Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Americas: Vol. XXX. 1876–79.
Carribbeana
By Philip Freneau (1752–1832)T
In summer seas by Nature placed,—
Art hardly told us where they lay
Till tyranny their charms defaced;
Ambition there her conquests made,
And avarice rifled every shade!
By foreign arms untimely fall,
And some to distant climates flee
Where later ruin met them all:
He saw his sylvan offspring bleed
That fiercer natures might succeed.
To these fair islands found his way,
Departing, left a race of slaves,
Cortez, thy mandate to obey;
And these again, if fame says true,
To lord it o’er the savage crew.
The Genius thus indulged his grief;
While he to woe his heart resigned,
To see the proud European chief
Pursue the harmless Indian race,
Torn by his dogs in every chase!
No longer hears the lover’s sigh;
But wretches meet to wail and weep
The loss of their dear liberty;
Unfeeling hearts possess these isles,
Man frowns, and only Nature smiles.
The haughty Spaniard calls his own,
No other world may share those stores
To other worlds so little known;
His Cuba lies a wilderness,
Where slavery digs what slaves possess.
In vain with golden, harvests teem,
Her endless spring, her balmy gales,
Did more to me than magic seem;
Yet what the god profusely gave
Is there denied the toiling slave.
Through life support the galling chain,
Hope’s airy prospects banish grief,
And bring his native climes again;
His native groves his heaven display,
The funeral is the joyous day.
In vain from Jove fair virtue fell:
Distress compels him to be base,
He has no motive to excel;
In death alone his prospects end,
The world’s worst foe is his best friend.
Who, smit with honor’s sacred flame,
Bade freedom to these coasts repair,
Assumed the slave’s neglected claim,
And scorning interest’s sordid plan
Proved to mankind the rights of man.
With freedom’s beams divinely clear,
Throughout the world his circuit run
Till these dark prospects disappear,
And a new race, not bought or sold,
Springs from the ashes of the old.