Yarrow, whose birth seem❜d blest with smiles divine,
The cradled offspring of a scepter'd line,
Witness'd chang'd fortune dash his cup of joy,
While yet a harmless, unsuspecting boy.
On Gambia's margin as he listless lay,
By cocoas shaded from the noontide ray,
There, from the spheres, heav'n's pitying angels saw
The deadly breach of Nature's holiest law-
Sudden, emerging from the covert wood,
A band of white men rush'd, and dragg'd him to the flood:
With streaming tears he pleads, but pleads in vain,
Ruthless they bear their captive o'er the main.
His kingly sire and friends, a frantic band,
Beheld the white wing'd vessel leave the strand;
All night they linger on the sea-girt steep,
Embrace in woe, and look, and wail, and weep,
And raving chide the kindling surge below
That speeds the ardour of the flying prow.
Sold to a planter on Virginia's shore,*
The princely boy the badge of slavery wore,
And breath'd beneath the scourge the voice of pain,
And clank'd the fetter and the rankling chain.
On Rappahannock's bank, the towery height, 1620
Of the stern tyrant's structure met the sight;
Whose wealth and grandeur, honours and repose,
Blush, feeling Muse, were wrung from others' woes.
Yet though no tender tear e'er Warbeck shed,
A maid, the blessing of his nuptial bed,
1625
Caught to her young, her warm, unpractis'd breast
Sweet sympathy, and welcom'd home the guest.
* The New England, or Eastern States of the American Republic, namely, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut; contain no slaves. Ohio never had any. Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan are without them. New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Columbia District, have enacted laws for emancipating the few they contain. The Quaker State, Pennsylvania, is not wholly without the remnant of a barbarous vassalage, which the inhabitants are using their best endeavours to eradicate and destroy. Very different is the prospect when we turn to the South: Virginia is disgraced with 392,518 slaves; South Carolina with 196,365; and Georgia with 105,218; while North Carolina, Maryland, Mississippi, Tenessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri, and Louisiana, exhibit multitudes of the most injured beings of the human race.
A dove pursued by hawk, with drooping wing
Once on her snowy arm was seen to cling,
And, half entangled in her floating hair,
Smooth his white plumes, and claim protection there.
Not o'er fictitious woes had learn'd to wail
The nymph she found real life a tragic tale.
The wretched scene of persecuting fate,
Of wanton cruelty, and rancorous hate,
Of dark revenge who scatters baleful breath,
Of stern despair that wildly laughs in death.
To the poor suppliant slave she lent her ear,
Wip'd from the faded cheek the falling tear,
And, when to soothe the tyrant all had fail'd, 1640
His gentle daughter sued him, and prevail'd.
But Yarrow's bosom scorn'd the vassal band
That knelt her intercession to demand;
The lash he bore-and hail'd the vesper beam
To seek his pine-built cabin on the stream,
Where his poor dog rejoic'd his look to meet,
Ran to his master, and caress'd his feet.
Crown'd was his hut with foliage waving high
From oak and ash-a seene to charm the eye;
But when he view'd the trees in green array'd, 1650
Man stood between, and threw on all a shade.
Full twice five years, beneath the scorpion-sway
Of tasking fiends, he linger'd out the day,
When Freedom came to cheer him in his shed,
And bade him raise from earth his drooping head;
Call'd him to flee, held out her generous hand,
And Hope, with smiling air and accent bland,
Soothes the wan wretch, and as she sees him weep,
Points to a refuge on the distant deep.
Nerv'd by the call, he shakes in air his chain, 1660 As falls a dew drop from the lion's mane,
To seek unseen the shaggy wood untrod,
Where brakes conceal the panther's dark abode.
And bids his only friend a long farewell,
His faithful dog, beneath his lonely cell:
Him he bespeaks: O thou affianc'd guest,
Blest with a heart ne'er own'd by human breast,
Thee mournful I forsake, and leave alone,
To pour the shrill, the unprotected moan,
And haply whine for him who ever shar'd
With thee his meal, though scantily he far'd.
Left to the white man's obloquy, thy cry
Will touch no bosom, and provoke no sigh,
But he will scorn thee supplicating mute,
And spurn thee from him as a worthless brute. 1675
Me to have serv'd is thy untoward fate,
Me to have serv'd will bring down on thee hateYet prudence-safety-bid me leave thee here, Then take my last caresses, and a tear!
With cheering Hope that triumph'd over fear, 1680
The stripling sought the forest deep and drear,
And plung'd amidst its wild sequester'd glades,
In gloom more awful than Hircinia's shades.
There, from an oak's high branch in leaves conceal'd,
His arm'd pursuers stand below reveal'd,
Whose neighing horses paw beneath the ground,
While the shrill blood-hounds snuff the root around.
Despair and rage his master's breast inflame-
He bitter curses heaps on Yarrow's name,
And priming his bright gun, obtests and cries, 1690
"If I descry him-by this tube he dies!"
And had it, Yarrow, been by fate decreed
For thee beneath the tyrant's arm to bleed,
Though, led by sympathy, no mortal breast
Sigh'd o'er thy turf, or bade thy ashes rest,
Yet where thy sad, neglected relicks slept,
Beside thy grave the faithful Muse had wept.
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