The Cane.-Africa.-The Negro.-The Slave-carrying Trade. The means and resources of the SlaveTrade. The Portuguese-Dutch-Danes-French, -and English in America.
AMONG the bowers of paradise, that graced
Those islands of the world-dividing waste,
Where towering cocoas waved their graceful locks,
And vines luxuriant clustered round the rocks;
Where orange groves perfumed the circling air,
With verdure, flowers, and fruit forever fair;
Gay myrtle foliage tracked the winding rills,
And cedar forests slumber on the hills;
-An eastern plant, ingrafted on the soil,
Was tilled for ages with consuming toil;
No tree of knowledge, with forbidden fruit,
Death in the taste, and ruin at the root,
Yet in its growth were good and evil found,
It blessed the planter, but it cursed the ground;
While with vain wealth it gorged the master's hoard, And spread with manna his luxurious board,
Its culture was perdition to the slave,
It sapped his life, and flourished on his grave.
When the fierce spoiler, from remorseless Spain, Tasted the balmy spirit of the cane,
(Already had his rival, in the West,
From the rich reed ambrosial sweetness pressed,) Dark through his thoughts the miser purpose rolled, To turn its hidden treasures into gold.
But at his breath, by pestilent decay,
The Indian tribes were swiftly swept away;
Silence and horror o'er the isles were spread,
The living seemed the spectres of the dead.
The Spaniard saw; no sigh of pity stole,
No pang of conscience touched his sullen soul:
The tyger weeps not o'er the kid ;—he turns
His flashing eyes abroad, and madly burns
For nobler victims, and for warmer blood;
Thus on the Charib shore the tyrant stood,
Thus cast his eyes with fury o'er the tide,
And far beyond the gloomy gulph descried
Devoted Africa; he burst away,
And with a yell of transport grasped his prey.
Where the stupendous Mountains of the Moon
Cast their broad shadows o'er the realms of noon;
From rude Caffraria, where the giraffes browse
With stately heads among the forest boughs,
To Atlas, where Numidian lions glow
With torrid fire beneath eternal snow;
From Nubian hills, that hail the dawning day,
To Guinea's coast, where evening fades away,
Regions immense, unsearchable, unknown,
Bask in the splendour of the solar zone;
A world of wonders-where creation seems
No more the works of Nature, but her dreams`;
Great, wild, and beautiful, beyond control,
She reigns in all the freedom of her soul;
Where none can check her bounty when she showers
O'er the gay wilderness her fruits and flowers;
None brave her fury, when, with whirlwind breath And earthquake step, she walks abroad with death:
O'er boundless plains she holds her fiery flight,
In terrible magnificence of light;
At blazing noon pursues the evening breeze,
Thro' the dun gloom of realm-o'ershadowing trees;
Her thirst at Nile's mysterious fountain quells,
Or breathes in secrecy where Niger swells
An inland ocean, on whose jasper rocks
With shells and sea-flower-wreaths she binds her locks :
She sleeps on isles of velvet verdure, placed
Midst sandy gulfs and shoals forever waste;
She guides her countless flocks to cherished rills,
And feeds her cattle on a thousand hills;
Her steps the wild bees welcome through the vale,
From every blossom that embalms the gale;
The slow, unwieldy river-horse she leads
Through the deep waters, o'er the pasturing meads;
And climbs the mountains that invade the sky,
To soothe the eagle's nestlings when they cry.
At sunset, when voracious monsters burst
From dreams of blood, awaked by maddening thirst;
When the lorn caves, in which they shrunk from light,
Ring with wild echoes through the hideous night;
When darkness seems alive, and all the air
Is one tremendous uproar of despair,
Horror and agony ;-on her they call:
She hears their clamour, she provides for all,
Leads the light leopard on his eager way,
And goads the gaunt hyæna to his prey.
In these romantic regions Man grows wild :
Here dwells the Negro, Nature's outcast child,
Scorned by his brethren; but his mother's eye,
That gazes on him from her warmest sky,
Sees in his flexible limbs untutored grace,
Power on his forehead, beauty in his face;
Sees in his breast, where lawless passions rove,
The heart of friendship, and the home of love;
Sees in his mind, where desolation reigns,
Fierce as his clime, uncultered as his plains,
A soil where virtue's fairest flowers might shoot,
And trees of science bend with glorious fruit;
Sees in his soul, involved with thickest night,
An emanation of eternal light,
Ordained, 'midst sinking worlds, his dust to fire,
And shine forever when the stars expire.
Is he not MAN, though knowledge never shed
Her quickening beams on his neglected head?
Is he not MAN, though sweet Religion's voice
Ne'er bade the mourner in his God rejoice?
Is he not man, by sin and suffering tried?
Is he not man, for whom the Saviour died?
Belie the Negro's powers;-in headlong will,
Christian thy brother thou shalt prove him still ;
Belie his virtues ; since his wrongs began,
His follies and his crimes have stampt him MAN.
The Spaniard found him such :-the island-race His foot had spurned from earth's insulted face; Among the waifs and foundlings of mankind, Abroad he looked, a sturdier stock to find; A spring of life, whose fountains should supply His channels as he drank the rivers dry : That stock he found on Afric's swarming plains, That spring he opened in the Negro's veins ; A spring, exhaustless as his avarice drew, A stock, that like Prometheus' vitals grew
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