The love of Country, and of Home, the same in all ages and among all nations.-The Negro's Home and Country.-Mungo Parke.-Progress of the SlaveTrade.-The Middle Passage.-The Negro in the West-Indies. The Guinea Captain. The Creole Planter. The Moors of Barbary. Bucaniers.-Maroons.- -St. Domingo.-Hurricanes.-The Yellow Fever.
THERE is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside ;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night ;
A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth :
The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so bountiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;
In every clime the magnet of his soul,
Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole :
For in this land of Heaven's peculiar grace,
The heritage of nature's noblest race,
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest,
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his softened looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, father, friend :
Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife,
Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life ;
In the clear heaven of her delightful eye
An angel-guard of loves and graces lie ;
Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fire-side pleasures gambol at her feet.
• Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?"
Art thou a man?-a patriot ?-look around ;
O thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land THY COUNTRY, and that spot THY HOME !
On Greenland's rocks, o'er grim Kamschatka's plains,
In pale Siberia's desolate domains ;
When the wild hunter takes his lonely way,
Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
The reindeer's spoil, the ermine's treasure shares,
And feasts his famine on the fat of bears;
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Plunging down headlong through the whirling main :~^
-His wastes of ice are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky,
And dearer far than Cæsar's palace-dome,
His cavern-shelter, and his cottage-home.
O'er China's garden-fields and peopled floods;
In California's pathless world of woods;
Round Andes' heights, where Winter, from his throne,
Looks down in scorn upon the Summer zone;
By the gay borders of Bermudas' isles,
Where Spring with everlasting verdure smiles;
On pure Madeira's vine-robed hills of health;
In Java's swamps of pestilence and wealth;
Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackals drink,
'Midst weeping willows, on Euphrates' brink ;
On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanished like a dream;
Where Greece, a spectre, haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves ;
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains and dishonored vales ;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea,
Around the beauteous Isle of Liberty;
-Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside;
His HOME the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
And is the Negró outlawed from his birth? Is he alone a stranger on the earth? Is there no shed, whose peeping roof appears So lovely that it fills his eyes with tears? No land, whose name, in exile heard, will dart Ice through his veins and lightning through his heart? Ah! yes; beneath the beams of brighter skies, His home amidst his father's country lies; There, with the partner of his soul, he shares Love-mingled pleasures, love-divided cares; There, as with nature's warmest, filial fire, He sooths his blind, and feeds his helpless sire; His children, sporting round his hut, behold How they shall cherish him when he is old, Trained by example, from their tenderest youth, To deeds of charity and words of truth. a -Is HE not blest? Behold! at closing day. The negro-village swarms abroad to play; He treads the dance through all its rapturous rounds, To the wild music of barbarian sounds;
Or, stretched at ease, where broad palmettos shower Delicious coolness in his shadowy bower,
He feasts on tales of witchcraft, that give birth
To breathless wonder or ecstatic mirth;
Yet most delighted, when in rudest rhymes
The minstrel wakes the song of elder times,
When men were heroes, slaves to beauty's charms,
And all the joys of life were love and arms.
-Is not the Negro blest? His generous soil
With harvest plenty crowns his simple toil;
More than his wants his flocks and fields afford;
He loves to greet the stranger at his board :
The winds were roaring and the White Man
• The rains of night descended on his head;
'The poor White Man sat down beneath our tree,
' Weary and faint and far from home was he;
For him no mother fills with milk the bowl,
'No wife prepares the bread to cheer his soul:
4 -Pity the poor White Man who sought our tree,
'No wife, no mother, and no home has he.'
Thus sung the Negro's daughters;-once again,
O, that the poor White Man might hear that strain!
-Whether the victim of the treacherous Moor;
Or from the Negro's hospitable door
Spurned as a spy from Europe's hateful clime,
And left to perish for thy country's crime;
Or destined still, when all thy wanderings cease,
On Albion's lovely lap to rest in peace;
Pilgrim ! in heaven or earth, where'er thou be,
Angels of mercy guide and comfort thee !
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