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Old Portraits, Part 1, From Volume VI.,

J >> John Greenleaf Whittier >> Old Portraits, Part 1, From Volume VI.,




"Ye 'll catechise him ilka quirk,
An' shore him weel wi' hell."

In a humorous poem, entitled Spring's Lament, he thus describes the
consternation produced in the meeting-house at sermon time by a dog, who,
in search of his mistress, rattled and scraped at the "west porch
door:"--

"The vera priest was scared himsel',
His sermon he could hardly spell;
Auld carlins fancied they could smell
The brimstone matches;
They thought he was some imp o' hell,
In quest o' wretches."

He lived to a good old age, a home-loving, unpretending farmer,
cultivating his acres with his own horny hands, and cheering the long
rainy days and winter evenings with homely rhyme. Most of his pieces
were written in the dialect of his ancestors, which was well understood
by his neighbors and friends, the only audience upon which he could
venture to calculate. He loved all old things, old language, old
customs, old theology. In a rhyming letter to his cousin Silas,
he says:--

"Though Death our ancestors has cleekit,
An' under clods then closely steekit,
We'll mark the place their chimneys reekit,
Their native tongue we yet wad speak it,
Wi' accent glib."

He wrote sometimes to amuse his neighbors, often to soothe their sorrow
under domestic calamity, or to give expression to his own. With little
of that delicacy of taste which results from the attrition of fastidious
and refined society, and altogether too truthful and matter-of-fact to
call in the aid of imagination, he describes in the simplest and most
direct terms the circumstances in which he found himself, and the
impressions which these circumstances had made on his own mind. He calls
things by their right names; no euphuism or transcendentalism,--the
plainer and commoner the better. He tells us of his farm life, its
joys and sorrows, its mirth and care, with no embellishment, with no
concealment of repulsive and ungraceful features. Never having seen a
nightingale, he makes no attempt to describe the fowl; but he has seen
the night-hawk, at sunset, cutting the air above him, and he tells of it.
Side by side with his waving corn-fields and orchard-blooms we have the
barn-yard and pigsty. Nothing which was necessary to the comfort and
happiness of his home and avocation was to him "common or unclean."
Take, for instance, the following, from a poem written at the close of
autumn, after the death of his wife:--

"No more may I the Spring Brook trace,
No more with sorrow view the place
Where Mary's wash-tub stood;
No more may wander there alone,
And lean upon the mossy stone
Where once she piled her wood.
'T was there she bleached her linen cloth,
By yonder bass-wood tree
From that sweet stream she made her broth,
Her pudding and her tea.
That stream, whose waters running,
O'er mossy root and stone,
Made ringing and singing,
Her voice could match alone."

We envy not the man who can sneer at this simple picture. It is honest
as Nature herself. An old and lonely man looks back upon the young years
of his wedded life. Can we not look with him? The sunlight of a summer
morning is weaving itself with the leafy shadows of the bass-tree,
beneath which a fair and ruddy-checked young woman, with her full,
rounded arms bared to the elbow, bends not ungracefully to her task,
pausing ever and anon to play with the bright-eyed child beside her, and
mingling her songs with the pleasant murmurings of gliding water! Alas!
as the old man looks, he hears that voice, which perpetually sounds to us
all from the past--no more!

Let us look at him in his more genial mood. Take the opening lines of
his Thanksgiving Day. What a plain, hearty picture of substantial
comfort!

"When corn is in the garret stored,
And sauce in cellar well secured;
When good fat beef we can afford,
And things that 're dainty,
With good sweet cider on our board,
And pudding plenty;

"When stock, well housed, may chew the cud,
And at my door a pile of wood,
A rousing fire to warm my blood,
Blest sight to see!
It puts my rustic muse in mood
To sing for thee."

If he needs a simile, he takes the nearest at hand. In a letter to his
daughter he says:--

"That mine is not a longer letter,
The cause is not the want of matter,--
Of that there's plenty, worse or better;
But like a mill
Whose stream beats back with surplus water,
The wheel stands still."

Something of the humor of Burns gleams out occasionally from the sober
decorum of his verses. In an epistle to his friend Betton, high sheriff
of the county, who had sent to him for a peck of seed corn, he says:--

"Soon plantin' time will come again,
Syne may the heavens gie us rain,
An' shining heat to bless ilk plain
An' fertile hill,
An' gar the loads o' yellow grain,
Our garrets fill.

"As long as I has food and clothing,
An' still am hale and fier and breathing,
Ye 's get the corn--and may be aething
Ye'll do for me;
(Though God forbid)--hang me for naething
An' lose your fee."

And on receiving a copy of some verses written by a lady, he talks in a
sad way for a Presbyterian deacon:--

"Were she some Aborigine squaw,
Wha sings so sweet by nature's law,
I'd meet her in a hazle shaw,
Or some green loany,
And make her tawny phiz and 'a
My welcome crony."

The practical philosophy of the stout, jovial rhymer was but little
affected by the sour-featured asceticism of the elder. He says:--

"We'll eat and drink, and cheerful take
Our portions for the Donor's sake,
For thus the Word of Wisdom spake--
Man can't do better;
Nor can we by our labors make
The Lord our debtor!"

A quaintly characteristic correspondence in rhyme between the Deacon and
Parson McGregore, evidently "birds o' ane feather," is still in
existence. The minister, in acknowledging the epistle of his old friend,
commences his reply as follows:--

"Did e'er a cuif tak' up a quill,
Wha ne'er did aught that he did well,
To gar the muses rant and reel,
An' flaunt and swagger,
Nae doubt ye 'll say 't is that daft chiel
Old Dite McGregore!"

The reply is in the same strain, and may serve to give the reader some
idea of the old gentleman as a religious controversialist:--

"My reverend friend and kind McGregore,
Although thou ne'er was ca'd a bragger,
Thy muse I'm sure nave e'er was glegger
Thy Scottish lays
Might gar Socinians fa' or stagger,
E'en in their ways.

"When Unitarian champions dare thee,
Goliah like, and think to scare thee,
Dear Davie, fear not, they'll ne'er waur thee;
But draw thy sling,
Weel loaded frae the Gospel quarry,
An' gie 't a fling."

The last time I saw him, he was chaffering in the market-place of my
native village, swapping potatoes and onions and pumpkins for tea,
coffee, molasses, and, if the truth be told, New England rum. Threescore
years and ten, to use his own words,

"Hung o'er his back,
And bent him like a muckle pack,"

yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his thick shoes of cowhide,
like one accustomed to tread independently the soil of his own acres,--
his broad, honest face seamed by care and darkened by exposure to "all
the airts that blow," and his white hair flowing in patriarchal glory
beneath his felt hat. A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man, simple as
a child, and betraying, neither in look nor manner, that he was
accustomed to

"Feed on thoughts which voluntary move
Harmonious numbers."

Peace to him! A score of modern dandies and sentimentalists could ill
supply the place of this one honest man. In the ancient burial-ground of
Windham, by the side of his "beloved Molly," and in view of the old
meeting-house, there is a mound of earth, where, every spring, green
grasses tremble in the wind and the warm sunshine calls out the flowers.
There, gathered like one of his own ripe sheaves, the farmer poet sleeps
with his fathers.






PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET.

[1845.]

I have been greatly interested in the fate of Juan Placido, the black
revolutionist of Cuba, who was executed in Havana, as the alleged
instigator and leader of an attempted revolt on the part of the slaves in
that city and its neighborhood.

Juan Placido was born a slave on the estate of Don Terribio de Castro.
His father was an African, his mother a mulatto. His mistress treated
him with great kindness, and taught him to read. When he was twelve
years of age she died, and he fell into other and less compassionate
hands. At the age of eighteen, on seeing his mother struck with a heavy
whip, he for the first time turned upon his tormentors. To use his own
words, "I felt the blow in my heart. To utter a loud cry, and from a
downcast boy, with the timidity of one weak as a lamb, to become all at
office like a raging lion, was a thing of a moment." He was, however,
subdued, and the next morning, together with his mother, a tenderly
nurtured and delicate woman, severely scourged. On seeing his mother
rudely stripped and thrown down upon the ground, he at first with tears
implored the overseer to spare her; but at the sound of the first blow,
as it cut into her naked flesh, he sprang once more upon the ruffian,
who, having superior strength, beat him until he was nearer dead than
alive.

After suffering all the vicissitudes of slavery,--hunger, nakedness,
stripes; after bravely and nobly bearing up against that slow, dreadful
process which reduces the man to a thing, the image of God to a piece of
merchandise, until he had reached his thirty-eighth year, he was
unexpectedly released from his bonds. Some literary gentlemen in Havana,
into whose hands two or three pieces of his composition had fallen,
struck with the vigor, spirit, and natural grace which they manifested,
sought out the author, and raised a subscription to purchase his freedom.
He came to Havana, and maintained himself by house-painting, and such
other employments as his ingenuity and talents placed within his reach.
He wrote several poems, which have been published in Spanish at Havana,
and translated by Dr. Madden, under the title of _Poems by a Slave_.

It is not too much to say of these poems that they will bear a comparison
with most of the productions of modern Spanish literature. The style is
bold, free, energetic. Some of the pieces are sportive and graceful;
such is the address to _The Cucuya_, or Cuban firefly. This beautiful
insect is sometimes fastened in tiny nets to the light dresses of the
Cuban ladies, a custom to which the writer gallantly alludes in the
following lines:--

"Ah!--still as one looks on such brightness and bloom,
On such beauty as hers, one might envy the doom
Of a captive Cucuya that's destined, like this,
To be touched by her hand and revived by her kiss!
In the cage which her delicate hand has prepared,
The beautiful prisoner nestles unscared,
O'er her fair forehead shining serenely and bright,
In beauty's own bondage revealing its light!
And when the light dance and the revel are done,
She bears it away to her alcove alone,
Where, fed by her hand from the cane that's most choice,
In secret it gleans at the sound of her voice!
O beautiful maiden! may Heaven accord
Thy care of the captive a fitting reward,
And never may fortune the fetters remove
Of a heart that is thine in the bondage of love!"

In his Dream, a fragment of some length, Placido dwells in a touching
manner upon the scenes of his early years. It is addressed to his
brother Florence, who was a slave near Matanzas, while the author was in
the same condition at Havana. There is a plaintive and melancholy
sweetness in these lines, a natural pathos, which finds its way to the
heart:--

"Thou knowest, dear Florence, my sufferings of old,
The struggles maintained with oppression for years;
We shared them together, and each was consoled
With the love which was nurtured by sorrow and tears.

"But now far apart, the sad pleasure is gone,
We mingle our sighs and our sorrows no more;
The course is a new one which each has to run,
And dreary for each is the pathway before.

"But in slumber our spirits at least shall commune,
We will meet as of old in the visions of sleep,
In dreams which call back early days, when at noon
We stole to the shade of the palm-tree to weep!

"For solitude pining, in anguish of late
The heights of Quintana I sought for repose;
And there, in the cool and the silence, the weight
Of my cares was forgotten, I felt not any woes.

"Exhausted and weary, the spell of the place
Sank down on my eyelids, and soft slumber stole
So sweetly upon me, it left not a trace
Of sorrow o'ercasting the light of the soul."


The writer then imagines himself borne lightly through the air to the
place of his birth. The valley of Matanzas lies beneath him, hallowed by
the graves of his parents. He proceeds:--

"I gazed on that spot where together we played,
Our innocent pastimes came fresh to my mind,
Our mother's caress, and the fondness displayed
In each word and each look of a parent so kind.

"I looked on the mountain, whose fastnesses wild
The fugitives seek from the rifle and hound;
Below were the fields where they suffered and toiled,
And there the low graves of their comrades are found.

"The mill-house was there, and the turmoil of old;
But sick of these scenes, for too well were they known,
I looked for the stream where in childhood I strolled
When a moment of quiet and peace was my own.

"With mingled emotions of pleasure and pain,
Dear Florence, I sighed to behold thee once more;
I sought thee, my brother, embraced thee again,
But I found thee a slave as I left thee before!"

Some of his devotional pieces evince the fervor and true feeling of the
Christian poet. His _Ode to Religion_ contains many admirable lines.
Speaking of the martyrs of the early days of Christianity, he says
finely:--

"Still in that cradle, purpled with their blood,
The infant Faith waxed stronger day by day."

I cannot forbear quoting the last stanza of this poem:--

"O God of mercy, throned in glory high,
On earth and all its misery look down:
Behold the wretched, hear the captive's cry,
And call Thy exiled children round Thy throne!
There would I fain in contemplation gaze
On Thy eternal beauty, and would make
Of love one lasting canticle of praise,
And every theme but Thee henceforth forsake!"

His best and noblest production is an ode _To Cuba_, written on the
occasion of Dr. Madden's departure from the island, and presented to that
gentleman. It was never published in Cuba, as its sentiments would have
subjected the author to persecution. It breathes a lofty spirit of
patriotism, and an indignant sense of the wrongs inflicted upon his race.
Withal, it has something of the grandeur and stateliness of the old
Spanish muse.

"Cuba!--of what avail that thou art fair,
Pearl of the Seas, the pride of the Antilles,
If thy poor sons have still to see thee share
The pangs of bondage and its thousand ills?
Of what avail the verdure of thy hills,
The purple bloom thy coffee-plain displays;
The cane's luxuriant growth, whose culture fills
More graves than famine, or the sword finds ways
To glut with victims calmly as it slays?

"Of what avail that thy clear streams abound
With precious ore, if wealth there's, none to buy
Thy children's rights, and not one grain is found
For Learning's shrine, or for the altar nigh
Of poor, forsaken, downcast Liberty?
Of what avail the riches of thy port,
Forests of masts and ships from every sea,
If Trade alone is free, and man, the sport
And spoil of Trade, bears wrongs of every sort?

"Cuba! O Cuba!---when men call thee fair,
And rich, and beautiful, the Queen of Isles,
Star of the West, and Ocean's gem most rare,
Oh, say to those who mock thee with such wiles:
Take off these flowers; and view the lifeless spoils
Which wait the worm; behold their hues beneath
The pale, cold cheek; and seek for living smiles
Where Beauty lies not in the arms of Death,
And Bondage taints not with its poison breath!"

The disastrous result of the last rising of the slaves--in Cuba is well
known. Betrayed, and driven into premature collision with their
oppressors, the insurrectionists were speedily crushed into subjection.
Placido was arrested, and after a long hearing was condemned to be
executed, and consigned to the Chapel of the Condemned.

How far he was implicated in the insurrectionary movement it is now
perhaps impossible to ascertain. The popular voice at Havana pronounced
him its leader and projector, and as such he was condemned. His own
bitter wrongs; the terrible recollections of his life of servitude; the
sad condition of his relatives and race, exposed to scorn, contumely, and
the heavy hand of violence; the impunity with which the most dreadful
outrages upon the persons of slaves were inflicted,--acting upon a mind
fully capable of appreciating the beauty and dignity of freedom,--
furnished abundant incentives to an effort for the redemption of his race
and the humiliation of his oppressors. The Heraldo, of Madrid speaks of
him as "the celebrated poet, a man of great natural genius, and beloved
and appreciated by the most respectable young men of Havana." It accuses
him of wild and ambitious projects, and states that he was intended to be
the chief of the black race after they had thrown off the yoke of
bondage.

He was executed at Havana in the seventh month, 1844. According to the
custom in Cuba with condemned criminals, he was conducted from prison to
the Chapel of the Doomed. He passed thither with singular composure,
amidst a great concourse of people, gracefully saluting his numerous
acquaintances. The chapel was hung with black cloth, and dimly lighted.
He was seated beside his coffin. Priests in long black robes stood
around him, chanting in sepulchral voices the service of the dead. It is
an ordeal under which the stoutest-hearted and most resolute have been
found to sink. After enduring it for twenty-four hours he was led out to
execution. He came forth calm and undismayed; holding a crucifix in his
hand, he recited in a loud, clear voice a solemn prayer in verse, which
he had composed amidst the horrors of the Chapel. The following is an
imperfect rendering of a poem which thrilled the hearts of all who heard
it:--

"God of unbounded love and power eternal,
To Thee I turn in darkness and despair!
Stretch forth Thine arm, and from the brow infernal
Of Calumny the veil of Justice tear;
And from the forehead of my honest fame
Pluck the world's brand of infamy and shame!

"O King of kings!--my fathers' God!--who only
Art strong to save, by whom is all controlled,
Who givest the sea its waves, the dark and lonely
Abyss of heaven its light, the North its cold,
The air its currents, the warm sun its beams,
Life to the flowers, and motion to the streams!

"All things obey Thee, dying or reviving
As thou commandest; all, apart from Thee,
From Thee alone their life and power deriving,
Sink and are lost in vast eternity!
Yet doth the void obey Thee; since from naught
This marvellous being by Thy hand was wrought.

"O merciful God! I cannot shun Thy presence,
For through its veil of flesh Thy piercing eye
Looketh upon my spirit's unsoiled essence,
As through the pure transparence of the sky;
Let not the oppressor clap his bloody hands,
As o'er my prostrate innocence he stands!

"But if, alas, it seemeth good to Thee
That I should perish as the guilty dies,
And that in death my foes should gaze on me
With hateful malice and exulting eyes,
Speak Thou the word, and bid them shed my blood,
Fully in me Thy will be done, O God!"

On arriving at the fatal spot, he sat down as ordered, on a bench, with
his back to the soldiers. The multitude recollected that in some
affecting lines, written by the conspirator in prison, he had said that
it would be useless to seek to kill him by shooting his body,--that his
heart must be pierced ere it would cease its throbbings. At the last
moment, just as the soldiers were about to fire, he rose up and gazed for
an instant around and above him on the beautiful capital of his native
land and its sail-flecked bay, on the dense crowds about him, the blue
mountains in the distance, and the sky glorious with summer sunshine.
"Adios, mundo!" (Farewell, world!) he said calmly, and sat down. The
word was given, and five balls entered his body. Then it was that,
amidst the groans and murmurs of the horror-stricken spectators, he rose
up once more, and turned his head to the shuddering soldiers, his face
wearing an expression of superhuman courage. "Will no one pity me?" he
said, laying his hand over his heart. "Here, fire here!" While he yet
spake, two balls entered his heart, and he fell dead.

Thus perished the hero poet of Cuba. He has not fallen in vain. His
genius and his heroic death will doubtless be regarded by his race as
precious legacies. To the great names of L'Ouverture and Petion the
colored man can now add that of Juan Placido.

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