But yet I know she's willing to be mine:
This makes me pray thou wouldst be willing too;
But if thou wilt not hear my earnest cry,
Nor grant the boon I from thy hand require,
Then do hear this, and grant my last petition:-
Quick as the lightning's flash streams o'er the
world,
Direct an arrow, fraught with dissolution,
To lay me low, unfeeling, on the ground!
But if the shaft be not by far wing'd quicker
Than any bard as yet has ever sung of,
The love I bear the Fair for whom I mourn,
Will like an Angel snatch me from its course!
But well I know, unerring, thou canst end
My bitter sorrows, and lay life extinct!
But if ought could death's sable bands unloose, My dearest would when my cold cheek she press'd,
And bathing, warm'd it with her briny tears.
, cutting thought! to think of her thus mourning!
hall I to her e'er be the cause of woe?
hall those dear lips, that oft I press'd so fondly, y me be spoil'd of all their cherry dye?
h, no! kind Heaven! I shrink from this idea; et her affection be fix'd on some other
Happier youth than me, more worthy of it.
My heart's o'ercome; this still is more o'erwhelm
ing-
Give her another! No, no, she is mine!
There is but one way left we can be happy:
May Heaven be pleased to grant my dearest wish
To waft us both into that happy region,
Where Disappointment knows not how to enter!
This racks me still: must she, to make me blest,
Feel the cold hand of Death dislodge her spirit!
I cannot wish that she for me should suffer:
O, Death! on me thy hand lay doubly dreadful,
And let me bear all pain she would endure,
In passing from this scene of constant trouble,
Unto that peaceful shore for which I'm longing.
Then haste, sweet day! when we shall reach that
dwelling,
There we'll find cure for all our grief and wailing
O, AFRIC! full of gold, but fuller far
Of all the woes of wild, unnatural war;
Thou surely art a land that's doom'd to show
The farthest length the human heart can go
In dire barbarity, and all the train
Of blackest miseries ever known to men!
Upon thy sons, thou sad, ill-fated land,
Captivity and Death come hand in hand!
The sordid wretch, who has no care but gain,
And stops at nothing, if he can attain
A heap of yellow dust-'tis he who stains
With human gore thy precious orey plains;
'Tis he provokes thy tribes to ceaseless jars,
To ruthless cruelties and bloody wars:
That he, with captives taken in the fray,
May load his barks, and bear them far away
To live in torment, or to find their graves
By thirst and hunger, as they cross the waves.
Women and children, wildly frantic, run
All unprotected through thy burning zone,
Mourning their husbands or their parents slain ;
Or, worst of all, bound in the tyrant's chain.
Distracted, careless whither they may fly,
Grief and despair appear in every eye;
Ere by some lurking demon they are found,
And in his thongs, devoid of
mercy, bound,
To share their fate for whom they make lament;
All from their homes and their relations rent!
Cramm'd up within the ship's black stinking
Men, women, children, in one mass are roll'd. Oh, what a scene! more horrid than the grave To see the victims, and to hear them rave; While fiends, unfeeling, at their misery jeer, And see their horrors only but to sneer!
Their ship thus fill'd, the monsters tempt the brine,
Drowning the cries for mercy raised-in wine! O, hapless negroes! now ye cry in vain,
If Death release not, ye must wear the chain. Sure ye have cause that ill-used art to weep Which man has learn'd-of sailing on the deep! Without a glimpse of day the captives lie,
And wish to Heaven that 'twere their lot to die.
Fervent they pray that howling storms would rise, And, spreading tempest black, roar through the
To make the liquid hills of ocean roll,
And in their vortex quick engulph them all!
Death finds them out, and to his work begins→→
The number of the wretched slaves he thins:
With kindly welcome they this fiend receive,
A trusty friend, that can their woes relieve.
When, by his hand, thrall-freed they any see,
Then each alive mourns that it was not he.
The work goes on; released are many more,
Though many live, and that they live deplore.
Most dismal state! far better sure to sleep
Below the wave, than thus above it weep!
Now in their cells, with no attention paid,
The living lie, 'mongst the unnoticed dead.
Oh, how would Pity feeling bosoms swell,
If such could see them in their dungeon wail
Now sordid fears upon their tyrants fall-
Not generous pity-lest they lose them all;
Lest their excursion o'er the deeps be vain ;
Lest den leave no one to increase their gain.
For fear of this down to the hold they go,
And overboard the lifeless bodies throw;
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