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The Hireling and the Slave (XHTML)
An epic proslavery poem published in 1856 by William Grayson (Charleston, SC: McCarter & Co.). Digitized by the Antislavery Literature Project.
HIRELING AND THE SLAVE,
CHICORA,
AND OTHER POEMS.
BY
WILLIAM J. GRAYSON.
CHICORA,
AND OTHER POEMS.
BY
WILLIAM J. GRAYSON.
After all, Slavery in their case (the Jamaica slaves) is but another name for servitude. – M. G. LEWIS.
Irish whites have been long emancipated, and nobody asks them to work, or permits them to work, on condition of finding them potatoes. – CARLYLE.
I never saw servants in any old English family more comfortable or more devoted; it is a relief to see any thing so patriarchal after the * * * Northern States. I would rather be a slave here, than a grumbling, saucy "help" there. Miss MURRAY in Georgia.
CHARLESTON, S. C.:
McCARTER & CO., PUBLISHERS.
116 MEETING STREET.
1856.
McCARTER & CO., PUBLISHERS.
116 MEETING STREET.
1856.
[unnumbered page ii]
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and fifty-six, by
McCARTER & CO.,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States
for the District of South Carolina.
eight hundred and fifty-six, by
McCARTER & CO.,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States
for the District of South Carolina.
[unnumbered page iii]
TO
JAMES L. PETIGRU, LL.D.
I ASK permission to inscribe the following verses to you. If not a fit offering to your taste and judgment, they at least give me an opportunity for saying how much I admire the wit, intellect, and learning which you have devoted with so much success to every noble purpose; which have never failed friend or stranger in distress, nor shrunk from a toil or sacrifice required by Justice, Humanity, or Generosity.
The most exalted station in society is that of the Advocate who employs distinguished legal attainments and abilities to defend the unfortunate, vindicate truth and right, and maintain law, order, and established government, and this station is universally admitted to be yours.
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[unnumbered page v]
PREFACE.
THE malignant abuse lavished on the slaveholders of America by writers in this country and England can be accounted for but in one way consistently with any degree of charitable consideration for the slanderers. They have no knowledge of the thing abused.
They substitute an ideal of their own contriving for the reality. They regard slavery as a system of chains, whips, and tortures. They consider its abuses as its necessary condition, and a cruel master its fair representative. Mr. Clarkson took up the subject, originally, as a fit one for a college exercise in rhetoric, and it became a rhetorical exercise for life to himself and his followers. With these people the cruelty of slavery is an affair of tropes and figures. But they have dealt so long in metaphorical fetters and prisons, that they have brought themselves to believe that the Negroes work in chains and live in dungeons.
To prove the evils of slavery, they collect, from all quarters, its abuses, and show the same regard for fairness and common sense as they would do to gather
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all the atrocities of their own country committed by husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, priest and people, and denounce these several relations in life in consequence of their abuses.
The laborer suffers wrong and cruelty in England, but they say it is against the law, against public opinion; he may apply to the courts for redress; these are open to him. Cruelty to the slave is equally against the law. It is equally condemned by public opinion; and as to the courts of law being open to the pauper hireling, we may remember the reply of Sheridan to a similar remark, Yes, and so are the London hotels: justice and a good dinner at a public house are equally within his reach. If, in consequence of the evils incident to hireling labor because there are severe, heartless, grinding employers, and miserable, starving hirelings, it were proposed to abolish hireling labor, it would be quite as just and logical as the argument to abolish slavery because there are sufferings among slaves, and hard hearts among masters. The cruelty or suffering is no more a necessary part of the one system than of the other. Notwithstanding its abuses and miseries, the hireling system works beneficially with white laborers ; and so also, notwithstanding hard masters, slavery, among a Christian people, is advantageous to the Negro. But to establish the hireling system with Africans would be as wise as to endeavor to bestow the constitutional government of England on Ashantee or Dahomey. In both cases
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there would be an equal amount of abstract truth and practical absurdity.
Slavery is that system of labor which exchanges subsistence for work, which secures a life-maintenance from the master to the slave, and gives a life-labor from the slave to the master. The slave is an apprentice for life, and owes his labor to his master; the master owes support, during life, to the slave. Slavery is the Negro system of labor. He is lazy and improvident. Slavery makes all work, and it insures homes, food, and clothing for all. It permits no idleness, and it provides for sickness, infancy, and old age. It allows no tramping or skulking, and it knows no pauperism.
This is the whole system substantially. All cruelty is an abuse; does not belong to the institution; is now punished, and may be in time prevented. The abuses of slavery are as open to all reforming influences as those of any other civil, social, or political condition.
The improvement in the treatment of the slave is as marked as in that of any other laboring class in the world. If it be true of the English soldier or sailor that his condition has been ameliorated in the last fifty years, it is quite as true of the negro.
If slavery is subject to abuses, it has its advantages also. It establishes more permanent, and, therefore, kinder relations between capital and labor. It removes what Stuart Mill calls "the widening and imbittering feud between the class of labor and the class of capi-
[page viii]
tal." It draws the relation closer between master and servant. It is not an engagement for days or weeks, but for life. There is no such thing with slavery as a laborer for whom nobody cares or provides. The most wretched feature in hireling labor is the isolated, miserable creature who has no home, no work, no food, and in whom no one is particularly interested. This is seen among hirelings only.
The sale of slaves is thought to be a great evil to the slave. But what is it substantially more than a transfer of labor from one employer to another? Is this an evil to the laborer? Would it be considered an evil by the European hireling if the laws required every master, before he dismissed his workmen, to secure to them another employer? Would it be an evil to the hireling to be certain of obtaining work to be safe from the misery of having no employer, no work, while he is starving for bread? The sale of the slave is the form in which the laws secure the slave from this misery of the hireling secure to him a certainty of employment and a certainty of subsistence. The hireling has neither.
I do not say that slavery is the best system of labor, but only that it is the best for the Negro in this country. In a nation composed of the same race or similar races, where the laborer is intelligent, industrious, and provident, money-wages may be better than subsistence. Even under all advantages there are great defects in the hireling system, for which, hitherto, no
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statesman has discovered an adequate remedy. In hireling states there are thousands of idlers, trampers, poachers, smugglers, drunkards, and thieves, who make theft a profession. There are thousands who suffer for want of food and clothing, from inability to obtain them. For these two classes those who will not work, and those who can not there is no sufficient provision. Among slaves there are no trampers, idlers, smugglers, poachers, and none suffer from want. Every one is made to work, and no one is permitted to starve. Slavery does for the Negro what European schemers in vain attempt to do for the hireling. It secures work and subsistence for all. It secures more order and subordination also.* The master is a Commissioner of the Poor on every plantation, to provide food, clothing, medicine, houses, for his people. He is a police-officer to prevent idleness, drunkenness, theft, or disorder. I do not mean by formal appointment of law, but by virtue of his relation to his slaves. There is, therefore, no starvation among slaves. There are, comparatively, few crimes. If there are paupers in slave states, they are the hirelings of other countries, who have run away from their homes. Pauperism began with them when serfage was abolished.
* One of the best arrangements for the relief of the hireling laborer is the provision made in France of houses where the children of laborers are taken in when the laborers go to work in the morning, are carefully attended during the day, and restored to the parents on their return at night. A similar provision for the care of children is found on every plantation.
[page x]
But you must confess, it is said, that slavery is an evil. True enough; in the same sense in which the hireling’s hard labor is an evil. But the poet tells us that there are worse things in the world than hard labor, "withouten that would come a heavier bale;" and so there are worse things for the Negro than slavery in a Christian land. Archbishop Hughes, in his late visit to Cuba, asked the Africans if they wished to return to their native country; the answer was always no. If the African is happier here than in his own country, can we say that, for him, the establishment of slavery is an evil? If the master is contented with his part in the system, with what reason can we regard it as an evil, so far as he is concerned? Slaves and masters are equally satisfied. The discontented are those who are neither.
What more can be required of slavery, in reference to the Negro, than has been done? It has made him, from a savage, an orderly and efficient laborer; it supports him in comfort and peace; it restrains his vices; it improves his mind, morals, and manners; it instructs him in Christian knowledge.
But the quarrel is with the master, and the design is to calumniate and injure him. And why this attack on the master? Who, among its pretended friends, will dare to say that they have done for the African race what the slaveholders of North America have done and are doing? What Abolitionist has bestowed on the Negro the same enduring patience, the same useful
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education, the same care and attendance? Who among them has done, or given, or sacrificed as much? Under the master’s care, the miserable black savage has been fed, clothed, instructed in useful arts, and made an important contributor to the business and enjoyments of the world. What have the Abolitionists done, what have they given, for the Negro race? They use the slave for the purposes of self-glorification only, indifferent about his present or future condition. They are ambitious to bring about a great social revolution — what its effects may be they do not care to inquire.
All Christians believe that the affairs of the world are directed by Providence for wise and good purposes. The coming of the Negro to North America makes no exception to the rule. His transportation was a rude mode of emigration; the only practicable one in his case; not attended with more wretchedness than the emigrant ship often exhibits even now, notwithstanding the passenger law. What the purpose of his coming is we may not presume to judge. But we can see much good already resulting from it — good to the Negro in his improved condition; to the country whose rich fields he has cleared of the forest, and made productive in climates unfit for the labor of the white man; to the Continent of Africa in furnishing, as it may ultimately, the only means for civilizing its people.
The end of slavery, then, would seem to be, present good to the slave himself, to .the country in which he labors and the world at large, and future good to his
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race. Whether Mr. Clarkson or Lord Carlisle approve or disapprove of the mode in which it has pleased divine Providence to bring all this about, the event will probably be the same. It may be doubted whether these gentlemen and their friends could have administered the affairs of the world more wisely, whatever our opinion may be of their wisdom or benevolence. As they will never have the power to try, this must remain among the other unsettled questions that perplex the ingenuity of mankind.
There is, however, a plain, practicable mode in which these anti-slavery zealots may confer freedom on thousands, year after year, without offense to any party. The plan is simple and easy. Let them show their sympathy for the Negro, not by eloquent speeches, but more eloquent acts; not with sentiment, but with sovereigns. They can buy any number of Negroes and carry them where they please. For such a purpose the government would not object. Efficient laborers are wanted in the West Indies. Here is a ready way to procure them. They may, in this manner, bestow freedom on many of the slaves of America, confer a benefit on their colonies, and gratify their own excited sensibilities with something more than unprofitable words. They feel profoundly for the Negro; let them feel to the amount of a million a year. This would be better than bringing Coolies from Asia and negroes from Africa by a system of very doubtful character. It would convince the world that their sympathy is an
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honest one, and not the offspring of vanity or arrogance.
An ingenious lady of South Carolina, in a very admirable letter, has made a similar proposal to the Duchess of Sutherland. But Her Grace is a near relation of the priest in the fable, who refused a half crown to a suppliant, but was ready enough to give him a blessing. The Abolitionists all belong to this benevolent class of world-menders, who are willing at all times to help every body, if it cost them no more than pretty phrases.
In the remarks made in reference to the condition of the hireling in Europe of England especially I have no feeling but compassion for the unfortunate paupers, and intend no reproach to their country. I venerate England as the great mother of nations, as our teacher in law, literature, civil and political liberty. The facts relating to the poverty, vice, brutality, and ignorance of the British laborer are taken, as may be seen from the notes attached, from English authorities; they can be multiplied a hundred fold. In adverting to them, I have merely desired to show that there is a poor and suffering class in all countries, the richest and most civilized not excepted laborers who get their daily bread by daily work, and that the slave is as well provided for as any other. The poor we shall have with us always; and whether the poor hireling or the poor slave is most the object of pity or subject of distress, is the only question proposed, and the true one at issue.
In comparing their several conditions, no contempt
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is implied, certainly none intended for the situation of the hireling poor. All honest labor is worthy of honor, that of the faithful slave not less so than any other. Moralists are accustomed to weigh the advantages and evils of the highest and lowest, the palace and cottage: what forbids us to do so with the good and ill of the two humblest stations of civilized life?
It may be thought unnecessary to invite public attention again to the subject of slavery. But if the subject be trite, it is also of incalculable and unceasing interest. I have endeavored to diversify the mode, if not the matter of the argument, by throwing the remarks offered into verse. I have done so, not only for the reason assigned, but with the additional purpose of offering some variety to the poetic forms that are almost universally prevalent. The poetry of the day is, for the most part, subtile and transcendental in its character. Every sentiment, reflection, or description is wrought into elaborate modes of expression from remote and fanciful analogies. The responses of the Muses have become as mystical and sometimes as obscure as those of more ancient oracles, and disdain the older and homelier forms of English verse.
It has occurred to me that a return to the more sober style of an earlier period may not be an unreasonable experiment on the public taste. The fashion in dress and furniture now and then goes back a century or two; why not the fashion in verse? The school of Dryden and Pope is not entirely forgotten. May we not imi-
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tate the poetry of Queen Anne’s time as well as the tables and chairs? The common measure of that period, applied to a didactic subject, may diversify the dishes presented to the public, and provide for its appetite the same kind of relief that bread and butter or beef and pudding would offer after a long indulgence in more refined and elaborate dishes. The most fastidious appetite may tolerate an occasional change of diet, and exchange dainties now and then for plainer fare.
[unnumbered page]
[unnumbered title page]
____________________________
THE
HIRELING AND THE SLAVE.
____________________________
THE
HIRELING AND THE SLAVE.
____________________________
[unnumbered blank page]
[unnumbered title page]
PART I
________________
THE ARGUMENT.
THE state of the hireling and the slave the same substantially, the condition hard labor, the reward subsistence; the hireling does not always obtain the reward his miseries, starvation, vices, brutality, subjection to military service, expulsion from his country; the transportation of the Negro from Africa to America a blessing to him, instructs him in mechanic arts, in agriculture; the various products of his industry numerous and useful to the whole world; his improvement not possible in his own country, therefore brought by Providence to this; Abolitionists denouncers of Providence; their object selfish; the Negro improved by the master’s care only, the Abolitionists do nothing for him; the superiority of the slave over the rest of his race; his security from want; his education not more defective than that of hirelings in Europe; his punishments less severe for similar offenses; master’s police more efficient in preserving order and preventing vice.
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THE
HIRELING AND THE SLAVE.
__________________________
PART FIRST.
HIRELING AND THE SLAVE.
__________________________
PART FIRST.
Oh, mortal man, that livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That, like an emmet, thou must ever moil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes, there is for it reason great.
* * * * *
Withouten that would come a heavier bale,
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale.
CASTLE OF INDOLENCE
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That, like an emmet, thou must ever moil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes, there is for it reason great.
* * * * *
Withouten that would come a heavier bale,
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale.
CASTLE OF INDOLENCE
FALLEN from primeval innocence and ease,
When thornless fields employed him but to please,*
The laborer toils; and from his dripping brow
Moistens the lengthening farrows of the plow;
In vain he scorns or spurns his altered state, [5]
Tries each poor shift, and strives to cheat his fate:
In vain new-shapes his name to shun the ill
Slave, hireling, help the curse pursues him still;
Changeless the doom remains, the mincing phrase
May mock high Heaven, but not reverse its ways. [10]
* "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; * * * thorns and thistles
shall it bring forth to thee; * * * in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou
eat bread." Genesis.
[page 22]
How small the choice, from cradle to the grave,
Between the lot of hireling, help, or slave!
To each alike applies the stern decree
That man shall labor; whether bond or free,
For all that toil, the recompense we claim — [15]
Food, fire, a home and clothing — is the same.1
The manumitted serfs of Europe find
Unchanged this sad estate of all mankind;
What blessing to the churl has freedom proved,
What want supplied, what task or toil removed? [20]
Hard work and scanty wages still their lot,
In youth o’erlabored, and in age forgot,
The mocking boon of freedom they deplore,
In wants and labors never known before.*
Free but in name — the slaves of endless toil, [25]
In Britain still they turn, the stubborn soil,
Spread on each sea her sails for every mart,
Ply in her cities every useful art;
But vainly may the peasant toil and groan
To speed the plow in furrows not his own; [30]
In vain the art is plied, the sail is spread,
The day s work offered for the daily bread; 2
With hopeless eye, the pauper hireling sees
The homeward sail swell proudly to the breeze,
Rich fabrics wrought by his unequaled hand, [35]
Borne by each breeze to every distant land;
For him, no boon successful commerce yields,
For him no harvest crowns the joyous fields,
The streams of wealth that foster pomp and pride,
No food nor shelter for his wants provide; [40]
* Pauperism began with the abolition of serfage. Westminster Review.
[page 23]
He fails to win, by toil intensely hard,
The bare subsistence — labor’s least reward. 3
In squalid hut — a kennel for the poor,
Or noisome cellar, stretched upon the floor,
His clothing rags, of filthy straw his bed, [45]
With offal from the gutter daily fed, 4
Thrust out from Nature’s board, the hireling lies:
No place for him that common board supplies,
No neighbor helps, no charity attends,
No philanthropic sympathy befriends;
None heed the needy wretch’s dying groan, [50]
He starves unsuccor’d, perishes unknown.
These are the miseries, such the wants* the cares,
The bliss that freedom for the serf prepares;
Vain is his skill in each familiar task,
Capricious Fashion shifts her Protean mask, [55]
His ancient craft gives work and bread no more, 5
And Want and Death sit scowling at his door.
Close by the hovel, with benignant air,
To lordly halls illustrious crowds repair* —
The Levite tribes of Christian love that show [60]
No care nor pity for a neighbor’s woe;
Who meet, each distant evil to deplore,
But not to clothe or feed their country’s poor;
They waste no thought on common wants or pains,
On misery hid in filthy courts and lanes, [65]
On alms that ask no witnesses but Heaven,
By pious hands to secret suffering given;
Theirs the bright sunshine of the public eye,
The pomp and circumstance of charity,
* Exeter Hall, the show-place of English philanthropy.
[page 24]
The crowded meeting, the repeated cheer, [70]
The sweet applause of prelate, prince, or peer,
The long report of pious trophies won
Beyond the rising or the setting sun,
The mutual smile, the self-complacent air,
The labored speech and Pharisaic prayer, [75]
Thanksgivings for their purer hearts and. hands,
Scorn for the publicans of other lands,
And soft addresses — Sutherland’s delight,
That gentle dames at pious parties write —
These are the cheats that vanity prepares, [80]
The charmed deceits of her seductive fairs,
When Exeter expands her portals wide,
And England’s saintly coteries decide
The proper nostrum for each evil known
In every land on earth, except their own, [85]
But never heed the sufferings, wants, or sins
At home, where all true charity begins.
There, unconcerned, the philanthropic eye
Beholds each phase of human misery;
Sees the worn child compelled in mines to slave [90]
Through narrow seams of coal, a living grave,
Driven from the breezy hill, the sunny glade,
By ruthless hearts, the drudge of labor made,
Unknown the boyish sport, the hours of play,
Stripped of the common boon, the light of day, [95]
Harnessed like brutes, like brutes to tug, and strain,
And drag, on hands and knees, the loaded wain:
There crammed in huts, in reeking masses thrown,
All moral sense and decency unknown, 6
With no restraint but what the felon knows, [100]
With the sole joy that beer or gin bestows,
[page 25]
To gross excess and brutalizing strife,
The drunken hireling dedicates his life: 7
Starved else, by infamy’s sad wages fed,
There women prostitute themselves for bread, [105]
And mothers, rioting with savage glee,
For murder’d infants spend the funeral fee; 8
Childhood bestows no childish sports or toys,
Age neither reverence nor repose enjoys,
Labor with hunger wages ceaseless strife, [110]
And want and suffering only end with life;
In crowded huts contagious ills prevail,
Dull typhus lurks, and deadlier plagues assail, 9
Gaunt Famine prowls around his pauper prey,
And daily sweeps his ghastly hosts away; [115]
Unburied corpses taint the summer air,
And crime and outrage revel with despair. 10
Torn from the cottage, conscript peasants go
To distant wars, against an unknown foe,
On fields of carnage, at ambition’s call, [120]
Perish — the warrior’s tool, the monarch’s thrall;
Wasted by plagues, unhonored their remains,
They fill a ditch on Danube’s marshy plains;
In the night trench of mingled mire and blood,
Swept by cold winds and rains, a ceaseless flood, [125]
Half fed, half clad, the tentless earth their bed,
Reeking with gore in mutual slaughter shed,
Scourged by disease, at every dreary post,
They fall in myriads on Crimea’s coast,
Or whelmed in snows on Beresina’s shore, [130]
Sleep the long treacherous sleep that wakes no more;
Worn by the toilsome march, the sleety sky,
Crouching in groups, the sinking squadrons lie:
[page 26]
No longer fly the fierce barbarian bands,
But, rapt in visions of far-distant lands, [135]
In their last wild delirious fancies see
The sunny hills — the haunts of infancy,
Green summer meadows, warm unclouded skies,
Welcomes of homely joy and glad surprise,
Till the stern frost-king stops the crimson stream [140]
Of life, and breaks the dying soldier’s dream;
Home, friends recede before his icy sway,
The dream of bliss and dreamer fade away,
With frozen hosts, the snowy waste is spread,
And howling wolves feast on the unburied dead. [145]
Far from their humble homes and native land,
Forced by a landlord’s pitiless command, 11
In uncongenial climes condemned to roam,
That sheep may batten in the peasant’s home,
The pauper exiles, from the hill that yields [150]
One parting look on their abandoned fields,
Behold with tears no manhood can restrain,
Their ancient hamlet level’d with the plain:
Then go in crowded ships new ills to find,
More hideous still than those they left behind; [155]
Grim Chol’ra thins their ranks, ship-fevers sweep
Their livid tithes of victims to the deep;
The sad survivors, on a foreign shore,
The double loss of homes and friends deplore,
And beg a stranger’s bounty to supply [160]
The food and shelter that their homes deny.
Yet homebred misery, such as this, imparts
Nor grief nor care to philanthropic hearts; 12
The tear of sympathy forever flows,
Though not for Saxon or for Celtic woes; [165]
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Vainly the starving white, at every door,
Craves help or pity for the hireling poor;
But that the distant black may softlier fare,
Eat, sleep, and play, exempt from toil and care,
All England’s meek philanthropists unite [170]
With frantic eagerness, harangue and write;
By purchased tools diffuse distrust and hate,
Sow factious strife in each dependent state,
Cheat with delusive lies the public mind,
Invent the cruelties they fail to find, 13 [175]
Slander, in pious garb, with prayer and hymn,
And blast a people s fortune for a whim.
Cursed by these factious arts, that take the guise
Of charity to cheat the good and wise,
The bright Antilles, with each closing year, [180]
See harvests fail, and fortunes disappear;
The cane no more its golden treasure yields;
Unsightly weeds deform the fertile fields;
The negro freeman, thrifty while a slave,
Loosed from restraint, becomes a drone or knave; [185]
Each effort to improve his nature foils,
Begs, steals, or sleeps and starves, but never toils;
For savage sloth mistakes the freedom won,
And ends the mere barbarian he begun. 14
Then, with a face of self-complacent smiles, [190]
Pleased with the ruin of these hapless isles,
And charmed with this cheap way of gaining heaven
By alms at cost of other countries given —
Like Nathan’s host, who hospitably gave
His guest a neighbor’s lamb his own to save, [195]
Clarkson’s meek school beholds with eager eyes,
In other climes, new fields of glory rise,
[page 28]
And heedless still of home, its care bestows,
In other lands, on other Negro woes.
Hesperian lands, beyond the Atlantic wave, [200]
Home of the poor, and refuge of the brave,
Who, vainly striving with oppression, fly
To find new homes beneath a happier sky;
Hither, to quiet vale or mountain side,
Where Peace and Nature undisturbed abide, [205]
In humble scenes unwonted lore to learn,
Patriot and prince their banished footsteps turn;
The exiled Bourbon finds a place of rest,
And Kossuth comes, a nation’s thankless guest;
Here, driven by bigots to their last retreat, [210]
All forms of faith a safe asylum meet,
Each as it wills, untouched by former fears,
Its prayer repeats, its cherished altar rears:
Scorned by all tongues, assailed by every hand,
Alien and outcast from his promised land, [215]
From Carmel’s heights and Sion’s holier hill,
By God’s decree a ceaseless wanderer still,
The Hebrew finds, his long oppression past,
A grateful home of equal laws at last;
The Jesuit’s zeal, in this secure abode, [220]
No hostile edict fears, nor penal code,
And Luther’s followers, in their Western home,
Like Bachman, scorn the bulls and fires of Rome.
To exile flying from a perjured state,
From royal bigotry and papal hate, [225]
The Huguenot, among his ancient foes,
Found shelter here and undisturbed repose;
Sad the long look the parting exile gave
To France receding on the rising wave!
[page 29]
Her daisied meads shall smile for him no more, [230]
Her orchards furnish no autumnal store,
With memory’s eye alone the wanderer sees
The vine-clad hills, the old familiar trees,
The castled steep, the noonday village shade,
The trim quaint garden where his childhood played; [235]
No more he joins the labor of the fields,
Or shares the joy the merry vintage yields;
Gone are the valley homes, by sparkling streams
That long shall murmur in the exile’s dreams,
And temples, where his sires were wont to pray, [240]
With stern Farel and chivalrous Mornay —
Scenes with long-treasured memories richly fraught,
Where Sully counseled, where Coligni fought,
And Henri’s meteor plume in battle shone,
A beacon-light to victory and a throne. [245]
These all are lost; but, smiling in the West,
Hope, still alluring, calms the anxious breast;
And, dimly rising through the landward haze,
New forms of beauty court his wistful gaze:
The level line of strand that brightly shines [250]
Between the rippling waves and dusky pines,
A shelving beach that sandy hillocks bound,
With clumps of palm and fragrant myrtle crowned;
Low shores, with margins broad of marshy green,
Bright winding streams the grassy wastes between,