Though warm with life the heaving surges glow,
Where'er the winds of heaven were wont to blow,
In sevenfold phalanx shall the rallying hosts
Of ocean-slumberers join their wandering ghosts,
Along the melancholy gulph, that roars
From Guinea to the Charibbean shores.
Myriads of slaves, that perish'd on the way,
From age to age the shark's appointed prey,
By livid plagues, by lingering tortures slain,
Or headlong plunged alive into the main,2
Shall rise in judgment from their gloomy beds,
And call down vengeance on their murderers' heads.
Yet small the number, and the fortune blest,
Of those who on the stormy deep found rest,
Weigh'd with the unremember'd millions more,
That 'scaped the sea, to perish on the shore,
By the slow pangs of solitary care,
The earth-devouring anguish of despair,3
The broken heart, which kindness never heals,
The home-sick passion which the negro feels,
When toiling, fainting in the land of canes,
His spirit wanders to his native plains;
His little lovely dwelling there he sees,
Beneath the shade of his paternal trees,
The home of comfort :-then before his eyes
The terrors of captivity arise.
'Twas night :-his babes around him lay at rest, Their mother slumber'd on their father's breast:
A yell of murder rang around their bed;
They woke; their cottage blazed; the victims fled; the ambush'd ruffians on their prey,
They caught, they bound, they drove them far away; The white man bought them at the mart of blood;
In pestilential barks they cross'd the flood;
Then were the wretched ones asunder torn,
To distant isles, to separate bondage borne,
Denied, though sought with tears, the sad relief
That misery loves,-the fellowship of grief.
The negro, spoiled of all that nature gave,
The freeborn man, thus shrunk into a slave,
His passive limbs to measured tasks confined,
Obey'd the impulse of another mind;
A silent, secret, terrible controul,
That ruled his sinews, and repress'd his soul.
Not for himself he waked at morning-light,
Toil'd the long day, and sought repose at night;
His rest, his labour, pastime, strength, and health,
Were only portions of a master's wealth;
His love-O, name not love, where Britons doom
The fruit of love to slavery from the womb.
Thus spurn'd, degraded, trampled, and oppress'd, The negro-exile languish'd in the west,
With nothing left of life but hated breath,
And not a hope except the hope in death,
To fly for ever from the Creole-strand,
And dwell a freeman in his fathers' land.
Lives there a savage ruder than the slave? -Cruel as death, insatiate as the grave,
False as the winds that round his vessel blow,
Remorseless as the gulph that yawns below,
Is he who toils upon the wafting flood,
A Christian broker in the trade of blood;
Boisterous in speech, in action prompt and bold,
He buys, he sells, he steals, he kills, for gold.
At noon, when sky and ocean, calm and clear,
Bend round his bark, one blue unbroken sphere;
When dancing dolphins sparkle through the brine,
And sun-beam circles o'er the waters shine;
He sees no beauty in the heaven serene,
No soul-enchanting sweetness in the scene,
But darkly scowling at the glorious day,
Curses the winds that loiter on their way.
When swoln with hurricanes the billows rise,
To meet the lightning midway from the skies;
When from the unburthen'd hold his shrieking slaves
Are cast, at midnight, to the hungry waves;
Not for his victims strangled in the deeps,
Not for his crimes the harden'd pirate weeps,
But grimly smiling, when the storm is o'er,
Counts his sure gains, and hurries back for more.
Lives there a reptile baser than the slave? 5.
-Loathsome as death, corrupted as the grave,
See the dull Creole, at his pompous board,
Attendant vassals cringing round their lord;
Satiate with food, his heavy eyelids close,
Voluptuous minions fan him to repose;
Prone on the noonday couch he lolls in vain,
Delirious slumbers rock his maudlin brain ;
He starts in horror from bewildering dreams,
His bloodshot eye with fire and frenzy gleams;
He stalks abroad; through all his wonted rounds,
The negro trembles, and the lash resounds,
And cries of anguish, shrilling through the air,
To distant fields his dread approach declare.
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