to read Then translate the Bible for his tribe But continued with polygamy Completely rejecting monogamy Livingstone succumbed to malaria As well as a bad dose of dysentry He died of African agues, that’s all His heart removed interred in soil His remains transferred to English land A hero’s welcome and burial grand But heart affirmed in African ground His name forever there renowned