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SHEPHERD.

"Fled; and, ere the noon of day, Reach'd the lonely goat-herd's nest, Where my wife, my children lay— Husband-Father-think the rest."

PART VI.

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"Though our parent perish'd here,
Like the Phoenix on her nest,
Lo! new-fledged her wings appear,
Hovering in the golden West.

"Thither shall her sons repair,
And beyond the roaring main
Find their native country there,
Find their Switzerland again.

"Mountains, can ye chain the will?
Ocean, canst thou quench the heart?
No; I feel my country still,
LIBERTY! where'er thou art.

"Thus it was in hoary time,
When our fathers sallied forth,
Full of confidence sublime,
From the famine-wasted North.'

"Freedom, in a land of rocks
Wild as Scandinavia, give,
Power Eternal! where our flocks
And our little ones may live.'

"Thus they pray'd ;- -a sacred hand
Led them by a path unknown,
To that dear delightful land
Which I yet must call my own.

"To the Vale of Switz they came
Soon their meliorating toil
Gave the forests to the flame,
And their ashes to the soil.

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1 There is a tradition among the Swiss, that they are de scended from the ancient Scandinavians; among whom, in a remote age, there arose so grievous a famine, that it was determined in the assembly of the Nation, that every tenth man and his family should quit their country, and seek a new pos session. Six thousand, chosen by lot, thus emigrated at once from the North. They prayed to God to conduct them to a land like their own, where they might dwell in freedom and quiet. finding food for their families, and pasture for their cattle. God, says the tradition, led them to a valley among the Alps, where they cleared away the forests, built the town of Switz, and afterwards peopled and cultivated the cantons of Uri and Under walden.

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WRITTEN IN HONOR OF THE ABOLITION OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE BY THE
BRITISH LEGISLATURE, IN 1807.

Receive him for ever; not now as a servant, but above a servant,-a brother beloved.

TO THE PUBLIC.

St. Paul's Epist. to Philemon, v. 15, 16.

which had become antiquated, by frequent, minute, and disgusting exposure; which afforded no opportunity to awaken, suspend, and delight curiosity, by THERE are objections against the title and plan of a subtle and surprising developement of plot; and this poem, which will occur to almost every reader. concerning which public feeling had been wearied The Author will not anticipate them: he will only into insensibility, by the agony of interest which the observe, that the title seemed the best, and the plan question excited, during three-and-twenty years of the most eligible, which he could adapt to a subject almost incessant discussion. That trade is at length so various and excursive, yet so familiar, and ex- abolished. May its memory be immortal, that hencehausted, as the African Slave Trade, a subject forth it may be known only by its memory!

THE WEST INDIES.

PART I.

ARGUMENT.

Introduction; on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The Mariner's Compass.-Columbus.-The Discovery of America.-The West Indian Islands.The Caribs.-Their Extermination.

"THY chains are broken, Africa: be free!" Thus saith the island-empress of the sea; Thus saith Britannia-Oh, ye winds and waves! Waft the glad tidings to the land of slaves; Proclaim on Guinea's coast, by Gambia's side, And far as Niger rolls his eastern tide,1 Through radiant realins, beneath the burning zone, Where Europe's curse is felt, her name unknown, Thus saith Britannia, empress of the sea, "Thy chains are broken, Africa: be free!"

Long lay the ocean-paths from man conceal'd: Light came from heaven,-the magnet was reveal'd, A surer star to guide the seaman's eye Than the pale glory of the northern sky; Alike ordain'd to shine by night and day, Through calm and tempest, with unsetting ray; Where'er the mountains rise, the billows roll, Still with strong impulse turning to the pole, True as the sun is to the morning true, Though light as film, and trembling as the dew.

Then man no longer plied with timid oar, And failing heart, along the windward shore; Broad to the sky he turn'd his fearless sail, Defied the adverse, woo'd the favoring gale, Bared to the storm his adamantine breast, Or soft on Ocean's lap lay down to rest; While free, as clouds the liquid ether sweep, His white-wing'd vessels coursed the unbounded deep; From clime to clime the wanderer loved to roam, The waves his heritage, the world his home.

Then first Columbus, with the mighty hand Of grasping genius, weigh'd the sea and land; The floods o'erbalanced-where the tide of light, Day after day, roll'd down the gulf of night, There seem'd one waste of waters:-long in vain His spirit brooded o'er the Atlantic main; When sudden, as creation burst from nought, Sprang a new world, through his stupendous thought, Light, order, beauty!-While his mind explored The unveiling mystery, his heart adored; Where'er sublime imagination trod,

He heard the voice, he saw the face of God.

Far from the western cliffs he cast his eye O'er the wide ocean stretching to the sky:

1 Mungo Park, in his travels, ascertained that "the great river of the Negroes" flows eastward. It is probable, therefore, that this river is either lost among the sands, or empties itself into some inland sea, in the undiscovered regions of Africa.See also Part II, line 64.

In calm magnificence the sun declined,

And left a paradise of clouds behind :
Proud at his feet, with pomp of pearl and gold,
The billows in a sea of glory roll'd.

"Ah! on this sea of glory might I sail, Track the bright sun, and pierce the eternal veil That hides those lands, beneath Hesperian skies, Where day-light sojourns till our morrow rise!"

Thoughtful he wander'd on the beach alone; Mild o'er the deep the vesper planet shone, The eye of evening, brightening through the west Till the sweet moment when it shut to rest: Whither, O golden Venus! art thou fled? Not in the ocean-chambers lies thy bed; Round the dim world thy glittering chariot drawn Pursues the twilight, or precedes the dawn; Thy beauty noon and midnight never see, The morn and eve divide the year with thee."

Soft fell the shades, till Cynthia's slender bow Crested the farthest wave, then sunk below: "Tell me, resplendent guardian of the night, Circling the sphere in thy perennial flight, What secret path of heaven thy smiles adorn, What nameless sea reflects thy gleaming horn?"

Now earth and ocean vanish'd, all serene
The starry firmament alone was seen;
Through the slow, silent hours, he watch'd the host
Of midnight suns in western darkness lost,
Till Night himself, on shadowy pinions borne,
Fled o'er the mighty waters, and the morn
Danced on the mountains :-“ Lights of heaven!" he
cried,

"Lead on;-I go to win a glorious bride;
Fearless o'er gulfs unknown I urge my way,
Where peril prowls, and shipwreck lurks for prey:
Hope swells my sail-in spirit I behold
That maiden world, twin-sister of the old,
By nature nursed beyond the jealous sea,
Denied to ages, but betroth'd to me."

1 When the Author of The West Indies conceived the plan of this introduction of Columbus, he was not aware that he was indebted to any preceding poet for a hint on the subject; but, some time afterwards, on a second perusal of Southey's Madoc, it struck him that the idea of Columbus walking on the shore

at sunset, which he had hitherto imagined his own, might be only a reflection of the impression made upon his mind long before, by the first reading of the following splendid passage. He therefore gladly makes this acknowledgment, though at his own expense, in justice to the Author of the noblest narrative poem in the English language, after the Faerie Queen and Paradise Lost.

When evening came, toward the echoing shore
I and Cadwallon walk'd together forth;
Bright with dilated glory shone the west;
But brighter lay the ocean flood below,

The burnish'd silver sea, that heaved and flash'd
Its restless rays intolerably bright.

"Prince!" quoth Cadwallon, "thou hast rode the waves
In triumph when the Invader felt thine arm.

Oh what a nobler conquest might be won

There, upon that wide field !" "What meanest thou ??

I cried: "That yonder waters are not spread

A boundless waste, a bourne impassable;
That thou shouldst rule the elements,-that there
Might manly courage, manly wisdom, find
Some happy isle, some undiscover'd shore,

The winds were prosperous, and the billows bore Earth from her lap perennial verdure pours, The brave adventurer to the promised shore; Far in the west, array'd in purple light, Dawn'd the new world on his enraptured sight: Not Adam, loosen'd from the encumbering earth, Waked by the breath of God to instant birth, With sweeter, wilder wonder gazed around, When life within, and light without he found; When, all creation rushing o'er his soul,

Ambrosial fruits, and amaranthine flowers;
O'er the wild mountains and luxuriant plains,
Nature in all the pomp of beauty reigns,
In all the pride of freedom.-NATURE FREE
Proclaims that MAN was born for liberty.
She flourishes where'er the sun-beams play
O'er living fountains, sallying into day;
She withers where the waters cease to roll,

He seem'd to live and breathe throughout the whole. And night and winter stagnate round the pole: So felt Columbus, when, divinely fair,

At the last look of resolute despair,

The Hesperian isles, from distance dimly blue,
With gradual beauty open'd on his view.
In that proud moment, his transported mind
The morning and the evening worlds combined,
And made the sea, that sunder'd them before
A bond of peace, uniting shore to shore.

Vain, visionary hope! rapacious Spain
Follow'd her hero's triumph o'er the main,
Her hardy sons in fields of battle tried,
Where Moor and Christian desperately died.
A rabid race, fanatically bold,

And steel'd to cruelty by lust of gold,
Traversed the waves, the unknown world explored,
The cross their standard, but their faith the sword;
Their steps were graves; o'er prostrate realms they
trod;

They worshipp'd Mammon while they vow'd to God.

Let nobler bards in loftier numbers tell How Cortez conquer'd, Montezuma fell; How fierce Pizarro's ruffian arm o'erthrew The Sun's resplendent empire in Peru; How, like a prophet, old Las Casas stood, And raised his voice against a sea of blood, Whose chilling waves recoil'd while he foretold His country's ruin by avenging gold. -That gold, for which unpitied Indians fell, That gold, at once the snare and scourge of hell, Thenceforth by righteous Heaven was doom'd to shed Unmingled curses on the spoiler's head; For gold the Spaniard cast his soul away,His gold and he were every nation's prey.

But themes like these would ask an angel-lyre, Language of light and sentiment of fire; Give me to sing, in melancholy strains, Of Carib martyrdoms and Negro chains; One race by tyrants rooted from the earth, One doom'd to slavery by the taint of birth!

Where first his drooping sails Columbus furl'd, And sweetly rested in another world, Amidst the heaven-reflecting ocean, smiles A constellation of elysian isles; Fair as Orion, when he mounts on high, Sparkling with midnight splendor from the sky: They bask beneath the sun's meridian rays, When not a shadow breaks the boundless blaze; The breath of ocean wanders through their vales In morning breezes and in evening gales:

Some resting-place for peace. Oh! that my soul
Could seize the wings of morning! soon would I
Behold that other world, where yonder sun
Now speeds to dawn in glory."

Man too, where freedom's beams and fountains rise,
Springs from the dust, and blossoms to the skies;
Dead to the joys of light and life, the slave
Clings to the clod; his root is in the grave:
Bondage is winter, darkness, death, despair;
Freedom the sun, the sea, the mountains, and the air

In placid indolence supinely blest,

A feeble race these beauteous isles possess'd;
Untamed, untaught, in arts and arms unskill'd,
Their patrimonial soil they rudely till'd,
Chased the free rovers of the savage wood,
Ensnared the wild-bird, swept the scaly flood,
Shelter'd in lowly huts their fragile forms
From burning suns and desolating storms;
Or when the halcyon sported on the breeze,
In light canoes they skimm'd the rippling seas:
Their lives in dreams of soothing languor flew,
No parted joys, no future pains, they knew,
The passing moment all their bliss or care;
Such as their sires had been the children were,
From age to age; as waves upon the tide
Of stormless time, they calmly lived and died.

Dreadful as hurricanes, athwart the main
Rush'd the fell legions of invading Spain;
With fraud and force, with false and fatal breath
(Submission bondage, and resistance death),
They swept the isles. In vain the simple race
Kneel'd to the iron sceptre of their grace,

Or with weak arms their fiery vengeance braved,
They came, they saw, they conquer'd, they enslaved
And they destroy'd;-the generous heart they broke,
They crush'd the timid neck beneath the yoke;
Where'er to battle march'd their fell array,
The sword of conquest plow'd resistless way;
Where'er from cruel toil they sought repose,
Around the fires of devastation rose.

The Indian, as he turn'd his head in flight,
Beheld his cottage flaming through the night,
And, 'midst the shrieks of murder on the wind,
Heard the mute blood-hound's death-step close behind

The conflict o'er, the valiant in their graves, The wretched remnant dwindled into slaves; Condemn'd in pestilential cells to pine, Delving for gold amidst the gloomy mine. The sufferer, sick of life-protracting breath, Inhaled with joy the fire-damp blast of death. -Condemn'd to fell the mountain palm on high, That cast its shadow from the evening sky, Ere the tree trembled to his feeble stroke, The woodman languish'd, and his heart-strings broke -Condemn'd, in torrid noon, with palsied hand, To urge the slow plow o'er the obdurate land,

The laborer, smitten by the sun's quick ray,
A corpse along the unfinish'd furrow lay.
O'erwhelm'd at length with ignominious toil,
Mingling their barren ashes with the soil,
Down to the dust the Carib people pass'd,
Like autumn foliage withering in the blast:
The whole race sunk beneath the oppressor's rod,
And left a blank among the works of God.

PART II.

ARGUMENT.

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 splendor 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,

The Cane.-Africa.-The Negro.-The Slave-Carry- And earthquake step, she walks abroad with death:
ing Trade. The Means and Resources of the Slave O'er boundless plains she holds her fiery flight,
Trade. The Portuguese,- Dutch, - Danes,-In terrible magnificence of light;
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 cluster'd round the rocks;
Where orange-groves perfumed the circling air,
With verdure, flowers, and fruit for ever fair;
Gay myrtle foliage track'd the winding rills,
And cedar forests slumber'd on the hills;
-An eastern plant, ingrafted on the soil,'
Was till'd 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 bless'd 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 sapp'd his life, and flourish'd 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 press'd),
Dark through his thoughts the miser purpose roll'd
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 seem'd the spectres of the dead.
The Spaniard saw; no sigh of pity stole,
No pang of conscience touch'd his sullen soul:
The tiger 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 Carib shore the tyrant stood,
Thus cast his eyes with fury o'er the tide,
And far beyond the gloomy gulf descried
Devoted Africa: he burst away,

And with a yell of transport grasp'd his prey.

Where the stupendous Mountains of the Moon Cast their broad shadows o'er the realms of noon;

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At blazing noon pursues the evening breeze,
Through the dun gloom of realm-o'ershadowing trees,
Her thirst at Nile's mysterious fountain quells,
Or bathes in secrecy where Niger swells
An inland ocean, on whose jasper rocks

With shells and sea-flower-wreaths she binds her locks:

She slept on isles of velvet verdure, placed
'Midst sandy gulfs and shoals for ever waste;
She guides her countless flocks to cherish'd 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 sun-set, 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 clamor, she provides for all,
Leads the light leopard on his eager way,
And goads the gaunt hyena to his prey.

In these romantic regions, man grows wild;
Here dwells the Negro, Nature's outcast child,
Scorn'd by his brethren; but his mother's eye,
That gazes on him from her warmest sky,
Sees in his flexile limbs untutor'd 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, uncultured 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,
Ordain'd, 'midst sinking worlds, his dust to fire
And shine for ever 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 reioice?

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