Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 3 | Page 3

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 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!
. . . . . . . . . . .
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