Proud of the vast extended shores
The haughty Spaniard calls his own,
His selfish heart restrains his stores,
To other climes but scarcely known:[328]
His Cuba lies a wilderness,
Where slavery digs what slaves possess.
Jamaica's sweet, romantic vales
In vain with golden harvests teem;
Her endless spring, her fragrant gales
More than Elysian magic seem:[329]
Yet what the soil profusely gave
Is there denied the toiling slave.
Fantastic joy and fond belief
Through life support the galling chain;
Hope's airy prospects banish griefs,
And bring his native lands again:
His native groves a heaven display,
The funeral is the jocund day.
For man oppressed and made so base,
In vain from Jove fair virtue fell;
Distress be-glooms the toiling race,
They have no motive to excel:
In death alone their miseries end,
The tyrant's dread—is their best friend.
How great their praise let truth declare,
Who touched with honour's sacred flame,
Bade freedom to some coasts repair
To urge the slave's neglected claim;
And scorning interest's swinish plan,
Gave to mankind the rights of man.
Ascending there, may freedom's sun
In all his force serenely clear,
A long, unclouded circuit run,
Till little tyrants disappear;
And a new race, not bought or sold,
Rise from the ashes of the old.
[326] Published in the Freeman's Journal of Jan. 31, 1787, with the introduction "The following verses, wrote by Mr. Freneau are subjoined to a short and accurate account of the West Indies in the printer's Pocket Almanac for the present year." The title of the poem suffered many variations in later editions. In the 1788 edition, where it was reprinted from the Journal, it was entitled "Stanzas written In a blank leaf of Burke's History of the West India Islands," and it was signed "Pennsylvania, 1786." In the 1795 edition it was entitled "Caribbeana," and in the edition of 1809, the text of which I have followed, it received the title above given. The poem was carefully revised for the edition of 1795.
"While he to tears his heart resign'd
With pain he saw the falling leaf;
'And thus (he cry'd) our reign must end,
We, like the leaves, must now descend.'"
Ed. 1788.