Thus men from highest joy to sorrow pass, Yet though thy monarch and thy nobles boil Rack and molasses in Jamaica's isle; 20 Desolate Africa! thou art lovely yet!! One heart yet beats which ne'er thee shall forget. What though thy maidens are a blackish brown, Does virtue dwell in whiter breasts alone? Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no! 25 It shall not, must not, cannot, e'er be so. The day shall come when Albion's self shall feel Stern Afric's wrath, and writhe 'neath Afric's steel. I see her tribes the hill of glory mount, And sell their sugars on their own account; 30 While round her throne the prostrate nations come, Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum! 32 NOTES.--Lines 1 and 2.--See _Guthrie's Geography_. The site of Timbuctoo is doubtful; the author has neatly expressed this in the poem, at the same time giving us some slight hints relative to its situation. Line 5.--So Horace: _leonum arida nutrix_. Line 13.--"Pop goes the musketoons." A learned friend suggested "Bang" as a stronger expression, but as African gunpowder is notoriously bad, the author thought "Pop" the better word. Lines 15-18.--A concise but affecting description is here given of the domestic habits of the people. The infamous manner in which they are entrapped and sold as slaves is described, and the whole ends with an appropriate moral sentiment. The enthusiasm the author feels is beautifully expressed in lines 25 and 26. Although this poem is not actually a parody of Tennyson's _Timbuctoo_, it is a clever burlesque of Prize poems in general, and derives interest as being one of Thackeray's earliest writings. The first independent volume of poems which Tennyson published in 1830, contained _Mariana_, _The Ballad of Oriana_, _Adeline_, _Lilian_, _The Poet_, _The Merman_, and _the Mermaid_, all of which are so well known that the following parodies require no introduction:-- ORIANA. _A Tennyson-cum-Albery Ballad._