Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

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  • A double Iris1 throws her painted arch, [550]
  • Shows commerce toiling in each crowded street,

  • And each throng’d street with limpid currents lav’d.

  • WHAT tho’ no bird of song, here charms the sense
  • With her wild minstrelsy; far, far beyond,
  • The unnatural quavers of Hesperian throats!2 [555]
  • Tho’ the chaste poet of the vernal3 woods,
  • That shuns rude folly’s din, delight not here
  • The listening eve; and tho’ no herald-lark4
  • Here leave his couch, high-towering to descry
  • The approach of dawn, and hail her with his song: [560]
  • Yet not unmusical the tinkling lapse
  • Of yon cool argent rill, which Phoebus gilds
  • With his first orient rays; yet musical,
  • Those buxom airs that through the plantanes play,
  • And tear with wantonness their leafy scrolls; [565]
  • Yet not unmusical the waves hoarse sound,
  • That dashes, sullen, on the distant shore;
  • Yet musical those little insects hum,
  • That hover round us, and to reason’s ear,

is said, that the guts of hogs would in time be lacerated, were they to feed on the ripe, unpeeled fruit. Its seed is said to be anthelmintic.5 The botanical name is Papaya.

  1. In Greco-Roman mythology, Iris was the daughter of the Titan Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra and sometimes cited as the wife of Zephyrus, the west wind. Her name in Greek means rainbow. The goddess Juno took her to serve as her handmaid. ↩︎

  2. “Hesperian throats” refers to the Hesperides, the daughters of Night and Erebus who guarded the tree of golden apples given by Hera to earth. They also were renowned for their singing. Because the tree was popularly located beyond the Atlas mountains at the western border of the Ocean, Hesperian can mean western. When referring to a specific geographic location, it designates Italy or Spain. ↩︎

  3. Of the spring. ↩︎

  4. Larks are any of several small birds of the family Alaudidae. Renowned for their singing and mostly found in the Old World, larks are also conventionally associated with the dawn. ↩︎

  5. Anthelmintic (also anthelminthic, antihelminthic) drugs are used to expel or kill parasitic worms, especially intestinal ones. ↩︎