- Yet many die; and few, for many a year,
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Just strength attain to labour for their lord.
- WOULD’ST thou secure thine Ethiop from those ails,
- Which change of climate, change of waters breed, [120]
- And food unusual? let Machaon draw
- From each some blood, as age and sex require;
- And well with vervain, well with sempre-vive,1
- Unload their bowels.—These, in every hedge,
- Spontaneous grow.—Nor will it not conduce [125]
- To give what chemists, in mysterious phrase,
- Term the white eagle;2 deadly foe to worms.
- But chief do thou, my friend, with hearty food,
- Yet easy of digestion, likest that
- Which they at home regal’d on; renovate [130]
- Their sea-worn appetites. Let gentle work,
- Or rather playful exercise, amuse
- The novel gang:3 and far be angry words;
- Far ponderous chains; and far disheartning blows.—
- From fruits restrain their eagerness; yet if [135]
- The acajou,4 haply, in thy garden bloom,
- With cherries, or of white or purple hue,
VER. 137. cherries,] The tree which produces this wholesome fruit is tall, shady, and of quick growth. Its Indian name is Acajou; hence corruptly called Cashew by
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Sempre-vive refers to the genus Sempervivum (“always living”), a group of plants native to Europe and parts of Asia. Gilmore notes that Grainger may not have been referring to European vervain but to Aloe vera, a plant highly valued for its medicinal properties and native to the Arabian Peninsula. ↩︎
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Calomel or mercuric chloride. Medicine widely used in the eighteenth century for its laxative and purgative effects, also described here by Grainger as a vermifuge or drug used to eliminate parasitic worms from the body. ↩︎
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Enslaved Africans newly arrived in the Caribbean. ↩︎
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The cashew or cashewnut tree (Anacardium occidentale). Its native range is Trinidad to tropical South America. As Grainger and others note, the fruit of the cashew tree is caustic, and it was supposedly used by women as a chemical peel to remove freckles (Riddell 82-83). ↩︎