The Slave Ships - anti slavery poems

                                  This poem was written by John Greenleaf Whittier

“ALL ready?” cried the captain;
“Ay, ay!” the seamen said;
“Heave up the worthless lubbers,—
The dying and the dead.”
Up from the slave-ship’s prison	5
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust:
“Now let the sharks look to it,—
Toss up the dead ones first!”
Corpse after corpse came up,—
Death had been busy there;	10
Where every blow is mercy,
Why should the spoiler spare?
Corpse after corpse they cast
Sullenly from the ship,
Yet bloody with the traces	15
Of fetter-link and whip.
Gloomily stood the captain,
With his arms upon his breast,
With his cold brow sternly knotted,
And his iron lip compressed.	20
“Are all the dead dogs over?”
Growled through that matted lip;
“The blind ones are no better,
Let ’s lighten the good ship.”
Hark! from the ship’s dark bosom,	25
The very sounds of hell!
The ringing clank of iron,
The maniac’s short, sharp yell!
The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled;
The starving infant’s moan,	30
The horror of a breaking heart
Poured through a mother’s groan.
Up from that loathsome prison
The stricken blind ones came:
Below, had all been darkness,	35
Above, was still the same.
Yet the holy breath of heaven
Was sweetly breathing there,
And the heated brow of fever
Cooled in the soft sea air.	40
“Overboard with them, shipmates!”
Cutlass and dirk were plied;
Fettered and blind, one after one,
Plunged down the vessel’s side.
The sabre smote above,	45
Beneath, the lean shark lay,
Waiting with wide and bloody jaw
His quick and human prey.
God of the earth! what cries
Rang upward unto thee?	50
Voices of agony and blood,
From ship-deck and from sea.
The last dull plunge was heard,
The last wave caught its stain,
And the unsated shark looked up	55
For human hearts in vain. *        *        *        *        *
Red glowed the western waters,
The setting sun was there,
Scattering alike on wave and cloud
His fiery mesh of hair.	60
Amidst a group in blindness,
A solitary eye
Gazed, from the burdened slaver’s deck,
Into that burning sky.
“A storm,” spoke out the gazer,	65
“Is gathering and at hand;
Curse on ’t, I ’d give my other eye
For one firm rood of land.”
And then he laughed, but only
His echoed laugh replied,	70
For the blinded and the suffering
Alone were at his side.
Night settled on the waters,
And on a stormy heaven,
While fiercely on that lone ship’s track	75
The thunder-gust was driven.
“A sail!—thank God, a sail!”
And as the helmsman spoke,
Up through the stormy murmur
A shout of gladness broke.	80
Down came the stranger vessel,
Unheeding on her way,
So near that on the slaver’s deck
Fell off her driven spray.
“Ho! for the love of mercy,	85
We ’re perishing and blind!”
A wail of utter agony
Came back upon the wind:
“Help us! for we are stricken
With blindness every one;	90
Ten days we ’ve floated fearfully,
Unnoting star or sun.
Our ship ’s the slaver Leon,—
We ’ve but a score on board;
Our slaves are all gone over,—	95
Help, for the love of God!”
On livid brows of agony
The broad red lightning shone;
But the roar of wind and thunder
Stifled the answering groan;	100
Wailed from the broken waters
A last despairing cry,
As, kindling in the stormy light,
The stranger ship went by. *        *        *        *        *
In the sunny Guadaloupe	105
A dark-hulled vessel lay,
With a crew who noted never
The nightfall or the day.
The blossom of the orange
Was white by every stream,	110
And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird
Were in the warm sunbeam.
And the sky was bright as ever,
And the moonlight slept as well,
On the palm-trees by the hillside,	115
And the streamlet of the dell:
And the glances of the Creole
Were still as archly deep,
And her smiles as full as ever
Of passion and of sleep.	120
But vain were bird and blossom,
The green earth and the sky,
And the smile of human faces,
To the slaver’s darkened eye;
At the breaking of the morning,	125
At the star-lit evening time,
O’er a world of light and beauty
Fell the blackness of his crime.