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(From The Voyage of the Blind)
O’ER Africa the morning broke, | |
| And many a negro-land revealed, | |
| From Europe’s eye and Europe’s yoke, | |
| In nature’s inmost heart concealed: | |
| Here rolled the Nile his glittering train, | 5 |
| From Ethiopia to the main; | |
| And Niger here uncoiled his length, | |
| That hides his fountain and his strength, | |
| Among the realms of noon; | |
| Casting away their robes of night, | 10 |
| Forth stood in nakedness of light | |
| The Mountains of the Moon. | |
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| Hushed were the howlings of the wild, | |
| The leopard in his den lay prone; | |
| Man, while creation round him smiled, | 15 |
| Was sad or savage, man alone;— | |
| Down in the dungeons of Algiers | |
| The Christian captive woke in tears; | |
| Caffraria’s lean marauding race | |
| Prowled forth on pillage or the chase; | 20 |
| In Libyan solitude, | |
| The Arabian horseman scoured along; | |
| The caravan’s obstreperous throng | |
| Their dusty march pursued. | |
| |
| But woe grew frantic in the west; | 25 |
| A wily rover of the tide | |
| Had marked the hour of Afric’s rest | |
| To snatch her children from her side: | |
| At early dawn, to prospering gales, | |
| The eager seamen stretch their sails; | 30 |
| The anchor rises from its sleep | |
| Beneath the rocking of the deep; | |
| Impatient from the shore | |
| A vessel steals;—she steals away | |
| Mute as the lion with his prey,— | 35 |
| A human prey she bore. | |
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| Curst was her trade and contraband; | |
| Therefore that keel, by guilty stealth, | |
| Fled with the darkness from the strand, | |
| Laden with living bales of wealth: | 40 |
| Fair to the eye her streamers played | |
| With undulating light and shade; | |
| White from her prow the gurgling foam | |
| Flew backward towards the negro’s home, | |
| Like his unheeded sighs; | 45 |
| Sooner that melting foam shall reach | |
| His inland home, than yonder beach | |
| Again salute his eyes. | |
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| Tongue hath not language to unfold | |
| The secrets of the space between | 50 |
| That vessel’s flanks,—whose dungeon-hold | |
| Hides what the sun hath never seen; | |
| Three hundred writhing prisoners there | |
| Breathe one mephitic blast of air | |
| From lip to lip; like flame supprest, | 55 |
| It bursts from every tortured breast, | |
| With dreary groans and strong; | |
| Locked side to side, they feel by starts | |
| The beating of each other’s hearts,— | |
| Their breaking, too, erelong. | 60 |
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| Light over the untroubled sea, | |
| Fancy might deem that vessel held | |
| Her voyage to eternity, | |
| By one unchanging breeze impelled;— | |
| Eternity is in the sky, | 65 |
| Whose span of distance mocks the eye; | |
| Eternity upon the main, | |
| The horizon there is sought in vain; | |
| Eternity below | |
| Appears in heaven’s inverted face; | 70 |
| And on, through everlasting space, | |
| The unbounded billows flow. | |
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| Yet, while his wandering bark careered, | |
| The master knew, with stern delight, | |
| That full for port her helm was steered, | 75 |
| With aim unerring, day and night. | |
| Pirate! that port thou ne’er shalt hail; | |
| Thine eye in search of it shall fail: | |
| But, lo! thy slaves expire beneath; | |
| Haste, bring the wretches forth to breathe; | 80 |
| Brought forth,—away they spring, | |
| And headlong in the whelming tide, | |
| Rescued from thee, their sorrows hide | |
| Beneath the halcyon’s wing. | |
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