Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 3 | Page 2

threatens there
Is glorious martyrdom
Then
onward with a martyr's zeal;
And wait thy sure reward

When man
to man no more shall kneel,
And God alone be Lord!
1832.
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.
Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the
plantation "de Libertas," belonging to M. Bayou. When the rising of the
negroes took place, in 1791, Toussaint refused to join them until he had

aided M. Bayou and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man
had discovered in Toussaint many noble qualities, and had instructed
him in some of the first branches of education; and the preservation of
his life was owing to the negro's gratitude for this kindness. In 1797,
Toussaint L'Ouverture was appointed, by the French government,
General-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, and, as such, signed the
Convention with General Maitland for the evacuation of the island by
the British. From this period, until 1801, the island, under the
government of Toussaint, was happy, tranquil, and prosperous. The
miserable attempt of Napoleon to re-establish slavery in St. Domingo,
although it failed of its intended object, proved fatal to the negro
chieftain. Treacherously seized by Leclerc, he was hurried on board a
vessel by night, and conveyed to France, where he was confined in a
cold subterranean dungeon, at Besancon, where, in April, 1803, he died.
The treatment of Toussaint finds a parallel only in the murder of the
Duke D'Enghien. It was the remark of Godwin, in his Lectures, that the
West India Islands, since their first discovery by Columbus, could not
boast of a single name which deserves comparison with that of
Toussaint L'Ouverture.
'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight smile
With which Heaven
dreams of Earth, shed down
Its beauty on the Indian isle,--
On
broad green field and white-walled town;
And inland waste of rock
and wood,
In searching sunshine, wild and rude,
Rose, mellowed
through the silver gleam,
Soft as the landscape of a dream.
All
motionless and dewy wet,
Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met

The myrtle with its snowy bloom,
Crossing the nightshade's solemn
gloom,--
The white cecropia's silver rind
Relieved by deeper green
behind,
The orange with its fruit of gold,
The lithe paullinia's
verdant fold,
The passion-flower, with symbol holy,
Twining its
tendrils long and lowly,
The rhexias dark, and cassia tall,
And
proudly rising over all,
The kingly palm's imperial stem,
Crowned
with its leafy diadem,
Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade,
The
fiery-winged cucullo played!
How lovely was thine aspect, then,
Fair island of the Western Sea


Lavish of beauty, even when
Thy brutes were happier than thy men,

For they, at least, were free!
Regardless of thy glorious clime,

Unmindful of thy soil of flowers,
The toiling negro sighed, that Time

No faster sped his hours.
For, by the dewy moonlight still,
He fed
the weary-turning mill,
Or bent him in the chill morass,
To pluck
the long and tangled grass,
And hear above his scar-worn back
The
heavy slave-whip's frequent crack
While in his heart one evil thought

In solitary madness wrought,
One baleful fire surviving still
The
quenching of the immortal mind,
One sterner passion of his kind,

Which even fetters could not kill,
The savage hope, to deal, erelong,

A vengeance bitterer than his wrong!
Hark to that cry! long, loud, and shrill,
From field and forest, rock
and hill,
Thrilling and horrible it rang,
Around, beneath, above;

The wild beast from his cavern sprang,
The wild bird from her grove!

Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony
Were mingled in that midnight cry;

But like the lion's growl of wrath,
When falls that hunter in his path

Whose barbed arrow, deeply set,
Is rankling in his bosom yet,
It
told of hate, full, deep, and strong,
Of vengeance kindling out of
wrong;
It was as if the crimes of years--
The unrequited toil, the
tears,
The shame and hate, which liken well
Earth's garden to the
nether hell--
Had found in nature's self a tongue,
On which the
gathered horror hung;
As if from cliff, and stream, and glen
Burst
on the' startled ears of men
That voice which rises unto God,

Solemn and stern,--the cry of blood!
It ceased, and all was still once
more,
Save ocean chafing on his shore,
The sighing of the wind
between
The broad banana's leaves of green,
Or bough by restless
plumage shook,
Or murmuring voice of mountain brook.
Brief was
the silence. Once again
Pealed to the skies that frantic yell,
Glowed
on the heavens a fiery stain,
And flashes rose and fell;
And painted
on the blood-red sky,
Dark, naked arms were tossed on high;
And,
round the white man's lordly hall,
Trod, fierce and free, the brute he
made;
And those who crept along the wall,
And answered to his

lightest call
With more than spaniel dread,
The creatures of his
lawless beck,
Were trampling on his very neck
And on the night-air,
wild and clear,
Rose woman's shriek of more than fear;
For
bloodied arms were round her thrown,
And dark cheeks pressed
against her own!
Where then was he whose fiery zeal
Had taught
the trampled heart to feel,
Until despair itself grew strong,
And
vengeance fed its torch from wrong?
Now, when the thunderbolt is
speeding;
Now, when oppression's heart is bleeding;
Now, when
the latent curse of Time
Is raining down in fire and blood,
That
curse which, through