accursed?

Love of Home, and Love of Woman!--dear to all,
but doubly dear
To the heart whose pulses elsewhere measure only
hate and fear.

All around the desert circles, underneath a brazen
sky,
Only one green spot remaining where the dew is
never dry!

From the horror of that desert, from its atmosphere
of hell,
Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the diver seeks
his bell.

'T is the fervid tropic noontime; faint and low the
sea-waves beat;
Hazy rise the inland mountains through the glimmer
of the heat,--

Where, through mingled leaves and blossoms,
arrowy sunbeams flash and glisten,
Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she lifts her
head to listen:--

"We shall live as slaves no longer! Freedom's
hour is close at hand!
Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the boat
upon the strand!

"I have seen the Haytien Captain; I have seen
his swarthy crew,
Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and color
true.

"They have sworn to wait our coming till the night
has passed its noon,
And the gray and darkening waters roll above the
sunken moon!"

Oh, the blessed hope of freedom! how with joy
and glad surprise,
For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant
beam her eyes!

But she looks across the valley, where her mother's
hut is seen,
Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and the lemon-
leaves so green.

And she answers, sad and earnest: "It were wrong
for thee to stay;
God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and his
finger points the way.

"Well I know with what endurance, for the sake
of me and mine,
Thou hast borne too long a burden never meant
for souls like thine.

"Go; and at the hour of midnight, when our last
farewell is o'er,
Kneeling on our place of parting, I will bless thee
from the shore.

"But for me, my mother, lying on her sick-bed
all the day,
Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming through
the twilight gray.

"Should I leave her sick and helpless, even freedom,
shared with thee,
Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, and
stripes to me.

"For my heart would die within me, and my brain
would soon be wild;
I should hear my mother calling through