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(From The West Indies)
THE WINDS were prosperous, and the billows bore | |
| The brave adventurer to the promised shore; | |
| Far in the west, arrayed in purple light, | |
| Dawned the new world on his enraptured sight: | |
| Not Adam, loosened from the encumbering earth, | 5 |
| Waked by the breath of God to instant birth, | |
| With sweeter, wilder wonder gazed around, | |
| When life within and light without he found; | |
| When, all creation rushing o’er his soul, | |
| He seemed to live and breathe throughout the whole. | 10 |
| So felt Columbus, when, divinely fair, | |
| At the last look of resolute despair, | |
| The Hesperian isles, from distance dimly blue, | |
| With gradual beauty opened on his view. | |
| In that proud moment his transported mind | 15 |
| The morning and the evening worlds combined, | |
| And made the sea, that sundered them before, | |
| A bond of peace, uniting shore to shore. * * * * * | |
| Where first his drooping sails Columbus furled, | |
| And sweetly rested in another world, | 20 |
| Amidst the heaven-reflecting ocean, smiles | |
| A constellation of elysian isles; | |
| Fair as Orion when he mounts on high, | |
| Sparkling with midnight splendor from the sky: | |
| They bask beneath the sun’s meridian rays, | 25 |
| When not a shadow breaks the boundless blaze; | |
| The breath of ocean wanders through their vales | |
| In morning breezes and in evening gales; | |
| Earth from her lap perennial verdure pours, | |
| Ambrosial fruits and amaranthine flowers; | 30 |
| O’er the wild mountains and luxuriant plains, | |
| Nature in all the pomp of beauty reigns, | |
| In all the pride of freedom. Nature free | |
| Proclaims that man was born for liberty. | |
| She flourishes where’er the sunbeams play | 35 |
| O’er living fountains, sallying into day; | |
| She withers where the waters cease to roll, | |
| And night and winter stagnate round the pole: | |
| Man, too, where freedom’s beams and fountains rise, | |
| Springs from the dust, and blossoms to the skies; | 40 |
| Dead to the joys of light and life, the slave | |
| Clings to the clod; his root is in the grave: | |
| Bondage is winter, darkness, death, despair; | |
| Freedom the sun, the sea, the mountains, and the air! | |
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| In placid indolence supinely blest, | 45 |
| A feeble race these beauteous isles possessed; | |
| Untamed, untaught, in arts and arms unskilled, | |
| Their patrimonial soil they rudely tilled, | |
| Chased the free rovers of the savage wood, | |
| Insnared the wild-bird, swept the scaly flood; | 50 |
| Sheltered in lowly huts their fragile forms | |
| From burning suns and desolating storms; | |
| Or when the halcyon sported on the breeze, | |
| In light canoes they skimmed the rippling seas; | |
| Their lives in dreams of soothing languor flew, | 55 |
| No parted joys, no future pains, they knew, | |
| The passing moment all their bliss or care; | |
| Such as their sires had been the children were, | |
| From age to age; as waves upon the tide | |
| Of stormless time, they calmly lived and died. * * * * * | 60 |
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