The sugar-cane: a poem in four books with notes / [James Grainger].

  • James Grainger
Date:
1766
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sugar-cane: a poem in four books with notes / [James Grainger]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a ea Eee ee RN a ee | eee eT ee Ee eS ey Pek IS - “38 THE SUGAR-CANE. Bookl. Yer fome pretend, and not unfpecious they, The wood-nymphs fofter the contagious blatt. Foes to the. Dryads, they remorfelefs fell 560 Each fhrub of fhade, each tree of f{preading root, That woo the firft glad fannings of the breeze. Far from the mufe be fuch inhuman thoughts ; Far better recks fhe of the woodland tribes, Farth’s eldeft birth, and earth’s beft ornament. 565 Afk him, whom rude neceflity compels To dare the noontide fervour, in this clime,- Ah, ‘moft intenfely hot; how much he lorigs | For cooling vaft impenetrable fhade? The mufe, alas, th’ experienc’d mufe cantell: 570 Oft hath fhe travell’d, while folftitial beams, Shot yellow deaths on the devoted land; Oft, oft hath fhe their ill-judg’d avarice blam’d, Who, to the ftranger, to their flaves and herds, - ‘ Denied this beft of joys, the breezy fades 575 And are there none, whom generous pity warms, Friends to the woodland reign; whom fhades delight ? | | | Ver. 559. contagious blaft.] So a particular fpecies of blight is called in the Weft-Indies. See its defcription in’ the fecond book. | : i Ver. £72. yellow deaths] The yellow fever, to which Euro- | peans of a fanguine habit of body, and who exceed in drinking er exercife, are liable on their arrival in the Weft-Indies. The ‘French call it Maladie de Siame, or more properly, “+ La Fievre * des Matelots.” Thofe who have lived any time in the iflands are no more fubjecét to this difeafe than the Creoles, whence, however, fome phyficians have too heaftily concluded, that it was a foreign extraction, qu,
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