Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

70

  • Thy doors and windows guard; securely lodge
  • Thy stocks and mill-points.—Then, or calms obtain;
  • Breathless the royal palm-tree’s airiest van;1
  • While, o’er the panting isle, the daemon Heat [295]
  • High hurls his flaming brand; vast, distant waves
  • The main drives furious in, and heaps the shore
  • With strange productions: Or, the blue serene
  • Assumes a louring2 aspect, as the clouds
  • Fly, wild-careering, thro’ the vault of heaven; [300]
  • Then transient birds, of various kinds, frequent
  • Each stagnant pool; some hover o’er thy roof;
  • Then Eurus reigns no more; but each bold wind,
  • By turns, usurps the empire of the air
  • With quick inconstancy; [305]
  • Thy herds, as sapient3 of the coming storm,
  • (For beasts partake some portion of the sky,)
  • In troops associate; and, in cold sweats bath’d,
  • Wild-bellowing, eye the pole.4 Ye seamen, now,
  • Ply to the southward, if the changeful moon, [310]
  • Or, in her interlunar palace hid,

VER. 293. stocks and mill-points:] The sails are fastened to the mill-points, as those are to the stocks. They should always be taken down before the hurricane-season.

  1. Van is a vantage, height, or summit. The royal palm (Roystonea oleracea) can reach forty meters in height and is native to the Lesser Antilles, northern South America, and Guatemala. ↩︎

  2. Scowling, angry-looking, gloomy. ↩︎

  3. Knowledgeable. ↩︎

  4. Polaris, the pole star or North Star. ↩︎