Toussaint LOuverture

'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 whe     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,     Aan dark cheeks pressed against her own!     Then, injured Afric! for the shame     Of thy own daughters, vengeance came     Full on the scornful hearts of those,     Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes,     And to thy hapless children gave     One choice,pollution or the grave!     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 long years of crime,     Has gathered, drop by drop, its flood,     Why strikes he not, the foremost one,     Where murder's sternest deeds are done?     He stood the aged palms beneath,     That shadowed o'er his humble door,     Listening, with half-suspended breath,     To the wild sounds of fear and death,     Toussaint L'Ouverture!     What marvel that his heart beat high!     The blow for freedom had been given,     And blood had answered to the cry     Which Earth sent up to Heaven!     What marvel that a fierce delight     Smiled grimly o'er his brow of night,     As groan and shout and bursting flame     Told where the midnight tempest came,     With blood and fire along its van,     And death behind! he was a Man!     Yes, dark-souled chieftain! if the light     Of mild Religion's heavenly ray     Unveiled not to thy mental sight     The lowlier and the purer way,     In which the Holy Sufferer trod,     Meekly amidst the sons of crime;     That calm reliance upon God     For justice in His own good time;     That gentleness to which belongs     Forgiveness for its many wrongs,     Even as the primal martyr, kneeling     For mercy on the evil-dealing;     Let not the favored white man name     Thy stern appeal, with words of blame.     Has he not, with the light of heaven     Broadly around him, made the same?     Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven,     And gloried in his ghastly shame?     Kneeling amidst his brother's blood,     To offer mockery unto God,     As if the High and Holy One     Could smile on deeds of murder done!     As if a human sacrifice     Were purer in His holy eyes,     Though offered up by Christian hands,     Than the foul rites of Pagan lands!     . . . . . . . .     Sternly, amidst his household band,     His carbine grasped within his hand,     The white man stood, prepared and still,     Waiting the shock of maddened men,     Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when     The horn winds through their caverned hill.     And one was weeping in his sight,     The sweetest flower of all the isle,     The bride who seemed but yesternight     Love's fair embodied smile.     And, clinging to her trembling knee,     Looked up the form of infancy,     With tearful glance in either face     The secret of its fear to trace.     "Ha! stand or die!" The white man's eye     His steady musket gleamed along,     As a tall Negro hastened nigh,     With fearless step and strong.     "What, ho, Toussaint!" A moment more,     His shadow crossed the lighted floor.     "Away!" he shouted; "fly with me,     The white man's bark is on the sea;     Her sails must catch the seaward wind,     For sudden vengeance sweeps behind.     Our brethren from their graves have spoken,     The yoke is spurned, the chain is broken;     On all the hills our fires are glowing,     Through all the vales red blood is flowing!     No more the mocking White shall rest     His foot upon the Negro's breast;     No more, at morn or eve, shall drip     The warm blood from the driver's whip:     Yet, though Tonssaint has vengeance sworn     For all the wrongs his race have borne,     Though for each drop of Negro blood     The white man's veins shall pour a flood;     Not all alone the sense of ill     Around his heart is lingering still,     Nor deeper can the white man feel     The generous warmth of grateful zeal.     Friends of the Negro! fly with me,     The path is open to the sea:     Away, for life!" He spoke, and pressed     The young child to his manly breast,     As, headlong, through the cracking cane,     Down swept the dark insurgent train,     Drunken and grim, with shout and yell     Howled through the dark, like sounds from hell.     Far out, in peace, the white man's sail     Swayed free before the sunrise gale.     Cloud-like that island hung afar,     Along the bright horizon's verge,     O'er which the curse of servile war     Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge;     And he, the Negro champion, where     In the fierce tumult struggled he?     Go trace him by the fiery glare     Of dwellings in the midnight air,     The yells of triumph and despair,     The streams that crimson to the sea!     Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb,     Beneath Besanon's alien sky,     Dark Haytien! for the time shall come,     Yea, even now is nigh,     When, everywhere, thy name shall be     Redeemed from color's infamy;     And men shall learn to speak of thee     As one of earth's great spirits, born     In servitude, and nursed in scorn,     Casting aside the weary weight     And fetters of its low estate,     In that strong majesty of soul     Which knows no color, tongue, or clime,     Which still hath spurned the base control     Of tyrants through all time!     Far other hands than mine may wreathe     The laurel round thy brow of death,     And speak thy praise, as one whose word     A thousand fiery spirits stirred,     Who crushed his foeman as a worm,1     Whose step on human hearts fell firm:     Be mine the better task to find     A tribute for thy lofty mind,     Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shone     Some milder virtues all thine own,     Some gleams of feeling pure and warm,     Like sunshine on a sky of storm,     Proofs that the Negro's heart retains     Some nobleness amid its chains,     That kindness to the wronged is never     Without its excellent reward,     Holy to human-kind and ever     Acceptable to God.