| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| The Slave |
| | | Richard Henry Horne (1802–84) |
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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. | |
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| We saw plantations spotted with white huts; | 5 |
| Estates midst orange groves and towering trees; | |
| Rich yellow lawns embrown’d by soft degrees; | |
| Plots of intense gold freak’d with shady nuts. | |
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| A dead hot silence tranced sea, land, and sky: | |
| And now a long canoe came gliding forth, | 10 |
| Wherein there sat an old man fierce and swarth | |
| Tiger-faced, black-fang’d, and with jaundiced eye. | |
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| 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 | 15 |
| A naked Image all of burnish’d gold. | |
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| 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. | 20 |
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