Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

12

  • SUCH the glad soil, from whence Jamaica’s sons
  • Derive their opulence: thrice fertile land,
  • "The pride, the glory of the sea-girt isles, [90]
  • "Which, like to rich and various gems, inlay
  • "The unadorned bosom of the deep,”1
  • Which first Columbus’ daring keel2 explor’d.

  • DAUGHTERS of Heaven,3 with reverential awe,
  • Pause at that godlike name; for not your flights [95]
  • Of happiest fancy, can outsoar his fame.

  • COLUMBUS, boast of science, boast of man!
  • Yet, by the great, the learned, and the wise,
  • Long held a visionary; who, like thee,
  • Could brook their scorn; wait seven long years at court, [100]
  • A selfish, sullen, dilatory court;
  • Yet never from thy purpos’d plan decline?
  • No God, no Hero, of poetic times,
  • In Truth’s fair annals, may compare with thee!
  • Each passion, weakness of mankind, thou knew’st, [105]
  • Thine own concealing; firmest base of power:
  • Rich in expedients; what most adverse seem’d,
  • And least expected, most advanc’d thine aim.
  • What storms, what monsters, what new forms of death,
  • In a vast ocean, never cut by keel, [110]
  1. Gilmore identifies this quotation as an adaptation from Milton’s Comus (ll.21-23). ↩︎

  2. Poetic term for a ship or vessel. ↩︎

  3. The Muses. ↩︎