Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

159

  • To every Negroe, as the candle-weed1
  • Expands his blossoms to the cloudy sky,
  • And moist Aquarius2 melts in daily showers; [615]
  • A wooly vestment give, (this Wiltshire weaves)3
  • Warm to repel chill Night’s unwholesome dews:
  • While strong coarse linen, from the Scotian loom,

  • Wards off the fervours of the burning day.

  • THE truly great, tho’ from a hostile clime, [620]
  • The sacred Nine embalm; then, Muses, chant,
  • In grateful numbers, Gallic Lewis’4 praise:
  • For private murder quell’d; for laurel’d arts,
  • Invented, cherish’d in his native realm;
  • For rapine5 punish’d; for grim famine fed; [625]
  • For sly chicane6 expell’d the wrangling bar;
  • And rightful Themis7 seated on her throne:
  • But, chief, for those mild laws his wisdom fram’d,

  • To guard the AEthiop from tyrannic sway!8

  • DID such, in these green isles which Albion claims, [630]
  • Did such obtain; the muse, at midnight-hour,

VER. 613. candle-weed] This shrub, which produces a yellow flower somewhat resembling a narcissus,9 makes a beautiful hedge, and blows about November. It grows wild every where. It is said to be diuretic,10 but this I do not know from experience.

  1. Senna alata, also known today as the candle bush or king of the forest. Its native range is southwestern Mexico to the tropical Americas. ↩︎

  2. Aquarius is often represented by a figure pouring water from a jar. ↩︎

  3. Wiltshire, a county in England, has been a center of the English weaving and woolen industry for nearly 4000 years. ↩︎

  4. Gallic Lewis refers to Louis XIV (1638-1715), king of France from 1643-1715. ↩︎

  5. The act or practice of seizing and taking away by force the property of others. ↩︎

  6. A subterfuge, petty trick, or quibble. ↩︎

  7. Greek goddess of law and justice. ↩︎

  8. Grainger is referring to the Code noir, a royal edict issued by Louis XIV in 1685. The Code noir contained sixty articles regulating the treatment of the enslaved in the French Caribbean. Although Grainger praises it as protecting the enslaved from abuse, other eighteenth-century observers condemned it as proving the inhumanity of the institution of slavery, since it still allowed enslavers to inflict harsh punishments on the enslaved and treat them as property. ↩︎

  9. The genus Narcissus contains several species of plants with yellow flowers, including the daffodil. ↩︎

  10. A substance that promotes the excretion of urine. ↩︎