- Mow down thy sugars: and tho’ all thy mills,
- Crackling, o’erflow with a redundant juice;
- Poor tastes the liquor; coction long demands,
- And highest temper, ere it saccharize;1
- A meagre produce. Such is Virtue’s meed, [180]
- Alas, too oft in these degenerate days.
- Thy cattle likewise, as they drag the wain,2
- Charg’d from the beach; in spite of whips and shouts,
- Will stop, will pant, will sink beneath the load;
- A better fate deserving.—— [185]
- Besides, thy land itself is insecure:
- For oft the glebe, and all its waving load,
- Will journey, forc’d off by the mining rain;
- And, with its faithless burden, disarrange
- Thy neighbour’s vale. So Markley-hill of old, [190]
- As sung thy bard, Pomona, (in these isles
- Yet unador’d;) with all its spreading trees,
-
Full fraught with apples, chang’d its lofty site.
- BUT, as in life, the golden mean is best;
- So happiest he whose green plantation lies [195]
- Nor from the hill too far, nor from the shore.
VER. 179. And highest temper,] Shell, or rather marble quick-lime,3 is so called by the planters: Without this, the juice of the Cane cannot be concreted into sugar, at least to advantage. See Book III. With quick-lime the French join ashes as a temper, and this mixture they call Enyvrage. It is hoped the Reader will pardon the introduction of the verb saccharize, as no other so emphatically expressed the Author’s meaning; for some chemists define sugar to be a native salt, and others a soap.