Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 3 | Page 3

death,?Toussaint L'Ouverture!?What marvel that his heart beat high!?The blow for freedom had been given,?And blood had answered to the cry?Which Earth sent up to Heaven!?What marvel that a fierce delight?Smiled grimly o'er his brow of night,?As groan and shout and bursting flame?Told where the midnight tempest came,?With blood and fire along its van,?And death behind! he was a Man!
Yes, dark-souled chieftain! if the light?Of mild Religion's heavenly ray?Unveiled not to thy mental sight?The lowlier and the purer way,?In which the Holy Sufferer trod,?Meekly amidst the sons of crime;?That calm reliance upon God?For justice in His own good time;?That gentleness to which belongs?Forgiveness for its many wrongs,?Even as the primal martyr, kneeling?For mercy on the evil-dealing;?Let not the favored white man name?Thy stern appeal, with words of blame.?Then, injured Afric! for the shame?Of thy own daughters, vengeance came?Full on the scornful hearts of those,?Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes,?And to thy hapless children gave?One choice,--pollution or the grave!
Has he not, with the light of heaven?Broadly around him, made the same??Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven,?And gloried in his ghastly shame??Kneeling amidst his brother's blood,?To offer mockery unto God,?As if the High and Holy One?Could smile on deeds of murder done!?As if a human sacrifice?Were purer in His holy eyes,?Though offered up by Christian hands,?Than the foul rites of Pagan lands!
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Sternly, amidst his household band,?His carbine grasped within his hand,?The white man stood, prepared and still,?Waiting the shock of maddened men,?Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when?The horn winds through their caverned hill.?And one was weeping in his sight,?The sweetest flower of all the isle,?The bride who seemed but yesternight?Love's fair embodied smile.?And, clinging to her trembling knee,?Looked up the form of infancy,?With tearful glance in either face?The secret of its fear to trace.
"Ha! stand or die!" The white man's eye?His steady musket gleamed along,?As a tall Negro hastened nigh,?With fearless step and strong.?"What, ho, Toussaint!" A moment more,?His shadow crossed the lighted floor.?"Away!" he shouted; "fly with me,?The white man's bark is on the sea;?Her sails must catch the seaward wind,?For sudden vengeance sweeps behind.?Our brethren from their graves have spoken,?The yoke is spurned, the chain is broken;?On all the bills our fires are glowing,?Through all the vales red blood is flowing?No more the mocking White shall rest?His foot upon the Negro's breast;?No more, at morn or eve, shall drip?The warm blood from the driver's whip?Yet, though Toussaint has vengeance sworn?For all the wrongs his race have borne,?Though for each drop of Negro blood?The white man's veins shall pour a flood;?Not all alone the sense of ill?Around his heart is lingering still,?Nor deeper can the white man feel?The generous warmth of grateful zeal.?Friends of the Negro! fly with me,?The path is open to the sea:?Away, for life!" He spoke, and pressed?The young child to his manly breast,?As, headlong, through the cracking cane,?Down swept the dark insurgent train,?Drunken and grim, with shout and yell?Howled through the dark, like sounds from hell.
Far out, in peace, the white man's sail?Swayed free before the sunrise gale.?Cloud-like that island hung afar,?Along the bright horizon's verge,?O'er which the curse of servile war?Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge;?And he, the Negro champion, where?In the fierce tumult struggled he??Go trace him by the fiery glare?Of dwellings in the midnight air,?The yells of triumph and despair,?The streams that crimson to the sea!
Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb,?Beneath Besancon's alien sky,?Dark Haytien! for the time shall come,?Yea, even now is nigh,?When, everywhere, thy name shall be?Redeemed from color's infamy;?And men shall learn to speak of thee?As one of earth's great spirits, born?In servitude, and nursed in scorn,?Casting aside the weary weight?And fetters of its low estate,?In that strong majesty of soul?Which knows no color, tongue, or clime,?Which still hath spurned the base control?Of tyrants through all time!?Far other hands than mine may wreathe?The laurel round thy brow of death,?And speak thy praise, as one whose word?A thousand fiery spirits stirred,?Who crushed his foeman as a worm,?Whose step on human hearts fell firm:
Be mine the better task to find?A tribute for thy lofty mind,?Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shone?Some milder virtues all thine own,?Some gleams of feeling pure and warm,?Like sunshine on a sky of storm,?Proofs that the Negro's heart retains?Some nobleness amid its chains,--?That kindness to the wronged is never?Without its excellent reward,?Holy to human-kind and ever?Acceptable to God.?1833.
THE SLAVE-SHIPS.
"That fatal, that perfidious bark,?Built I' the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."
MILTON'S Lycidas.
"The French ship Le Rodeur, with a crew of twenty-two men, and with one hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from Bonny, in Africa, April, 1819. On approaching the line, a terrible malady broke out,--an obstinate disease of the eyes,--contagious, and altogether beyond the resources of medicine. It was aggravated by the scarcity of water among the slaves (only half