Anti Slavery Poems I, vol 3, part 1 | Page 2

to M. Bayou. When the rising of the negroes took place, in 1791, Toussaint refused to join them until he had aided M. Bayou and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man had discovered in Toussaint many noble qualities, and had instructed him in some of the first branches of education; and the preservation of his life was owing to the negro's gratitude for this kindness. In 1797, Toussaint L'Ouverture was appointed, by the French government, General-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, and, as such, signed the Convention with General Maitland for the evacuation of the island by the British. From this period, until 1801, the island, under the government of Toussaint, was happy, tranquil, and prosperous. The miserable attempt of Napoleon to re-establish slavery in St. Domingo, although it failed of its intended object, proved fatal to the negro chieftain. Treacherously seized by Leclerc, he was hurried on board a vessel by night, and conveyed to France, where he was confined in a cold subterranean dungeon, at Besancon, where, in April, 1803, he died. The treatment of Toussaint finds a parallel only in the murder of the Duke D'Enghien. It was the remark of Godwin, in his Lectures, that the West India Islands, since their first discovery by Columbus, could not boast of a single name which deserves comparison with that of Toussaint L'Ouverture.
'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight smile?With which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed down?Its beauty on the Indian isle,--?On broad green field and white-walled town;?And inland waste of rock and wood,?In searching sunshine, wild and rude,?Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam,?Soft as the landscape of a dream.?All motionless and dewy wet,?Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met?The myrtle with its snowy bloom,?Crossing the nightshade's solemn gloom,--?The white cecropia's silver rind?Relieved by deeper green behind,?The orange with its fruit of gold,?The lithe paullinia's verdant fold,?The passion-flower, with symbol holy,?Twining its tendrils long and lowly,?The rhexias dark, and cassia tall,?And proudly rising over all,?The kingly palm's imperial stem,?Crowned with its leafy diadem,?Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade,?The fiery-winged cucullo played!
How lovely was thine aspect, then,?Fair island of the Western Sea?Lavish of beauty, even when?Thy brutes were happier than thy men,?For they, at least, were free!?Regardless of thy glorious clime,?Unmindful of thy soil of flowers,?The toiling negro sighed, that Time?No faster sped his hours.?For, by the dewy moonlight still,?He fed the weary-turning mill,?Or bent him in the chill morass,?To pluck the long and tangled grass,?And hear above his scar-worn back?The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack?While in his heart one evil thought?In solitary madness wrought,?One baleful fire surviving still?The quenching of the immortal mind,?One sterner passion of his kind,?Which even fetters could not kill,?The savage hope, to deal, erelong,?A vengeance bitterer than his wrong!
Hark to that cry! long, loud, and shrill,?From field and forest, rock and hill,?Thrilling and horrible it rang,?Around, beneath, above;?The wild beast from his cavern sprang,?The wild bird from her grove!?Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony?Were mingled in that midnight cry;?But like the lion's growl of wrath,?When falls that hunter in his path?Whose barbed arrow, deeply set,?Is rankling in his bosom yet,?It told of hate, full, deep, and strong,?Of vengeance kindling out of wrong;?It was as if the crimes of years--?The unrequited toil, the tears,?The shame and hate, which liken well?Earth's garden to the nether hell--?Had found in nature's self a tongue,?On which the gathered horror hung;?As if from cliff, and stream, and glen?Burst on the' startled ears of men?That voice which rises unto God,?Solemn and stern,--the cry of blood!?It ceased, and all was still once more,?Save ocean chafing on his shore,?The sighing of the wind between?The broad banana's leaves of green,?Or bough by restless plumage shook,?Or murmuring voice of mountain brook.?Brief was the silence. Once again?Pealed to the skies that frantic yell,?Glowed on the heavens a fiery stain,?And flashes rose and fell;?And painted on the blood-red sky,?Dark, naked arms were tossed on high;?And, round the white man's lordly hall,?Trod, fierce and free, the brute he made;?And those who crept along the wall,?And answered to his lightest call?With more than spaniel dread,?The creatures of his lawless beck,?Were trampling on his very neck?And on the night-air, wild and clear,?Rose woman's shriek of more than fear;?For bloodied arms were round her thrown,?And dark cheeks pressed against her own!?Where then was he whose fiery zeal?Had taught the trampled heart to feel,?Until despair itself grew strong,?And vengeance fed its torch from wrong??Now, when the thunderbolt is speeding;?Now, when oppression's heart is bleeding;?Now, when the latent curse of Time?Is raining down in fire and blood,?That curse which, through long years of crime,?Has gathered, drop by drop, its flood,--?Why strikes he not, the foremost one,?Where murder's sternest deeds are done?
He stood the aged palms beneath,?That shadowed o'er his humble door,?Listening, with half-suspended breath,?To the wild sounds of fear and death,?Toussaint L'Ouverture!?What marvel