Page:Poems Sigourney, 1834.pdf/117

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Some of the Pagan Africans visit the burial places of their departed relatives, bearing food and drink;—and mothers have been known, for a long course of years, to bring, in an agony of grief, their annual oblation to the tombs of their children.

!—I bring thee food, The rice-cake pure and white, The cocoa, with its milky blood, Dates and pomegranates bright, The orange in its gold, Fresh from thy favourite tree, Nuts in their ripe and husky fold, Dearest! I spread for thee.

Year after year I tread Thus to thy low retreat, But now the snow-hairs mark my head And age enchains my feet; Oh! many a change of woe Hath dimmed thy spot of birth Since first my gushing tears did flow O'er this thy bed of earth.

There came a midnight cry, Flames from our hamlet rose,