Page:The West Indies, and Other Poems.djvu/56

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Mark, as he passes, every head declined ;

Then slowly raised, — to curse him from behind.

This is the veriest wretch on nature's face,

Own'd by no country, spurn'd by every race ;

The tether'd tyrant of one narrow span,

The bloated vampire of a living man ;

His frame, — a fungus form, of dunghill birth,

That taints the air, and rots above the earth ;

His soul ; — ^has he a soul, whose sensual breast

Of selfish passions is a serpent's nest ?

Who follows headlong, ignorant, and blind,

The vagvie brute-instinct of an idiot mind ;

Whose heart, midst scenes of sutlering senseless

grown. E'en in his mother's lap was chill'd to stone ; Whose torpid pulse no social feelings move ; A stranger to the tenderness of love, His motley haram charms his gloating eye, Where ebon, brown, and olive beauties vie ;

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