- The ripened cane-piece; and, with her, to taste
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(Delicious draught!) the nectar of the mill! [45]
- THE planter’s labour in a round revolves;1
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Ends with the year, and with the year begins.
- YE swains, to Heaven bend low in grateful prayer,
- Worship the Almighty; whose kind-fostering hand
- Hath blest your labour, and hath given the cane [50]
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To rise superior to each menac’d ill.
- NOR less, ye planters, in devotion, sue,
- That nor the heavenly bolt, nor casual spark,
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Nor hand of malice may the crop destroy.2
- AH me! what numerous, deafning bells, resound? [55]
- What cries of horror startle the dull sleep?
- What gleaming brightness makes, at midnight, day?
- By its portentuous glare, too well I see
- Palaemon’s fate;3 the virtuous, and the wise!
- Where were ye, watches, when the flame burst forth? [60]
- A little care had then the hydra4 quell’d:
- But, now, what clouds of white smoke load the sky!
- How strong, how rapid the combustion pours!
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Cane cultivation is a year-round affair that nevertheless has distinct rhythms, which arise from the fact that cane can take 15-24 months to mature. ↩︎
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A reference to arson. Grainger does not specify who the arsonists might be, but this is one of several places where he hints at moments of enslaved resistance on Caribbean plantations. For more on this section of the poem and related passages, see “Fire” on this site. ↩︎
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Palaemon, also known as Melicertes, was a Greco-Roman sea-god. According to one legend, the goddess Juno killed Melicertes by boiling him in a cauldron; in another, Juno drove Ino, Melicertes’ mother, and Melicertes mad, causing them to throw themselves into the Saronic Gulf, whereupon they were changed into marine deities. Ino became Leucothea, and Melicertes was renamed Palaemon. ↩︎
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A mythic water snake whose multiple heads could regenerate if severed. Hercules killed the hydra as the second of his twelve Labors. The term also signifies a difficult task. ↩︎