Toussaint L'Ouverture

'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight smileWith which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed downIts 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 metThe myrtle with its snowy bloom,Crossing the nightshade's solemn gloom,--The white cecropia's silver rindRelieved 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 SeaLavish of beauty, even whenThy 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 TimeNo 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 backThe heavy slave-whip's frequent crackWhile in his heart one evil thoughtIn solitary madness wrought,One baleful fire surviving stillThe 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 agonyWere mingled in that midnight cry;But like the lion's growl of wrath,When falls that hunter in his pathWhose 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 wellEarth'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 glenBurst on the' startled ears of menThat 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 betweenThe broad banana's leaves of green,Or bough by restless plumage shook,Or murmuring voice of mountain brook.Brief was the silence. Once againPealed 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 callWith more than spaniel dread,The creatures of his lawless beck,Were trampling on his very neckAnd on the night-air, wild and clear,Rose woman's shriek of more than fear;For bloodied arms were round her thrown,And dark cheeks pressed against her own!Where then was he whose fiery zealHad 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 TimeIs 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 cryWhich Earth sent up to Heaven!What marvel that a fierce delightSmiled grimly o'er his brow of night,As groan and shout and bursting flameTold 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 lightOf mild Religion's heavenly rayUnveiled not to thy mental sightThe lowlier and the purer way,In which the Holy Sufferer trod,Meekly amidst the sons of crime;That calm reliance upon GodFor justice in His own good time;That gentleness to which belongsForgiveness for its many wrongs,Even as the primal martyr, kneelingFor mercy on the evil-dealing;Let not the favored white man nameThy stern appeal, with words of blame.Then, injured Afric! for the shameOf thy own daughters, vengeance cameFull on the scornful hearts of those,Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes,And to thy hapless children gaveOne choice,--pollution or the grave!

Has he not, with the light of heavenBroadly 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 OneCould smile on deeds of murder done!As if a human sacrificeWere 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, whenThe 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 yesternightLove's fair embodied smile.And, clinging to her trembling knee,Looked up the form of infancy,With tearful glance in either faceThe secret of its fear to trace.

"Ha! stand or die!" The white man's eyeHis 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 bills our fires are glowing,Through all the vales red blood is flowingNo more the mocking White shall restHis foot upon the Negro's breast;No more, at morn or eve, shall dripThe warm blood from the driver's whipYet, though Toussaint has vengeance swornFor all the wrongs his race have borne,Though for each drop of Negro bloodThe white man's veins shall pour a flood;Not all alone the sense of illAround his heart is lingering still,Nor deeper can the white man feelThe 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 pressedThe young child to his manly breast,As, headlong, through the cracking cane,Down swept the dark insurgent train,Drunken and grim, with shout and yellHowled through the dark, like sounds from hell.

Far out, in peace, the white man's sailSwayed free before the sunrise gale.Cloud-like that island hung afar,Along the bright horizon's verge,O'er which the curse of servile warRolled its red torrent, surge on surge;And he, the Negro champion, whereIn the fierce tumult struggled he?Go trace him by the fiery glareOf 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 Besancon's alien sky,Dark Haytien! for the time shall come,Yea, even now is nigh,When, everywhere, thy name shall beRedeemed from color's infamy;And men shall learn to speak of theeAs one of earth's great spirits, bornIn servitude, and nursed in scorn,Casting aside the weary weightAnd fetters of its low estate,In that strong majesty of soulWhich knows no color, tongue, or clime,Which still hath spurned the base controlOf tyrants through all time!Far other hands than mine may wreatheThe laurel round thy brow of death,And speak thy praise, as one whose wordA thousand fiery spirits stirred,Who crushed his foeman as a worm,Whose step on human hearts fell firm:

Be mine the better task to findA tribute for thy lofty mind,Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shoneSome 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 retainsSome nobleness amid its chains,--That kindness to the wronged is neverWithout its excellent reward,Holy to human-kind and everAcceptable to God.