The poetical works of James Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

Introduction: on the Abolition of the Slave Trade.— The Mariner's Compass.—Columbus.—The Discovery of America.—The West Indian Islands.— The Charibs.—Their Extermination.

“Thy chains are broken, Africa, be free!”
Thus saith the island empress of the sea;
Thus saith Britannia. O, 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,
Through radiant realms, 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 favouring 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 gulph 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;
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 daylight 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 gulphs 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.”

The winds were prosperous, and the billows bore
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,
He seem'd to live and breathe throughout the whole.
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 rais'd 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 Charib 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 splendour 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:
Earth from her lap perennial verdure pours,
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 sunbeams play
O'er living fountains, sallying into day;
She withers where the waters cease to roll,
And night and winter stagnate round the pole:
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,
Insnared 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 plough'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 bloodhound'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 plough o'er the obdurate land,
The labourer, 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 Charib 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.