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• Aid not, ye winds! with your destroying breath,

• The spreading vengeance.—They contemn my prayer. [65]

• ROUS’D by the deafning bells, the cries, the blaze;
• From every quarter, in tumultuous bands,
• The Negroes rush; and, ‘mid the crackling flames,
• Plunge, daemon-like! All, all, urge every nerve:
• This way, tear up those Canes; dash the fire out, [70]
• Which sweeps, with serpent-error, o’er the ground.
• There, hew these down; their topmost branches burn:
• And here bid all thy watery engines play;

• For here the wind the burning deluge drives.

• IN vain.—More wide the blazing torrent rolls;[75]
• More loud it roars, more bright it fires the pole!
• And toward thy mansion, see, it bends its way.
• Haste! far, O far, your infant-throng remove:
• Quick from your stables drag your steeds and mules:
• With well-wet blankets guard your cypress-roofs; [80]

• And where thy dried Canes in large stacks are pil’d.—

• EFFORTS but serve to irritate the flames:
• Naught but thy ruin can their wrath appease.
• Ah, my Palaemon! what avail’d thy care,

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VER. 81. And where thy dried Canes] The Cane-stalks which have been ground, are called Magoss; probably a corruption of the French word Bagasse,¹ which signifies the same thing. They make an excellent fewel.

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