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

The Cane.—Africa.—The Negro.—The Slave-Carrying Trade.—The Means and Resources of the Slave Trade.—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 cluster'd round the rocks;
Where orange-groves perfum'd 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 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 grasp'd 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,
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 sleeps on isles of velvet verdure, placed
Midst sandy gulphs 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 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,
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, uncultur'd 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 made 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 spurn'd from earth's insulted face;
Among the waifs and foundlings of mankind,
Abroad he look'd, 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 open'd in the Negro's veins;
A spring, exhaustless as his avarice drew,
A stock that like Prometheus' vitals grew
Beneath the eternal beak his heart that tore,
Beneath the insatiate thirst that drain'd his gore.
Thus, childless as the Charibbeans died,
Afric's strong sons the ravening waste supplied;
Of hardier fibre to endure the yoke,
And self-renew'd beneath the severing stroke;
As grim oppression crush'd them to the tomb,
Their fruitful parent's miserable womb
Teem'd with fresh myriads, crowded o'er the waves,
Heirs to their toil, their sufferings, and their graves.

Freighted with curses was the bark that bore
The spoilers of the west to Guinea's shore;
Heavy with groans of anguish blew the gales
That swell'd that fatal bark's returning sails;
Old Ocean shrunk as o'er his surface flew
The human cargo and the demon crew.
—Thenceforth, unnumber'd as the waves that roll
From sun to sun, or pass from pole to pole,
Outcasts and exiles, from their country torn,
In floating dungeons o'er the gulph were borne;
—The valiant, seized in peril-daring fight;
The weak, surprised in nakedness and night;
Subjects by mercenary despots sold;
Victims of justice prostitute for gold;
Brothers by brothers, friends by friends, betray'd;
Snared in her lover's arms the trusting maid;
The faithful wife by her false lord estranged,
For one wild cup of drunken bliss exchanged;
From the brute-mother's knee, the infant-boy,
Kidnapp'd in slumber, barter'd for a toy;
The father, resting at his father's tree,
Doom'd by the son to die beyond the sea:
—All bonds of kindred, law, alliance, broke;
All ranks, all nations, crouching to the yoke;
From fields of light, unshadow'd climes, that lie
Panting beneath the sun's meridian eye;
From hidden Ethiopia's utmost land;
From Zaara's fickle wilderness of sand;
From Congo's blazing plains and blooming woods;
From Whidah's hills, that gush with golden floods;
Captives of tyrant power and dastard wiles,
Dispeopled Africa, and gorged the isles.
Loud and perpetual o'er the Atlantic waves,
For guilty ages, roll'd the tide of slaves;
A tide that knew no fall, no turn, no rest,
Constant as day and night from east to west;
Still widening, deepening, swelling in its course,
With boundless ruin and resistless force.

Quickly by Spain's alluring fortune fired,
With hopes of fame and dreams of wealth inspired,
Europe's dread powers from ignominious ease
Started; their pennons stream'd on every breeze;
And still where'er the wide discoveries spread,
The cane was planted, and the native bled;
While, nursed by fiercer suns, of nobler race,
The Negro toil'd and perish'd in his place.

First, Lusitania,—she whose prows had borne
Her arms triumphant round the car of morn,
—Turn'd to the setting sun her bright array,
And hung her trophies o'er the couch of day.

Holland,—whose hardy sons roll'd back the sea,
To build the halcyon-nest of liberty,
Shameless abroad the enslaving flag unfurl'd,
And reign'd a despot in the younger world.

Denmark,—whose roving hordes, in barbarous times,
Fill'd the wide North with piracy and crimes,
Awed every shore, and taught their keels to sweep
O'er every sea, the Arabs of the deep,
—Embark'd, once more to western conquest led
By Rollo's spirit, risen from the dead.

Gallia,—who vainly aim'd, in depth of night,
To hurl old Rome from her Tarpeian height,

(But lately laid, with unprevented blow,
The thrones of kings, the hopes of freedom, low,)
—Rush'd o'er the theatre of splendid toils,
To brave the dangers and divide the spoils.

Britannia,—she who scathed the crest of Spain,
And won the trident sceptre of the main,
When to the raging wind and ravening tide
She gave the huge Armada's scatter'd pride,
Smit by the thunder-wielding hand that hurl'd
Her vengeance round the wave-encircled world;
—Britannia shared the glory and the guilt,—
By her were Slavery's island-altars built,
And fed with human victims;—while the cries
Of blood demanding vengeance from the skies,
Assail'd her traders' grovelling hearts in vain,
—Hearts dead to sympathy, alive to gain,
Hard from impunity, with avarice cold,
Sordid as earth, insensible as gold.

Thus through a night of ages, in whose shade
The sons of darkness plied the infernal trade,
Wild Africa beheld her tribes, at home,
In battle slain; abroad, condemn'd to roam
O'er the salt waves, in stranger isles to bear,
(Forlorn of hope, and sold into despair,)
Through life's slow journey, to its dolorous close,
Unseen, unwept, unutterable woes.