Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

65

  • Planter, prefer them now: the rattling shower, [190]
  • Pour’d down in constant streams, for days and nights,
  • Not only swells, with nectar sweet, thy Canes;

  • But, in the deluge, drowns thy plundering foe.

  • WHEN may the planter idly fold his arms,
  • And say, “My soul take rest?” Superior ills, [195]
  • Ills which no care nor wisdom can avert,
  • In black succession rise. Ye men of Kent,1
  • When nipping Eurus,2 with the brutal force
  • Of Boreas,3 join’d in ruffian league, assail
  • Your ripen’d hop-grounds;4 tell me what you feel, [200]
  • And pity the poor planter; when the blast,5
  • Fell plague of Heaven! perdition of the isles!
  • Attacks his waving gold. Tho’ well-manur’d;
  • A richness tho’ thy fields from nature boast;
  • Though seasons pour; this pestilence invades: [205]
  • Too oft it seizes the glad infant-throng,
  • Nor pities their green nonage:6 Their broad blades
  • Of which the graceful wood-nymphs erst compos’d
  • The greenest garlands to adorn their brows,

VER. 205. Tho’ seasons] Without a rainy season, the Sugar-cane could not be cultivated to any advantage: For what Pliny the Elder writes of another plant may be applied to this, Gaudet irriguis, et toto anno bibere amat.7

VER. 205. this pestilence] It must, however, be confessed, that the blast is less frequent in lands naturally rich, or such as are made so by well-rotted manure.

  1. Kent is a county in southeastern England. ↩︎

  2. In Greek mythology, the east wind. ↩︎

  3. In Greek mythology, the north wind. ↩︎

  4. According to Gilmore, Grainger refers in these lines to the arrival of the hop aphid or Damson hop aphid (Phorodon humuli) to Kentish hop fields. These flies traveled on the wind and caused great damage to crops. ↩︎

  5. Gilmore identifies the blast as the disease that also has been called the black blight. It results from an infestation by the West Indian cane fly (Saccharosydne saccharivora). ↩︎

  6. Period of immaturity. ↩︎

  7. “It rejoices in watering, and it loves to drink the whole year round.” Adapted from Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, Book XIII, Chapter 7. The original line reads, “Gaudet riguis totoque anno bibere, cum amet sitientia.” ↩︎