John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Anti-Slavery PoemsThe Slaves of Martinique
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As she stands before her lover, with raised face to look and listen.
Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her graceful beauty wrong.
Holding still his spirit’s birthright, to his higher nature true;
As the gregree holds his Fetich from the white man’s gaze apart.
Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the fields of cane and corn:
Scarce with look or word of censure, turns the driver unto him.
Slavery’s last and humblest lesson he has never deigned to learn.
Folding arms and knitting forehead, stands he silent evermore.
Where the brute survives the human, and man’s upright form is not!
Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers in his hold;
Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is in its place;
And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba choked with vines.
Is made light and happy only when a Love is shining in.
Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, making all the world like home;
Of one kindly current throbbing from the universal heart;
Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in that Soil accursed?
To the heart whose pulses elsewhere measure only hate and fear.
Only one green spot remaining where the dew is never dry!
Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the diver seeks his bell.
Hazy rise the inland mountains through the glimmer of the heat,—
Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she lifts her head to listen:—
Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the boat upon the strand!
Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and color true.
And the gray and darkening waters roll above the sunken moon!”
For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant beam her eyes!
Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and the lemon-leaves so green.
God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and his finger points the way.
Thou hast borne too long a burden never meant for souls like thine.
Kneeling on our place of parting, I will bless thee from the shore.
Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming through the twilight gray.
Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, and stripes to me.
I should hear my mother calling through the twilight for her child!”
Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and green hedges of the lime.
Wherefore looks he o’er the waters, leaning forward on his spade?
Like a white cloud of the mountains, driven seaward by the breeze!
Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightier than all.