To Heaven the Christian Negro sent his sighs,
In morning vows and evening sacrifice;
He pray'd for blessings to descend on those
That dealt to him the cup of many woes;
Thought of his home in Africa forlorn,

Yet, while he wept, rejoiced that he was born.
No longer burning with unholy fires,
He wallow'd in the dust of base desires;
Ennobling virtue fix'd his hopes above,
Enlarged his heart, and sanctified his love:
With humble steps the paths of peace he trod,
A happy pilgrim, for he walk'd with God.

Still slowly spread the dawn of life and day,
In death and darkness Pagan myriads lay:
Stronger and heavier chains than those that bind
The captive's limbs, enthrall'd his abject mind;
The yoke of man his neck indignant bore,
The yoke of sin his willing spirit wore.

Meanwhile, among the great, the brave, the free,
The matchless race of Albion and the sea,
Champions arose to plead the Negro's cause;
In the wide breach of violated laws,
Through which the torrent of injustice roll'd,
They stood:-with zeal unconquerably bold,
They raised their voices, stretch'd their arms to save
From chains the freeman, from despair the slave;
The exile's heart-sick anguish to assuage,
And rescue Afric from the spoiler's rage.
She, miserable mother, from the shore,
Age after age, beheld the barks that bore
Her tribes to bondage-with distraction wrung,
Wild as the lioness that seeks her young,
She flash'd unheeded lightnings from her eyes;
Her inmost deserts echoing to her cries;
Till agony the sense of suffering stole,
And stern unconscious grief benumb'd her
So Niobe, when all her race were slain,
In ecstacy of woe forgot her pain:
Cold in her eye serenest horror shone,
While pitying Nature soothed her into stone.

soul.

Thus Africa, entranced with sorrow, stood,
Her fix'd eye gleaming on the restless flood:
-When Sharpe, on proud Britannia's charter'd shore,
From Libyan limbs the unsanction'd fetters tore,
And taught the world, that while she rules the waves,
Her soil is freedom to the feet of slaves:
-When Clarkson his victorious course began,2
Unyielding in the cause of God and man,
Wise, patient, persevering to the end,

No guile could thwart, no power his purpose bend.
He rose o'er Afric like the sun in smiles,—
He rests in glory on the western isles:
-When Wilberforce, the minister of grace,
The new Las Casas of a ruin'd race,3

1 Granville Sharpe, Esq. after a struggle of many years, against authority and precedent, established in our courts of justice the law of the Constitution, that there are no slaves in England, and that the fact of a Negro being found in this country is of itself a proof that he is a freeman.

2 No panegyric which a conscientious writer can bestow, or a good man may receive, will be deemed extravagant for the modest merits of Mr. Clarkson, by those who are acquainted with his labors.-See his History of the Abolition, etc., 2 vols. 3 The author of this poem confesses himself under many obligations to Mr. Wilberforce's eloquent letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, addressed to the Freeholders of Yorkshire, and published in 1807, previous to the decision of the question.

With angel-might opposed the rage of hell,
And fought like Michael, till the dragon fell:

Las Casas has been accused of being a promoter, if not the original projector, of the Negro Slave Trade to the West Indies. The Abbé Gregoire some years ago published a defence of this great and good man against the degrading imputation. The following, among other arguments which he advances, are well worthy of consideration.

The slave trade between Africa and the West Indies commenced, according to Herrera himself, the first and indeed the only accuser of Las Casas, nineteen years before the epoch of his pretended project.

Herrera (from whom other authors have negligently taken the fact for granted, on his bare word) does not quote a single authority in support of his assertion, that Las Casas recommended the importation of Negroes into Hispaniola. The charge itself was first published thirty-five years after the death of Las Casas. All writers antecedent to Herrera, and contemporary with him, are silent on the subject, although several of these were the avowed enemies of Las Casas. Herrera's veracity on other points is much disputed, and he displays violent prejudices against the man whom he accuses. It may be added, that he was greatly indebted to him for information as an historian of the Indies.

In the numerous writings of Las Casas himself, still extant, there is not one word in favor of slavery of any kind, but they abound with reasoning and invective against it in every shape; and, among his eloquent appeals, and comprehensive plans on behalf of the oppressed Indians, there is not a solitary hint in recommendation of the African Slave Trade. He only twice mentions the Negroes through all his multifarious writings; in one instance he merely names them as living in the islands (in a manuscript in the National Library at Paris); and in the same work he proposes no other remedy for the miseries of the aboriginal inhabitants, than the suppression of the repartimientos, or divisions of the people, with the soil on which they were born. In another memorial, after detailing at great length the measures which ought to be pursued for the redress of the Indians (the proper opportunity, certainly, to advocate the Negro Slave Trade, if he approved of it), he adds,-"The Indians are not more tormented by their masters and the different public officers, than by their servants and by the Negroes."

The original accusation of Las Casas, translated from the words of Herrera, is as follows:-"The licentiate Bartholomew Las Casas, perceiving that his plans experienced on all sides great difficulties, and that the expectations which he had formed from his connexion with the High Chancellor, and the favorable opinion the latter entertained of him, had not produced any effect, projected other expedients, such as, to procure for the Castilians established in the Indies a cargo of Negroes, to relieve the Indians in the culture of the earth and the labor of the mines; also to obtain a great number of working men (from Europe), who should pass over into those regions with certain privileges, and on certain conditions, which he detailed."

Let this statement be compared with Dr. Robertson's most exaggerated account, avowedly taken from Herrera alone, and let every man judge for himself, whether one of the most zealous and indefatigable advocates of freedom that ever existed, "while he contended earnestly for the liberty of the people born in one quarter of the globe, labored to enslave the inhabitants of another region, and, in his zeal to save the Americans from the yoke, pronounced it to be lawful and expedient to impose one still heavier on the Africans."-Robertson's History of America, Vol. I, Part III. But the circumstance connected by Dr. Robertson with this supposed scheme of Las Casas is unwarranted by any authority, and makes his own of no value. He adds," The plan of Las Casas was adopted. Charles V. granted a patent to one of his Flemish favorites, containing an exclusive right of importing four thousand Negroes into America." Herrera, the only author whom Dr. Robertson pretends to follow, does not, in any place, associate his random charge against Las Casas with this acknowledged and most infamous act. The crime of having first recommended the importation of African slaves into the American islands is attributed, by three writers of the life of Cardinal Ximenes (who rendered himself illustrious by his opposition to the trade in its infancy), to Chiecres, and by two others, to the Flemish nobility themselves, who obtained the monopoly aforementioned, and which was sold to some "Genoese merchants for 25,000 ducats: and they were the first who brought into a regular form that commerce for slaves between Africa and America, which has since been carried on to such an amazing extent."-It is unnecessary to say more on this subject.-A translation of Gregoire's de203

-When Pitt, supreme, amid the senate, rose
The Negro's friend, among the Negro's foes;
Yet while his tone like heaven's high thunder broke,
No fire descended to consume the yoke:
-When Fox, all eloquent, for freedom stood,
With speech resistless as the voice of blood,
The voice that cries through all the patriot's veins,
When at his feet his country groans in chains;
The voice that whispers in the mother's breast,
When smiles her infant in his rosy rest;
Of power to bid the storm of passion roll,
Or touch with sweetest tenderness the soul—
He spake in vain;-till, with his latest breath,
He broke the spell of Africa in death.

The Muse to whom the lyre and lute belong,
Whose song of freedom is her noblest song,
The lyre with awful indignation swept,
O'er the sweet lute in silent sorrow wept,
-When Albion's crimes drew thunder from her
tongue,

-When Afric's woes o'erwhelm'd her while she

sung,

Lamented Cowper! in thy path I tread;
O! that on me were thy meek spirit shed!
The woes that wring my bosom once were thine;
Be all thy virtues, all thy genius, mine!
Peace to thy soul! thy God thy portion be;
And in his presence may I rest with thee!

Quick at the call of Virtue, Freedom, Truth,
Weak withering Age and strong aspiring Youth
Alike the expanding power of pity felt!
The coldest, hardest hearts began to melt; ·
From breast to breast the flame of justice glow'd;
Wide o'er its banks the Nile of mercy flow'd;
Through all the isle the gradual waters swell'd;
Mammon in vain the encircling flood repell'd;
O'erthrown at length, like Pharaoh and his host,
His shipwreck'd hopes lay scatter'd round the coast.
High on her rock in solitary state,
Sublimely musing, pale Britannia sate:
Her awful forehead on her spear reclined,
Her robe and tresses streaming with the wind;
Chill through her frame foreboding tremors crept;
The Mother thought upon her sons, and wept:
-She thought of Nelson in the battle slain,
And his last signal beaming o'er the main;
In Glory's circling arms the hero bled,
While Victory bound the laurel on his head;
At once immortal, in both worlds, became
His soaring spirit and abiding name;
-She thought of Pitt, heart-broken on his bier;
And "O my Country!" echoed in her ear;
-She thought of Fox;-she heard him faintly speak,
His parting breath grew cold upon her cheek,
His dying accents trembled into air;
"Spare injured Africa! the Negro spare!"

The Negro's claim to all his Maker gave,
And all the tyrant ravish'd from the slave.
Her yielding heart confess'd the righteous claim,
Sorrow had soften'd it, and love o'ercame;
Shame flush'd her noble cheek, her bosom burn'd;
To helpless, hopeless Africa she turn'd;
She saw her sister in the mourner's face,
And rush'd with tears, into her dark embrace:"
"All hail!" exclaim'd the empress of the sea,—
Thy chains are broken-Africa, be free!"

66

Muse! take the harp of prophecy :-behold!
The glories of a brighter age unfold:
Friends of the outcast! view the accomplish'd plan,
The Negro towering to the height of man.
The blood of Romans, Saxons, Gauls, and Danes,
Swell'd the rich fountain of the Briton's veins;
Unmingled streams a warmer life impart,
A dusky race, beneath the evening sun,
And quicker pulses, to the Negro's heart:
Is beauty bound to color, shape, or air?
Shall blend their spousal currents into one:
No: God created all his offspring fair.
Tyrant and slave their tribes shall never see,
For God created all his offspring free;
When Justice, leagued with Mercy, from above,
Shall reign in all the liberty of love;
And the sweet shores beneath the balmy west
Again shall be "the islands of the blest."

Unutterable mysteries of fate

Involve, O Africa! thy future state.
-On Niger's banks, in lonely beauty wild,
A Negro-mother carols to her child:

Son of my widow'd 'love, my orphan joy!
Avenge thy father's murder, O, my boy!”
Along those banks the fearless infant strays,
Bathes in the stream, among the eddies plays;
The fierce youth, shouting foremost in the chase,
See the boy, bounding through the eager race;
Drives the grim lion from his ancient woods,
And smites the crocodile amidst his floods.
To giant strength in unshorn manhood grown,
He haunts the wilderness, he dwells alone.
A tigress with her whelps to seize him sprung;
He tears the mother, and he tames the young
In the drear cavern of their native rock;
Thither wild slaves and fell banditti flock:
He heads their hordes; they burst, like torrid rains,
In death and devastation o'er the plains;
Stronger and bolder grows his ruffian band,
Prouder his heart, more terrible his hand.
He spreads his banner; crowding from afar,
Resistless as the pillar'd whirlwinds fly
Innumerable armies rush to war;
O'er Libyan sands, revolving to the sky,

In fire and wrath through every realm they run;
Where the noon-shadow shrinks beneath the sun;

She started from her trance!—and round the shore, Till at the Conqueror's feet, from sea to sea,

Beheld her supplicating sons once more
Pleading the suit so long, so vainly tried,
Renew'd, resisted, promised, pledged, denied,

fence of Las Casas was published in 1803, by H. D. Symonds, Paternoster-Row.

1 "England expects every man to do his duty."

A hundred nations bow the servile knee,
And, throned in nature's unreveal'd domains,
The Jenghis Khan of Africa he reigns.

Dim through the night of these tempestuous years

A Sabbath dawn o'er Africa appears;

204

PREFACE.

as are introduced would probably have acted and spoken as they are here made to act and speak. The THERE is no authentic history of the world from story is told as a parable only; and its value, in this the Creation to the Deluge, besides that which is view, must be determined by its moral, or rather by found in the first chapters of Genesis. He, therefore, its religious influence on the mind and on the heart. who fixes the date of a fictitious narrative within that Fiction though it be, it is the fiction that represents period, is under obligation to no other authority what- | Truth; and that is Truth, Truth in the essence, ever for conformity of manners, events, or even lo- though not in the name; Truth in the spirit, though calities: he has full power to accommodate these to not in the letter.

his peculiar purposes, observing only such analogy as shall consist with the brief information contained in the sacred records, concerning mankind in the earliest ages. The present writer acknowledges, that he has exercised this undoubted right with great freedom. Success alone sanctions bold innovation: if he has succeeded in what he has attempted, he will need no arguments to justify it; if he has miscarried, none will avail him. Those who imagine that he has exhibited the antediluvians as more skilful in arts and arms than can be supposed, in their stage of society, may read the Eleventh Book of PARADISE LOST:-and those who think he has made the religion of the Patriarchs too evangelical, may read the Twelfth.

With respect to the personages and incidents of his story, the Author having deliberately adopted them, under the conviction, that in the characters of the one he was not stepping out of human nature, and in the construction of the other not exceeding the limits of poetical probability, he asks no favor, he deprecates no censure, on behalf of either; nor shall the facility| with which "much malice, and a little wit" might turn into ridicule every line that he has written, deter him from leaving the whole to the mercy of general Readers.

But, here is a large web of fiction involving a small fact of Scripture! Nothing could justify a work of this kind, if it were, in any way, calculated to impose on the credulity, pervert the principles, or corrupt the affections, of its approvers. Here, then, the appeal lies to conscience rather than to taste; and the decision on this point is of infinitely more importance to the Poet than his name among men, or his interests on earth. It was his design, in this composition, to present a similitude of events, that might be imagined to have happened in the first age of the world, in which such Scripture-characters |

TO THE SPIRIT OF A DEPARTED FRIEND.

MANY, my friend, have mourn'd for Thee,
And yet shall many mourn,

Long as thy name on earth shall be

In sweet remembrance borne,

By those who loved Thee here, and love
Thy spirit still in realms above.

For while thine absence they deplore,
"Tis for themselves they weep;
Though they behold thy face no more,
In peace thine ashes sleep,

And o'er the tomb they lift their eye,
-Thou art not dead, Thou couldst not die.

In silent anguish, O my friend !
When I recall thy worth,
Thy lovely life, thine early end,
I feel estranged from earth;
My soul with thine desires to rest,
Supremely and for ever blest.

In loftier mood, I fain would raise,
With my victorious breath,
Some fair memorial of thy praise,
Beyond the reach of Death;

Proud wish, and vain!—I cannot give
The word, that makes the dead to live.

THOU art not dead, Thou couldst not die;
To nobler life new-born,

Thou look'st in pity from the sky
Upon a world forlorn,

Where glory is but dying flame,
And immortality a name.

Bat he, the fugitive of care and guilt,
Forsook the haunts he chose, the homes he built;
While filial nations hail'd him Sire and Chief,
Empire nor honor brought his soul relief:

He found, where'er he roam'd, uncheer'd, unblest,
No pause from suffering, and from toil no rest.

Ages meanwhile, as ages now are told,
O'er the young world in long succession roll'd;
For such the vigor of primeval man,
Through number'd centuries his period ran,
And the first Parents saw their hardy race,
O'er the green wilds of habitable space,
By tribes and kindred, scatter'd wide and far,
Beneath the track of every varying star.
But as they multiplied from clime to clime,
Embolden'd by their elder brother's crime,
They spurn'd obedience to the Patriarchs' yoke,
The bonds of Nature's fellowship they broke;
The weak became the victims of the strong,
And Earth was fill'd with violence and wrong.
Yet long on Eden's fair and fertile plain,
A righteous nation dwelt, that knew not Cain;
There fruits and flowers, in genial light and dew,
Luxuriant vines, and golden harvests, grew;
By freshening waters flocks and cattle stray'd,
While Youth and Childhood watch'd them from the
Shade;

Age, at his fig-tree, rested from his toil,
And manly vigor till'd the unfailing soil;
Green sprang the turf, by holy footsteps trod,
Round the pure altars of the living God;
Till foul Idolatry those altars stain'd,
And lust and revelry through Eden reign'd.
Then fled the people's glory and defence,
The joys of home, the peace of innocence;
Sin brought forth sorrows in perpetual birth,
And the last light from heaven forsook the earth,
Save in one forest-glen, remote and wild,
Where yet a ray of lingering mercy smiled,
Their quiet course where Seth and Enoch ran,
And God and angels deign'd to walk with man.

Now from the east, supreme in arts and arms,
The tribes of Cain, awakening war-alarms,
Full in the spirit of their father, came

One sole-surviving remnant, void of fear,
Woods in their front, Euphrates in their rear,
Were sworn to perish at a glorious cost,
For all they once had known, and loved, and lost;
A small, a brave, a melancholy band,

The orphans, and the childless of the land.
The hordes of Cain, by giant-chieftains led,
Wide o'er the north their vast encampment spread:
A broad and sunny champaign stretch'd between;
Westward a maze of waters girt the scene;
There, on Euphrates, in its ancient course,
Three beauteous rivers roll'd their confluent force,
Whose streams while man the blissful garden trod,
Adorn'd the earthly paradise of God;

But since he fell, within their triple bound,
Fenced a long region of forbidden ground;
Meeting at once, where high athwart their bed
Repulsive rocks a curving barrier spread,
The embattled floods, by mutual whirlpools crost,
In hoary foam and surging mist were lost;
Thence, like an Alpine cataract of snow,
White down the precipice they dash'd below;
There, in tumultuous billows broken wide,
They spent their rage, and yoked their fourfold tide;
Through one majestic channel, calm and free,
The sister-rivers sought the parent-sea.

The midnight watch was ended; down the west
The glowing moon declined towards her rest;
Through either host the voice of war was dumb;
In dreams the hero won the fight to come;
No sound was stirring, save the breeze that bore
The distant cataract's everlasting roar,
When from the tents of Cain, a Youth withdrew;
Secret and swift, from post to post he flew,
And pass'd the camp of Eden, while the dawn
Gleam'd faintly o'er the interjacent lawn;
Skirting the forest, cautiously and slow,
He fear'd at every step to start a foe;
Oft leap'd the hare across his path, up-sprung
The lark beneath his feet, and soaring sung;
What time, o'er eastern mountains seen afar,
With golden splendor, rose the morning star,
As if an Angel-sentinel of night,

From earth to heaven, had wing'd his homeward
flight,

To waste their brethren's lands with sword and flame. Glorious at first, but lessening by the way,

In vain the younger race of Adam rose,
With force unequal, to repel their foes;
Their fields in blood, their homes in ruins lay,
Their whole inheritance became a prey;
The stars, to whom as Gods they raised their cry,
Roll'd, heedless of their offerings, through the sky;
Till urged on Eden's utmost bounds, at length,
In fierce despair they rallied all their strength.
They fought, but they were vanquish'd in the fight,
Captured, or slain, or scatter'd in the flight:
The morning battle-scene at eve was spread
With ghastly heaps, the dying and the dead;
The dead unmourn'd, unburied left to lie,
By friends and foes, the dying left to die.
The victim, while he groan'd his soul away,
Heard the gaunt vulture hurrying to his prey,
Then strengthless felt the ravening beak, that tore
His widen'd wounds, and drank the living gore.

And lost insensibly in higher day.

From track of man and herd his path he chose,
Where high the grass, and thick the copsewood rose;
Then by Euphrates' banks his course inclined,
Where the grey willows trembled to the wind;
With toil and pain their humid shade he clear'd,
When at the porch of heaven the sun appear'd,
Through gorgeous clouds that streak'd the orient sky,
And kindled into glory at his eye;

While dark amidst the dews that glitter'd round,
From rock and tree, long shadows traced the ground
Then climb'd the fugitive an airy height,
And resting, back o'er Eden cast his sight.

Far on the left, to man for ever closed,
The Mount of Paradise in clouds reposed:
The gradual landscape open'd to his view;
From Nature's face the veil of mist withdrew,