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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Saint Christopher

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Americas: Vol. XXX. 1876–79.

West Indies: Saint Christopher, the Island

Saint Christopher

By James Grainger (1721?–1766)

(From The Sugar-Cane)

SUCH, green Saint Christopher, thy happy soil!—

Not Grecian Tempe, where Arcadian Pan,

Knit with the Graces, tuned his sylvan pipe,

While mute Attention hushed each charmèd rill;

Not purple Enna, whose irriguous lap,

Strewed with each fruit of taste, each flower of smell,

Sicilian Proserpine, delighted, sought,

Can vie, blest isle, with thee. Though no soft sound

Of pastoral stop thine echoes e’er awaked;

Nor raptured poet, lost in holy trance,

Thy streams arrested with enchanting song:

Yet virgins, far more beautiful than she

Whom Pluto ravished, and more chaste, are thine:

Yet probity, from principle, not fear,

Actuates thy sons, bold, hospitable, free;

Yet a fertility, unknown of old,

To other climes denied, adorns thy hills;

Thy vales, thy dells adorns.