Is he not man, by sin and suffering tried?
Is he not man, for whom the Savior 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 had tore,
Beneath the insatiate thirst that drain'd his gore.
Thus, childless as the Caribbeans 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 parents' 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 gulf were borne:
-The valiant, seized in peril-during 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.
To hurl old Rome from her Tarpeian height,
Gallia,-who vainly aim'd, in depth of night,
|(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.
The Love of Country, and of Home, the same in all
Ages and among all Nations.-The Negro's Home
and Country-Mungo Park.-Progress of the Slave
Trade. The Middle Passage.-The Negro in the
West Indies.-The Guinea Captain.-The Creole Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Planter. The Moors of Barbary.-Buccaneers.
Maroons. St. Domingo.-Hurricanes.-The Yel-
low Fever.
THERE is a land, of every land the pride, Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside; Where brighter suns dispense serener light, And milder moons emparadise the night; A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth, Time-tutor'd age, and love-exalted youth; The wandering mariner, whose eye explores The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores, Views not a realm so beautiful and fair, Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air; In every clime the magnet of his soul, Touch'd by remembrance, trembles to that pole; For in this land of Heaven's peculiar grace, The heritage of nature's noblest race, There is a spot of earth supremely blest, A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest, Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride, While in his soften'd looks benignly blend The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend: Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife, Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life; In the clear heaven of her delightful eye, An angel-guard of loves and graces lie; Around her knees domestic duties meet, And fire-side pleasures gambol at her feet. Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?" Art thou a man?-a patriot ?-look around; O, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam, That land thy country, and that spot thy home!
On Greenland's rocks, o'er rude Kamschatka's plains,
In pale Siberia's desolate domains;
When the wild hunter takes his lonely way,
Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
The reindeer's spoil, the ermine's treasure shares,
And feasts his famine on the fat of bears;
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Plunging down headlong through the whirling main;
-His wastes of ice are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky,
And dearer far than Cæsar's palace-dome,
His cavern-shelter, and his cottage-home.
O'er China's garden-fields and peopled floods; In California's pathless world of woods; Round Andes' heights, where Winter from his throne, Looks down in scorn upon the summer zone; By the gay borders of Bermuda's isles, Where Spring with everlasting verdure smiles, On pure Madeira's vine-robed hills of health; In Java's swamps of pestilence and wealth; Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackals drink, 'Midst weeping willows, on Euphrates' brink; On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream, Where Canaan's glories vanish'd like a dream; Where Greece, a spectre, haunts her heroes' graves, And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves;
Her subject mountains and dishonor'd vales;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea,
Around the beauteous isle of Liberty;
-Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside;
His home the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
And is the Negro outlaw'd from his birth? Is he alone a stranger on the earth?
Is there no shed, whose peeping roof appears
So lovely that it fills his eyes with tears?
No land, whose name, in exile heard, will dart
Ice through his veins and lightning through his heart?
Ah! yes: beneath the beams of brighter skies,
His home amidst his father's country lies;
There with the partner of his soul he shares
Love-mingled pleasures, love-divided cares:
There, as with nature's warmest filial fire,
He soothes his blind, and feeds his helpless sire,
His children sporting round his hut behold
How they' shall cherish him when he is old,
Train'd by example from their tenderest youth
To deeds of charity, and words of truth.'
-Is he not blest? Behold, at closing day,
The negro-village swarms abroad to play;
He treads the dance through all its rapturous rounds,
To the wild music of barbarian sounds;
Or, stretch'd at ease, where broad palmettoes shower
Delicious coolness in his shadowy bower,
He feasts on tales of witchcraft, that give birth
To breathless wonder, or ecstatic mirth:
Yet most delighted, when, in rudest rhymes,
The minstrel wakes the song of elder times,
When men were heroes, slaves to Beauty's charms,
And all the joys of life were love and arms.
-Is not the Negro blest? His generous soil
With harvest-plenty crowns his simple toil;
More than his wants his flocks and fields afford:
He loves to greet the stranger at his board:
"The winds were roaring, and the White Man fied;
The rains of night descended on his head;
The poor White Man sat down beneath our trec,
Weary and faint, and far from home, was he:
For him no mother fills with milk the bowl,
No wife prepares the bread to cheer his soul;
-Pity the poor White Man who sought our tree;
No wife, no mother, and no home, has he."
Thus sang the Negro's daughters;—once again,
O that the poor White Man might hear that strain!
1 Dr. Winterbotham says, "The respect which the Africans pay to old people is very great.-One of the severest insults which can be offered to an African is to speak disrespectfully of his mother." "The Negro race is, perhaps, the most prolific of all the human species. Their infancy and youth are singularly happy.-The mothers are passionately fond of their | children."-Goldbury's Travels.-"Strike me,' said my attendant, but do not curse my mother.'-The same sentiment I found universally to prevail.-One of the first lessons
in which the Mandingo women instruct their children is the practice of truth. It was the only consolation for a Negro mother, whose son had been murdered by the Moors, that the poor boy had never told a lie."-Parks Travels. The doscription of African life and manners that follows, and the song of the Negro's daughters, are copied without exaggeration from the authentic accounts of Mungo Park.
-Whether the victim of the treacherous Moor,
Or from the Negro's hospitable door
Spurn'd as a spy from Europe's hateful clime,
And left to perish for thy country's crime;
Or destined still, when all thy wanderings cease,
On Albion's lovely lap to rest in peace;
Pilgrim! in heaven or earth, where'er thou be,
Angels of mercy guide and comfort thee!
Thus lived the Negro in his native land,
Till Christian cruisers anchor'd on his strand:
Where'er their grasping arms the spoilers spread,
The Negro's joys, the Negro's virtues, fled;
Till, far amidst the wilderness unknown,
They flourish'd in the sight of Heaven alone :
While from the coast, with wide and wider sweep,
The race of Mammon dragg'd across the deep
Their sable victims, to that western bourn,
From which no traveller might e'er return,
To blazon in the ears of future slaves
The secrets of the world beyond the waves.
When the loud trumpet of eternal doom
Shall break the mortal bondage of the tomb;
When with a mother's pangs the expiring earth
Shall bring her children forth to second birth;
Then shall the sea's mysterious caverns, spread
With human relics, render up their dead:
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 gulf, that roars
From Guinea to the Caribbean 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,'
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 in 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,'
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.
-"T was 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:
Forth sprang 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, spoil'd of all that nature gave
His passive limbs, to measured tasks confined,
To freeborn man, thus shrunk into a slave:
Obey'd the impulse of another mind;
A silent, secret, terrible control,
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 labor, 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, 1 On this subject the following instance of almost incredible With nothing left of life but hated breath, The Negro-exile languish'd in the West, cruelty was substantiated in a court of justice :"In this year (1783), certain underwriters desired to be heard And not a hope except the hope, in death, against Gregson and others of Liverpool, in the case of the ship To fly for ever from the Creole-strand, Zong, Captain Collingwood, alleging that the captain and And dwell a freeman in his father-land. officers of the said vessel threw overboard one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, in order to defraud them, Lives there a savage ruder than the slave! by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if they had been-Cruel as death, insatiate as the grave, lost in a natural way. In the course of the trial, which afterwards came on, it appeared that the slaves on board the Zong were very sickly; that sixty of them had already died; and rain fell, and continued for three days, immediately after the several were ill, and likely to die, when the captain proposed to James Kelsal, the mate, and others, to throw several of them overboard, stating, 'that if they died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners of the ship, but that, if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the underwriters.' He selected, accordingly, one hundred and thirty-two of the most sickly of the slaves. Fifty-four of these were immediately thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be partakers of their fate on the succeeding day. In the course of three days afterwards the remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck, to complete the number of victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea, but the rest, with a noble resolution, would not suffer the officers to touch them, but leaped after their companions, and shared their fate.
"The plea which was set up in behalf of this atrocious and unparalleled act of wickedness was, that the captain discovered, when he made the proposal, that he had only two hundred gal lons of water on board, and that he had missed his port. It was proved, however, in answer to this, that no one had been put upon short allowance; and that, as if Providence had determined to afford an unequivocal proof of the guilt, a shower of
second lot of slaves had been destroyed, by means of which they might have filled many of their vessels (a) with water, and thus have prevented all necessity for the destruction of the
"Mr. Sharpe was present at this trial, and procured the at tendance of a short-hand writer to take down the facts which
should come out in the course of it. These he gave to the public afterwards. He communicated them also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as the guardians of minister of state. No notice, however, was taken by any of justice upon the seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as principal these of the information which had been thus sent them."Clarkson's History of the Abolition, etc., page 95—97.
1 The Negroes sometimes, in deep and irrecoverable melancholy, waste themselves away, by secretly swallowing large quantities of earth. It is remarkable that "earth-eating," as it is called, is an infectious, and even a social malady: plantations have been occasionally almost depopulated, by the slaves, with one consent, betaking themselves to this strange practice which speedily brings them to a miserable and premature end. (a) It appeared that they filled six.
False as the winds that round his vessel blow,
Remorseless as the gulf that yɛwns 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 sunbeam 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??
-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 eye-lids close,
Voluptuous minions fan him to repose;
Prone on the noon-day 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.
Mark, as he passes, every head declined;
Then slowly raised,-to curse him from behind.
This is the veriest wretch on nature's face,
Own'd by no country, spurn'd by every race;
The tether'd tyrant of one narrow span,
The bloated vampire of a living man.
His frame, a fungous form, of dunghill birth,
That taints the air, and rots above the earth:
His soul;-has he a soul, whose sensual breast
Of selfish passions is a serpent's nest?
Who follows, headlong, ignorant, and blind,
The vague brute-instinct of an idiot mind;
Whose heart, 'midst scenes of suffering senseless
grown,
E'en from his mother's lap was chill'd to stone;
Whose torpid pulse no social feelings move;
A stranger to the tenderness of love;
His motley haram charms his gloating eye,
Where ebon, brown, and olive beauties vie;
1 See Note 1, page 16, col. 1.
His children, sprung alike from sloth and vice,
Are born his slaves, and loved at market price.
Has he a soul?-With his departing breath,
A form shall hail him at the gates of death,
The spectre Conscience,-shrieking through the gloom,
"Man, we shall meet again beyond the tomb."
Oh, Africa! amidst thy children's woes,
Did earth and heaven conspire to aid thy foes?
No, thou hadst vengeance-From thy northern shores
Sallied the lawless corsairs of the Moors,
And back on Europe's guilty nations hurl'd
Thy wrongs and sufferings in the sister world:
Deep in thy dungeons Christians clank'd their chains,
Or toil'd and perish'd on thy parching plains.
But where thine offspring crouch'd beneath the yoke,
In heavier peals the avenging thunder broke.
-Leagued with rapacious rovers of the main,
Hayti's barbarian hunters harass'd Spain,'
A mammoth race, invincible in might,
Rapine and massacre their dire delight,
Peril their element; o'er land and flood
They carried fire, and quench'd the flames with blood;
Despairing captives hail'd them from the coasts,
They rush'd to conquest, led by Carib ghosts.
Tremble, Britannia! while thine islands tell
The appalling mysteries of Obi's spell; 2
The wild Maroons, impregnable and free,
Among the mountain-holds of liberty,
Sudden as lightning darted on their foe,
Seen like the flash, remember'd like the blow.
While Gallia boasts of dread Marengo's fight, And Hohenlinden's slaughter-deluged night, Her spirit sinks;-the sinews of the brave, That crippled Europe, shrunk before the Slave; The Demon-spectres of Domingo rise, And all her triumphs vanish from her eyes.
God is a Spirit, veil'd from human sight, In secret darkness of eternal light; Through all the glory of his works we trace The hidings of his counsel and his face; Nature, and time, and change, and fate fulfil, Unknown, unknowing, his mysterious will; Mercies and judgments mark him, every hour, Supreme in grace, and infinite in power: Oft o'er the Eden-islands of the West, In floral pomp, and verdant beauty drest, Roll the dark clouds of his awaken'd ire: -Thunder and earthquake, whirlwind, flood, and fire, 'Midst reeling mountains and disparting plains, Tell the pale world," the God of vengeance reigns."
Nor in the majesty of storms alone, The Eternal makes his dread displeasure known;
2 The character of the Creole Planter here drawn is justified both by reason and fact: it is no monster of imagination, though, for the credit of human nature, we may hope that it is a monster as rare as it is shocking. It is the double curse of slavery to degrade all who are concerned with it, doing or suffering. The slave himself is the lowest in the scale of human beings,-tains of Jamaica; also, Dr. Moseley's Treatise on Sugar. except the slave-dealer. Dr. Pinkard's Notes on the West Indies, and Captain Stedman's Account of Surinam, afford examples of the cruelty, ignorance, sloth, and sensuality of Creole planters, particularly in Dutch Guiana, which fully equal the epitome of vice and abomination exhibited in these lines.
1 Alluding to the freebooters and buccaneers who infested the Caribbean seas during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were equally renowned for their valor and brutality. 2 See Dallas's History of the Maroans, among the moun
3 For minute and afflicting details of the origin and progress of the yellow fever in an individual subject, see Dr. Pinkard's Notes on the West Indies, vol. iii. particularly Letter XII, in which the writer, from experience, describes its horrors and sufferings
At his command the pestilence abhorr'd
Spares the poor slave, and smites the haughty lord;
While to the tomb he sees his friend consign'd,
Foreboding melancholy sinks his mind.
Soon at his heart he feels the monster's fangs,
They tear his vitals with convulsive pangs:
The light is anguish to his eye, the air
Sepulchral vapors laden with despair;
Now frenzy-horrors rack his whirling brain,
Tremendous pulses throb through every vein;
The firm earth shrinks beneath his torture-bed,
The sky in ruins rushes o'er his head;
He rolls, he rages in consuming fires,
Till nature, spent with agony, expires.
Ages roll'd by, the turf perennial bloom'd O'er the lorn relics of those saints entomb'd; No miracle proclaim'd their power divine, No kings adorn'd, no pilgrims kiss'd their shrine; Cold and forgotten in the grave they slept: But God remember'd them their Father kept A faithful remnant;-o'er their native clime His Spirit moved in his appointed time; The race revived at his almighty breath, A seed to serve him, from the dust of death. "Go forth, my sons, through heathen realms proclaim Mercy to Sinners in a Savior's name:"
Thus spake the Lord; they heard, and they obey'd,
-Greenland lay wrapt in nature's heaviest shade;
Thither the ensign of the cross they bore;
The gaunt barbarians met them on the shore;
With joy and wonder hailing from afar,
Through polar storms, the light of Jacob's star.
Where roll Ohio's streams, Missouri's floods, Beneath the umbrage of eternal woods, The Red Man roam'd, a hunter-warrior wild;
The Moravian Brethren.-Their missions in Greenland, North America, and the West Indies. On him the everlasting Gospel smiled; Christian Negroes.-The Advocates of the Negroes His heart was awed, confounded, pierced, subdued, in England. Granville Sharpe,-Clarkson,-Wil- Divinely melted, moulded, and renew'd; berforce,-Pitt,-Fox,-The Nation itself.-The The bold base savage, nature's harshest clod, Abolition of the Slave Trade.-The future State of the West Indies,-of Africa,-of the Whole World.-The Millennium.
WAS there no mercy, mother of the slave! No friendly hand to succor and to save, While commerce thus thy captive tribes oppress'd, And lowering vengeance linger'd o'er the west ? Yes, Africa! beneath the stranger's rod They found the freedom of the sons of God.
When Europe languish'd in barbarian gloom, Beneath the ghostly tyranny of Rome, Whose second empire, cowl'd and mitred, burst A phoenix from the ashes of the first; From Persecution's piles, by bigots fired, Among Bohemian mountais Truth retired; There, 'midst rude rocks, in lonely glens obscure, She found a people scatter'd, scorn'd, and poor, A little flock through quiet valleys led, A Christian Israel in the desert fed, While ravening wolves, that scorn'd the shepherd's
Laid waste God's heritage through every land.
With these the lovely exile sojourn'd long;
Soothed by her presence, solaced by her song,
They toil'd through danger, trials, and distress,
A band of Virgins in the wilderness,
With burning lamps, amid their secret bowers,
Counting the watches of the weary hours,
In patient hope the Bridegroom's voice to hear,
And see his banner in the clouds appear :
But when the morn returning chased the night,
These stars, that shone in darkness, sunk in light:
Luther, like Phosphor, led the conquering day,
His meek forerunners waned, and pass'd away.'
1 The context preceding and following this line alludes to the old Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, who flourished long before the Reformation, but afterwards were almost lost among the Protestants, fill the beginning of the eighteenth century, when their ancient episcopal church was revived in Lusatia, by some refugees from Moravia.-See Crantz's Ancient and Modern
Rose from the dust the image of his God.
And thou, poor Negro! scorn'd of all mankind; Thou dumb and impotent, and deaf and blind; Thou dead in spirit! toil-degraded slave, Crush'd by the curse on Adam to the grave; The messengers of peace, o'er land and sea, That sought the sons of sorrow, stoop'd to thee. -The captive raised his slow and sullen eye; He knew no friend, nor deem'd a friend was nigh, Till the sweet tones of Pity touch'd his ears, And Merey bathed his bosom with her tears; Strange were those tones, to him those tears were
He wept and wonder'd at the mighty change,
Felt the quick pang of keen compunction dart,
And heard a small still whisper in his heart,
A voice from Heaven, that bade the outcast rise
From shame on earth to glory in the skies.
From isle to isle the welcome tidings ran; The slave that heard them started into man: Like Peter, sleeping in his chains, he lay,— The angel came, his night was turn'd to day; Arise!" his fetters fall, his slumbers flee; He wakes to life, he springs to liberty.
No more to demon-gods, in hideous forms, He pray'd for earthquakes, pestilence, and storms, In secret agony devour'd the earth,
And, while he spared his mother, cursed his birth: '
History of the Brethren. Histories of the missions of the Brethren in Greenland, North America, and the West Indies, have been published in Germany: those of the two former have been translated into English.-See Crantz's History of Greenland, and Loskiel's History of the Brethren among the Indians in North America. It is only justice here to observe, that Christians of other denominations have exerted themselves with great success in the conversion of the negroes. No invidious prefer ence is intended to be given to the Moravians; but, knowing them best, the author particularized this society.
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