The Slave

A SEA-PIECE, OFF JAMAICA

BEFORE us in the sultry dawn arose 
  Indigo-tinted mountains; and ere noon 
  We near’d an isle that lay like a festoon, 
And shar’d the ocean’s glittering repose. 
 
We saw plantations spotted with white huts; 
  Estates midst orange groves and towering trees; 
  Rich yellow lawns embrown’d by soft degrees; 
Plots of intense gold freak’d with shady nuts. 
 
A dead hot silence tranced sea, land, and sky: 
  And now a long canoe came gliding forth, 
  Wherein there sat an old man fierce and swarth 
Tiger-faced, black-fang’d, and with jaundiced eye. 
 
Pure white, with pale blue chequer’d, and red fold 
  Of head-cloth ’neath straw brim, this Master wore; 
  While in the sun-glare stood with high-rais’d oar
A naked Image all of burnish’d gold. 
 
Golden his bones—high-valued in the mart, 
  His minted muscles, and his glossy skin; 
  Golden his life of action—but within 
The slave is human in a bleeding heart.