Alas! the haven of a deeper repose than he had dreamed of was close at hand. He lingered until the middle of the tenth month, suffering much, yet calm and sensible to the last. Just before his death, he desired his children to sing at his bedside that touching song of Lover's,The Angel's Whisper. Turning his eyes towards the open window, through which the leafy glory of the season he most loved was visible, he listened to the sweet melody. In the words of his friend Pierpont,—
"The angel's whisper stole in song upon his closing ear;From his own daughter's lips it came, so musical and clear,That scarcely knew the dying man what melody was there—The last of earth's or first of heaven's pervading all the air."
He sleeps in the Concord burial-ground, under the shadow of oaks; the very spot he would have chosen, for he looked upon trees with something akin to human affection. "They are," he said, "the beautiful handiwork and architecture of God, on which the eye never tires. Every one is a feather in the earth's cap, a plume in her bonnet, a tress on her forehead,—a comfort, a refreshing, and an ornament to her." Spring has hung over him her buds, and opened beside him her violets. Summer has laid her green oaken garland on his grave, and now the frost-blooms of autumn drop upon it. Shall man cast a nettle on that mound? He loved humanity,—shall it be less kind to him than Nature? Shall the bigotry of sect, and creed, and profession, drive its condemnatory stake into his grave? God forbid. The doubts which he sometimes unguardedly expressed had relation, we are constrained to believe, to the glosses of commentators and creed-makers and the inconsistency of professors, rather than to those facts and precepts of Christianity to which he gave the constant assent of his practice. He sought not his own. His heart yearned with pity and brotherly affection for all the poor and suffering in the universe. Of him, the angel of Leigh Hunt's beautiful allegory might have written, in the golden book of remembrance, as he did of the good Abou Ben Adhem, "He loved his fellow-men."
The great charm of Scottish poetry consists in its simplicity, and genuine, unaffected sympathy with the common joys and sorrows of daily life. It is a home-taught, household melody. It calls to mind the pastoral bleat on the hillsides, the kirkbells of a summer Sabbath, the song of the lark in the sunrise, the cry of the quail in the corn-land, the low of cattle, and the blithe carol of milkmaids "when the kye come hame" at gloaming. Meetings at fair and market, blushing betrothments, merry weddings, the joy of young maternity, the lights and shades of domestic life, its bereavements and partings, its chances and changes, its holy death-beds, and funerals solemnly beautiful in quiet kirkyards, —these furnish the hints of the immortal melodies of Burns, the sweet ballads of the Ettrick Shepherd and Allan Cunningham, and the rustic drama of Ramsay. It is the poetry of home, of nature, and the affections.
All this is sadly wanting in our young literature. We have no songs; American domestic life has never been hallowed and beautified by the sweet and graceful and tender associations of poetry. We have no Yankee pastorals. Our rivers and streams turn mills and float rafts, and are otherwise as commendably useful as those of Scotland; but no quaint ballad or simple song reminds us that men and women have loved, met, and parted on their banks, or that beneath each roof within their valleys the tragedy and comedy of life have been enacted. Our poetry is cold and imitative; it seems more the product of over-strained intellects than the spontaneous outgushing of hearts warm with love, and strongly sympathizing with human nature as it actually exists about us, with the joys and griefs of the men and women whom we meet daily. Unhappily, the opinion prevails that a poet must be also a philosopher, and hence it is that much of our poetry is as indefinable in its mysticism as an Indian Brahmin's commentary on his sacred books, or German metaphysics subjected to homeopathic dilution. It assumes to be prophetical, and its utterances are oracular. It tells of strange, vague emotions and yearnings, painfully suggestive of spiritual "groanings which cannot be uttered." If it "babbles o' green fields" and the common sights and sounds of nature, it is only for the purpose of finding some vague analogy between them and its internal experiences and longings. It leaves the warm and comfortable fireside of actual knowledge and human comprehension, and goes wailing and gibbering like a ghost about the impassable doors of mystery:—
"It fain would be resolvedHow things are done,And who the tailor isThat works for the man I' the sun."
How shall we account for this marked tendency in the literature of a shrewd, practical people? Is it that real life in New England lacks those conditions of poetry and romance which age, reverence, and superstition have gathered about it in the Old World? Is it that
"Ours are not Tempe's nor Arcadia's vales,"
but are more famous for growing Indian corn and potatoes, and the manufacture of wooden ware and pedler notions, than for romantic associations and legendary interest? That our huge, unshapely shingle structures, blistering in the sun and glaring with windows, were evidently never reared by the spell of pastoral harmonies, as the walls of Thebes rose at the sound of the lyre of Amphion? That the habits of our people are too cool, cautious, undemonstrative, to furnish the warp and woof of song and pastoral, and that their dialect and figures of speech, however richly significant and expressive in the autobiography of Sam Slick, or the satire of Hosea Biglow and Ethan Spike, form a very awkward medium of sentiment and pathos? All this may be true. But the Yankee, after all, is a man, and as such his history, could it be got at, must have more or less of poetic material in it; moreover, whether conscious of it or not, he also stands relieved against the background of Nature's beauty or sublimity. There is a poetical side to the commonplace of his incomings and outgoings; study him well, and you may frame an idyl of some sort from his apparently prosaic existence. Our poets, we must needs think, are deficient in that shiftiness, ready adaptation to circumstances, and ability of making the most of things, for which, as a people, we are proverbial. Can they make nothing of our Thanksgiving, that annual gathering of long-severed friends? Do they find nothing to their purpose in our apple-bees, buskings, berry- pickings, summer picnics, and winter sleigh-rides? Is there nothing available in our peculiarities of climate, scenery, customs, and political institutions? Does the Yankee leap into life, shrewd, hard, and speculating, armed, like Pallas, for a struggle with fortune? Are there not boys and girls, school loves and friendship, courtings and match-makings, hope and fear, and all the varied play of human passions, —the keen struggles of gain, the mad grasping of ambition,—sin and remorse, tearful repentance and holy aspirations? Who shall say that we have not all the essentials of the poetry of human life and simple nature, of the hearth and the farm-field? Here, then, is a mine unworked, a harvest ungathered. Who shall sink the shaft and thrust in the sickle?
And here let us say that the mere dilettante and the amateur ruralist may as well keep their hands off. The prize is not for them. He who would successfully strive for it must be himself what he sings,—part and parcel of the rural life of New England,—one who has grown strong amidst its healthful influences, familiar with all its details, and capable of detecting whatever of beauty, humor, or pathos pertain to it,—one who has added to his book-lore the large experience of an active participation in the rugged toil, the hearty amusements, the trials, and the pleasures he describes.
We have been led to these reflections by an incident which has called up before us the homespun figure of an old friend of our boyhood, who had the good sense to discover that the poetic element existed in the simple home life of a country farmer, although himself unable to give a very creditable expression of it. He had the "vision," indeed, but the "faculty divine" was wanting; or, if he possessed it in any degree, as Thersites says of the wit of Ajax, "it would not out, but lay coldly in him like fire in the flint."
While engaged this morning in looking over a large exchange list of newspapers, a few stanzas of poetry in the Scottish dialect attracted our attention. As we read them, like a wizard's rhyme they seemed to have the power of bearing us back to the past. They had long ago graced the columns of that solitary sheet which once a week diffused happiness over our fireside circle, making us acquainted, in our lonely nook, with the goings-on of the great world. The verses, we are now constrained to admit, are not remarkable in themselves, truth and simple nature only; yet how our young hearts responded to them! Twenty years ago there were fewer verse-makers than at present; and as our whole stock of light literature consisted of Ellwood'sDavideisand the selections ofLindley Murray's English Reader, it is not improbable that we were in a condition to overestimate the contributions to the poet's corner of our village newspaper. Be that as it may, we welcome them as we would the face of an old friend, for they somehow remind us of the scent of haymows, the breath of cattle, the fresh greenery by the brookside, the moist earth broken by the coulter and turned up to the sun and winds of May. This particular piece, which follows, is entitledThe Sparrow, and was occasioned by the crushing of a bird's-nest by the author while ploughing among his corn. It has something of the simple tenderness of Burns.
"Poor innocent and hapless SparrowWhy should my mould-board gie thee sorrow!This day thou'll chirp and mourn the morrowWi' anxious breast;The plough has turned the mould'ring furrowDeep o'er thy nest!"Just I' the middle o' the hillThy nest was placed wi' curious skill;There I espied thy little billBeneath the shade.In that sweet bower, secure frae ill,Thine eggs were laid."Five corns o' maize had there been drappit,An' through the stalks thy head was pappit,The drawing nowt could na be stappitI quickly foun';Syne frae thy cozie nest thou happit,Wild fluttering roun'."The sklentin stane beguiled the sheer,In vain I tried the plough to steer;A wee bit stumpie I' the rearCam' 'tween my legs,An' to the jee-side gart me veerAn' crush thine eggs."Alas! alas! my bonnie birdie!Thy faithful mate flits round to guard thee.Connubial love!—a pattern worthyThe pious priest!What savage heart could be sae hardyAs wound thy breast?"Ah me! it was nae fau't o' mine;It gars me greet to see thee pine.It may be serves His great designWho governs all;Omniscience tents wi' eyes divineThe Sparrow's fall!"How much like thine are human dools,Their sweet wee bairns laid I' the mools?The Sovereign Power who nature rulesHath said so be itBut poor blip' mortals are sic foolsThey canna see it."Nae doubt that He who first did mate usHas fixed our lot as sure as fate is,An' when He wounds He disna hate us,But anely this,He'll gar the ills which here await usYield lastin' bliss."
In the early part of the eighteenth century a considerable number of Presbyterians of Scotch descent, from the north of Ireland, emigrated to the New World. In the spring of 1719, the inhabitants of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, saw them passing up the river in several canoes, one of which unfortunately upset in the rapids above the village. The following fragment of a ballad celebrating this event has been handed down to the present time, and may serve to show the feelings even then of the old English settlers towards the Irish emigrants:—
"They began to scream and bawl,As out they tumbled one and all,And, if the Devil had spread his net,He could have made a glorious haul!"
The new-comers proceeded up the river, and, landing opposite to the Uncanoonuc Hills, on the present site of Manchester, proceeded inland to Beaver Pond. Charmed with the appearance of the country, they resolved here to terminate their wanderings. Under a venerable oak on the margin of the little lake, they knelt down with their minister, Jamie McGregore, and laid, in prayer and thanksgiving, the foundation of their settlement. In a few years they had cleared large fields, built substantial stone and frame dwellings and a large and commodious meeting-house; wealth had accumulated around them, and they had everywhere the reputation of a shrewd and thriving community. They were the first in New England to cultivate the potato, which their neighbors for a long time regarded as a pernicious root, altogether unfit for a Christian stomach. Every lover of that invaluable esculent has reason to remember with gratitude the settlers of Londonderry.
Their moral acclimation in Ireland had not been without its effect upon their character. Side by side with a Presbyterianism as austere as that of John Knox had grown up something of the wild Milesian humor, love of convivial excitement and merry-making. Their long prayers and fierce zeal in behalf of orthodox tenets only served, in the eyes of their Puritan neighbors, to make more glaring still the scandal of their marked social irregularities. It became a common saying in the region round about that "the Derry Presbyterians would never give up a pint of doctrine or a pint of rum." Their second minister was an old scarred fighter, who had signalized himself in the stout defence of Londonderry, when James II. and his Papists were thundering at its gates. Agreeably to his death-bed directions, his old fellow-soldiers, in their leathern doublets and battered steel caps, bore him to his grave, firing over him the same rusty muskets which had swept down rank after rank of the men of Amalek at the Derry siege.
Erelong the celebrated Derry fair was established, in imitation of those with which they had been familiar in Ireland. Thither annually came all manner of horse-jockeys and pedlers, gentlemen and beggars, fortune- tellers, wrestlers, dancers and fiddlers, gay young farmers and buxom maidens. Strong drink abounded. They who had good-naturedly wrestled and joked together in the morning not unfrequently closed the day with a fight, until, like the revellers of Donnybrook,
"Their hearts were soft with whiskey,And their heads were soft with blows."
A wild, frolicking, drinking, fiddling, courting, horse-racing, riotous merry-making,—a sort of Protestant carnival, relaxing the grimness of Puritanism for leagues around it.
In the midst of such a community, and partaking of all its influences, Robert Dinsmore, the author of the poem I have quoted, was born, about the middle of the last century. His paternal ancestor, John, younger son of a Laird of Achenmead, who left the banks of the Tweed for the green fertility of Northern Ireland, had emigrated to New England some forty years before, and, after a rough experience of Indian captivity in the wild woods of Maine, had settled down among his old neighbors in Londonderry. Until nine years of age, Robert never saw a school. He was a short time under the tuition of an old British soldier, who had strayed into the settlement after the French war, "at which time," he says in a letter to a friend, "I learned to repeat the shorter and larger catechisms. These, with the Scripture proofs annexed to them, confirmed me in the orthodoxy of my forefathers, and I hope I shall ever remain an evidence of the truth of what the wise man said, 'Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.'" He afterwards took lessons with one Master McKeen, who used to spend much of his time in hunting squirrels with his pupils. He learned to read and write; and the old man always insisted that he should have done well at ciphering also, had he not fallen in love with Molly Park. At the age of eighteen he enlisted in the Revolutionary army, and was at the battle of Saratoga. On his return he married his fair Molly, settled down as a farmer in Windham, formerly a part of Londonderry, and before he was thirty years of age became an elder in the church, of the creed and observances of which he was always a zealous and resolute defender. From occasional passages in his poems, it is evident that the instructions which he derived from the pulpit were not unlike those which Burns suggested as needful for the unlucky lad whom he was commending to his friend Hamilton:—
"Ye 'll catechise him ilka quirk,An' shore him weel wi' hell."
In a humorous poem, entitled Spring's Lament, he thus describes the consternation produced in the meeting-house at sermon time by a dog, who, in search of his mistress, rattled and scraped at the "west porch door:"—
"The vera priest was scared himsel',His sermon he could hardly spell;Auld carlins fancied they could smellThe brimstone matches;They thought he was some imp o' hell,In quest o' wretches."
He lived to a good old age, a home-loving, unpretending farmer, cultivating his acres with his own horny hands, and cheering the long rainy days and winter evenings with homely rhyme. Most of his pieces were written in the dialect of his ancestors, which was well understood by his neighbors and friends, the only audience upon which he could venture to calculate. He loved all old things, old language, old customs, old theology. In a rhyming letter to his cousin Silas, he says:—
"Though Death our ancestors has cleekit,An' under clods then closely steekit,We'll mark the place their chimneys reekit,Their native tongue we yet wad speak it,Wi' accent glib."
He wrote sometimes to amuse his neighbors, often to soothe their sorrow under domestic calamity, or to give expression to his own. With little of that delicacy of taste which results from the attrition of fastidious and refined society, and altogether too truthful and matter-of-fact to call in the aid of imagination, he describes in the simplest and most direct terms the circumstances in which he found himself, and the impressions which these circumstances had made on his own mind. He calls things by their right names; no euphuism or transcendentalism,—the plainer and commoner the better. He tells us of his farm life, its joys and sorrows, its mirth and care, with no embellishment, with no concealment of repulsive and ungraceful features. Never having seen a nightingale, he makes no attempt to describe the fowl; but he has seen the night-hawk, at sunset, cutting the air above him, and he tells of it. Side by side with his waving corn-fields and orchard-blooms we have the barn-yard and pigsty. Nothing which was necessary to the comfort and happiness of his home and avocation was to him "common or unclean." Take, for instance, the following, from a poem written at the close of autumn, after the death of his wife:—
"No more may I the Spring Brook trace,No more with sorrow view the placeWhere Mary's wash-tub stood;No more may wander there alone,And lean upon the mossy stoneWhere once she piled her wood.'T was there she bleached her linen cloth,By yonder bass-wood treeFrom that sweet stream she made her broth,Her pudding and her tea.That stream, whose waters running,O'er mossy root and stone,Made ringing and singing,Her voice could match alone."
We envy not the man who can sneer at this simple picture. It is honest as Nature herself. An old and lonely man looks back upon the young years of his wedded life. Can we not look with him? The sunlight of a summer morning is weaving itself with the leafy shadows of the bass-tree, beneath which a fair and ruddy-checked young woman, with her full, rounded arms bared to the elbow, bends not ungracefully to her task, pausing ever and anon to play with the bright-eyed child beside her, and mingling her songs with the pleasant murmurings of gliding water! Alas! as the old man looks, he hears that voice, which perpetually sounds to us all from the past—no more!
Let us look at him in his more genial mood. Take the opening lines of his Thanksgiving Day. What a plain, hearty picture of substantial comfort!
"When corn is in the garret stored,And sauce in cellar well secured;When good fat beef we can afford,And things that 're dainty,With good sweet cider on our board,And pudding plenty;"When stock, well housed, may chew the cud,And at my door a pile of wood,A rousing fire to warm my blood,Blest sight to see!It puts my rustic muse in moodTo sing for thee."
If he needs a simile, he takes the nearest at hand. In a letter to his daughter he says:—
"That mine is not a longer letter,The cause is not the want of matter,—Of that there's plenty, worse or better;But like a millWhose stream beats back with surplus water,The wheel stands still."
Something of the humor of Burns gleams out occasionally from the sober decorum of his verses. In an epistle to his friend Betton, high sheriff of the county, who had sent to him for a peck of seed corn, he says:—
"Soon plantin' time will come again,Syne may the heavens gie us rain,An' shining heat to bless ilk plainAn' fertile hill,An' gar the loads o' yellow grain,Our garrets fill."As long as I has food and clothing,An' still am hale and fier and breathing,Ye 's get the corn—and may be aethingYe'll do for me;(Though God forbid)—hang me for naethingAn' lose your fee."
And on receiving a copy of some verses written by a lady, he talks in a sad way for a Presbyterian deacon:—
"Were she some Aborigine squaw,Wha sings so sweet by nature's law,I'd meet her in a hazle shaw,Or some green loany,And make her tawny phiz and 'aMy welcome crony."
The practical philosophy of the stout, jovial rhymer was but little affected by the sour-featured asceticism of the elder. He says:—
"We'll eat and drink, and cheerful takeOur portions for the Donor's sake,For thus the Word of Wisdom spake—Man can't do better;Nor can we by our labors makeThe Lord our debtor!"
A quaintly characteristic correspondence in rhyme between the Deacon and Parson McGregore, evidently "birds o' ane feather," is still in existence. The minister, in acknowledging the epistle of his old friend, commences his reply as follows:—
"Did e'er a cuif tak' up a quill,Wha ne'er did aught that he did well,To gar the muses rant and reel,An' flaunt and swagger,Nae doubt ye 'll say 't is that daft chielOld Dite McGregore!"
The reply is in the same strain, and may serve to give the reader some idea of the old gentleman as a religious controversialist:—
"My reverend friend and kind McGregore,Although thou ne'er was ca'd a bragger,Thy muse I'm sure nave e'er was gleggerThy Scottish laysMight gar Socinians fa' or stagger,E'en in their ways."When Unitarian champions dare thee,Goliah like, and think to scare thee,Dear Davie, fear not, they'll ne'er waur thee;But draw thy sling,Weel loaded frae the Gospel quarry,An' gie 't a fling."
The last time I saw him, he was chaffering in the market-place of my native village, swapping potatoes and onions and pumpkins for tea, coffee, molasses, and, if the truth be told, New England rum. Threescore years and ten, to use his own words,
"Hung o'er his back,And bent him like a muckle pack,"
yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his thick shoes of cowhide, like one accustomed to tread independently the soil of his own acres,— his broad, honest face seamed by care and darkened by exposure to "all the airts that blow," and his white hair flowing in patriarchal glory beneath his felt hat. A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man, simple as a child, and betraying, neither in look nor manner, that he was accustomed to
"Feed on thoughts which voluntary moveHarmonious numbers."
Peace to him! A score of modern dandies and sentimentalists could ill supply the place of this one honest man. In the ancient burial-ground of Windham, by the side of his "beloved Molly," and in view of the old meeting-house, there is a mound of earth, where, every spring, green grasses tremble in the wind and the warm sunshine calls out the flowers. There, gathered like one of his own ripe sheaves, the farmer poet sleeps with his fathers.
I have been greatly interested in the fate of Juan Placido, the black revolutionist of Cuba, who was executed in Havana, as the alleged instigator and leader of an attempted revolt on the part of the slaves in that city and its neighborhood.
Juan Placido was born a slave on the estate of Don Terribio de Castro. His father was an African, his mother a mulatto. His mistress treated him with great kindness, and taught him to read. When he was twelve years of age she died, and he fell into other and less compassionate hands. At the age of eighteen, on seeing his mother struck with a heavy whip, he for the first time turned upon his tormentors. To use his own words, "I felt the blow in my heart. To utter a loud cry, and from a downcast boy, with the timidity of one weak as a lamb, to become all at office like a raging lion, was a thing of a moment." He was, however, subdued, and the next morning, together with his mother, a tenderly nurtured and delicate woman, severely scourged. On seeing his mother rudely stripped and thrown down upon the ground, he at first with tears implored the overseer to spare her; but at the sound of the first blow, as it cut into her naked flesh, he sprang once more upon the ruffian, who, having superior strength, beat him until he was nearer dead than alive.
After suffering all the vicissitudes of slavery,—hunger, nakedness, stripes; after bravely and nobly bearing up against that slow, dreadful process which reduces the man to a thing, the image of God to a piece of merchandise, until he had reached his thirty-eighth year, he was unexpectedly released from his bonds. Some literary gentlemen in Havana, into whose hands two or three pieces of his composition had fallen, struck with the vigor, spirit, and natural grace which they manifested, sought out the author, and raised a subscription to purchase his freedom. He came to Havana, and maintained himself by house-painting, and such other employments as his ingenuity and talents placed within his reach. He wrote several poems, which have been published in Spanish at Havana, and translated by Dr. Madden, under the title ofPoems by a Slave.
It is not too much to say of these poems that they will bear a comparison with most of the productions of modern Spanish literature. The style is bold, free, energetic. Some of the pieces are sportive and graceful; such is the address toThe Cucuya, or Cuban firefly. This beautiful insect is sometimes fastened in tiny nets to the light dresses of the Cuban ladies, a custom to which the writer gallantly alludes in the following lines:—
"Ah!—still as one looks on such brightness and bloom,On such beauty as hers, one might envy the doomOf a captive Cucuya that's destined, like this,To be touched by her hand and revived by her kiss!In the cage which her delicate hand has prepared,The beautiful prisoner nestles unscared,O'er her fair forehead shining serenely and bright,In beauty's own bondage revealing its light!And when the light dance and the revel are done,She bears it away to her alcove alone,Where, fed by her hand from the cane that's most choice,In secret it gleans at the sound of her voice!O beautiful maiden! may Heaven accordThy care of the captive a fitting reward,And never may fortune the fetters removeOf a heart that is thine in the bondage of love!"
In his Dream, a fragment of some length, Placido dwells in a touching manner upon the scenes of his early years. It is addressed to his brother Florence, who was a slave near Matanzas, while the author was in the same condition at Havana. There is a plaintive and melancholy sweetness in these lines, a natural pathos, which finds its way to the heart:—
"Thou knowest, dear Florence, my sufferings of old,The struggles maintained with oppression for years;We shared them together, and each was consoledWith the love which was nurtured by sorrow and tears."But now far apart, the sad pleasure is gone,We mingle our sighs and our sorrows no more;The course is a new one which each has to run,And dreary for each is the pathway before."But in slumber our spirits at least shall commune,We will meet as of old in the visions of sleep,In dreams which call back early days, when at noonWe stole to the shade of the palm-tree to weep!"For solitude pining, in anguish of lateThe heights of Quintana I sought for repose;And there, in the cool and the silence, the weightOf my cares was forgotten, I felt not any woes."Exhausted and weary, the spell of the placeSank down on my eyelids, and soft slumber stoleSo sweetly upon me, it left not a traceOf sorrow o'ercasting the light of the soul."
The writer then imagines himself borne lightly through the air to the place of his birth. The valley of Matanzas lies beneath him, hallowed by the graves of his parents. He proceeds:—
"I gazed on that spot where together we played,Our innocent pastimes came fresh to my mind,Our mother's caress, and the fondness displayedIn each word and each look of a parent so kind."I looked on the mountain, whose fastnesses wildThe fugitives seek from the rifle and hound;Below were the fields where they suffered and toiled,And there the low graves of their comrades are found."The mill-house was there, and the turmoil of old;But sick of these scenes, for too well were they known,I looked for the stream where in childhood I strolledWhen a moment of quiet and peace was my own."With mingled emotions of pleasure and pain,Dear Florence, I sighed to behold thee once more;I sought thee, my brother, embraced thee again,But I found thee a slave as I left thee before!"
Some of his devotional pieces evince the fervor and true feeling of the Christian poet. HisOde to Religioncontains many admirable lines. Speaking of the martyrs of the early days of Christianity, he says finely:—
"Still in that cradle, purpled with their blood,The infant Faith waxed stronger day by day."
I cannot forbear quoting the last stanza of this poem:—
"O God of mercy, throned in glory high,On earth and all its misery look down:Behold the wretched, hear the captive's cry,And call Thy exiled children round Thy throne!There would I fain in contemplation gazeOn Thy eternal beauty, and would makeOf love one lasting canticle of praise,And every theme but Thee henceforth forsake!"
His best and noblest production is an odeTo Cuba, written on the occasion of Dr. Madden's departure from the island, and presented to that gentleman. It was never published in Cuba, as its sentiments would have subjected the author to persecution. It breathes a lofty spirit of patriotism, and an indignant sense of the wrongs inflicted upon his race. Withal, it has something of the grandeur and stateliness of the old Spanish muse.
"Cuba!—of what avail that thou art fair,Pearl of the Seas, the pride of the Antilles,If thy poor sons have still to see thee shareThe pangs of bondage and its thousand ills?Of what avail the verdure of thy hills,The purple bloom thy coffee-plain displays;The cane's luxuriant growth, whose culture fillsMore graves than famine, or the sword finds waysTo glut with victims calmly as it slays?"Of what avail that thy clear streams aboundWith precious ore, if wealth there's, none to buyThy children's rights, and not one grain is foundFor Learning's shrine, or for the altar nighOf poor, forsaken, downcast Liberty?Of what avail the riches of thy port,Forests of masts and ships from every sea,If Trade alone is free, and man, the sportAnd spoil of Trade, bears wrongs of every sort?"Cuba! O Cuba!—-when men call thee fair,And rich, and beautiful, the Queen of Isles,Star of the West, and Ocean's gem most rare,Oh, say to those who mock thee with such wiles:Take off these flowers; and view the lifeless spoilsWhich wait the worm; behold their hues beneathThe pale, cold cheek; and seek for living smilesWhere Beauty lies not in the arms of Death,And Bondage taints not with its poison breath!"
The disastrous result of the last rising of the slaves—in Cuba is well known. Betrayed, and driven into premature collision with their oppressors, the insurrectionists were speedily crushed into subjection. Placido was arrested, and after a long hearing was condemned to be executed, and consigned to the Chapel of the Condemned.
How far he was implicated in the insurrectionary movement it is now perhaps impossible to ascertain. The popular voice at Havana pronounced him its leader and projector, and as such he was condemned. His own bitter wrongs; the terrible recollections of his life of servitude; the sad condition of his relatives and race, exposed to scorn, contumely, and the heavy hand of violence; the impunity with which the most dreadful outrages upon the persons of slaves were inflicted,—acting upon a mind fully capable of appreciating the beauty and dignity of freedom,— furnished abundant incentives to an effort for the redemption of his race and the humiliation of his oppressors. The Heraldo, of Madrid speaks of him as "the celebrated poet, a man of great natural genius, and beloved and appreciated by the most respectable young men of Havana." It accuses him of wild and ambitious projects, and states that he was intended to be the chief of the black race after they had thrown off the yoke of bondage.
He was executed at Havana in the seventh month, 1844. According to the custom in Cuba with condemned criminals, he was conducted from prison to the Chapel of the Doomed. He passed thither with singular composure, amidst a great concourse of people, gracefully saluting his numerous acquaintances. The chapel was hung with black cloth, and dimly lighted. He was seated beside his coffin. Priests in long black robes stood around him, chanting in sepulchral voices the service of the dead. It is an ordeal under which the stoutest-hearted and most resolute have been found to sink. After enduring it for twenty-four hours he was led out to execution. He came forth calm and undismayed; holding a crucifix in his hand, he recited in a loud, clear voice a solemn prayer in verse, which he had composed amidst the horrors of the Chapel. The following is an imperfect rendering of a poem which thrilled the hearts of all who heard it:—
"God of unbounded love and power eternal,To Thee I turn in darkness and despair!Stretch forth Thine arm, and from the brow infernalOf Calumny the veil of Justice tear;And from the forehead of my honest famePluck the world's brand of infamy and shame!"O King of kings!—my fathers' God!—who onlyArt strong to save, by whom is all controlled,Who givest the sea its waves, the dark and lonelyAbyss of heaven its light, the North its cold,The air its currents, the warm sun its beams,Life to the flowers, and motion to the streams!"All things obey Thee, dying or revivingAs thou commandest; all, apart from Thee,From Thee alone their life and power deriving,Sink and are lost in vast eternity!Yet doth the void obey Thee; since from naughtThis marvellous being by Thy hand was wrought."O merciful God! I cannot shun Thy presence,For through its veil of flesh Thy piercing eyeLooketh upon my spirit's unsoiled essence,As through the pure transparence of the sky;Let not the oppressor clap his bloody hands,As o'er my prostrate innocence he stands!"But if, alas, it seemeth good to TheeThat I should perish as the guilty dies,And that in death my foes should gaze on meWith hateful malice and exulting eyes,Speak Thou the word, and bid them shed my blood,Fully in me Thy will be done, O God!"
On arriving at the fatal spot, he sat down as ordered, on a bench, with his back to the soldiers. The multitude recollected that in some affecting lines, written by the conspirator in prison, he had said that it would be useless to seek to kill him by shooting his body,—that his heart must be pierced ere it would cease its throbbings. At the last moment, just as the soldiers were about to fire, he rose up and gazed for an instant around and above him on the beautiful capital of his native land and its sail-flecked bay, on the dense crowds about him, the blue mountains in the distance, and the sky glorious with summer sunshine. "Adios, mundo!" (Farewell, world!) he said calmly, and sat down. The word was given, and five balls entered his body. Then it was that, amidst the groans and murmurs of the horror-stricken spectators, he rose up once more, and turned his head to the shuddering soldiers, his face wearing an expression of superhuman courage. "Will no one pity me?" he said, laying his hand over his heart. "Here, fire here!" While he yet spake, two balls entered his heart, and he fell dead.
Thus perished the hero poet of Cuba. He has not fallen in vain. His genius and his heroic death will doubtless be regarded by his race as precious legacies. To the great names of L'Ouverture and Petion the colored man can now add that of Juan Placido.