Mary Anne Rawson's The Bow in the Cloud (1834): A Scholarly EditionMain MenuEditor's IntroductionEditor's IntroductionThe Published AnthologyContains all of the pieces published in the anthology, with an editor's noteSelected Unpublished PiecesTranscriptions of some unpublished pieces sent to RawsonText analysisResults of analysing the anthology and its manuscriptsNetwork AnalysisNetwork analysis prototypes, including a network graph of connections in the archiveMap of PlacenamesA map of all places associated with pieces in the anthologyPeople MentionedBow in the Cloud: PersonographyFurther ReadingsA Bibliography of sources relating to this projectThis project was supported by an NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication in 2023/2024 (FEL-289788). Find project data on GitHub.
On Richard Hill
12023-10-31T11:00:12+00:00Christopher Ohge67a4fbaba4797c94aa865988788fca89b5c3761615plain2024-09-14T16:05:37+00:00Christopher Ohge67a4fbaba4797c94aa865988788fca89b5c37616Richard Hill (1795–1872) is the only known mixed-race author in the Bow in the Cloud. He was a lawyer and poet and a staunch advocate for equal rights in Jamaica.
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12023-08-25T13:06:23+00:00The Creole Maiden's Song to the Marvel of Peru, by Richard Hill8Poem (with prose headnote) by Richard Hillplain2024-09-07T15:30:31+00:00 A fondness for flowers is characteristic of the coloured Creoles of the Spanish colonies. On holidays, the groups of young people who seek in the evening the savannahs for recreation, among other devices for pastime employ themselves in weaving garlands and singing improvisatore songs. When in Haiti, I never visited the savannahs of St. Jago de los Cavalleros, on such occasions, without observing, in the sort of natural bowers with which the lawns are interspersed, some company of young persons gathered together, and amusing themselves in this way. In addition to this characteristic affection for the blossoms of the field and the forest, the Hispaniolian females make use of natural flowers, (particularly those that expand in the evening,) as ornaments for the head. The assertion made by persons who have visited those colonies, that these chaplets are not unfrequently intermingled with fire-flies confined in gauze bandages as a substitute for brilliants, is not to be charged as a traveller's tale. The following little effusion is an attempt to embody some of these traits, in the supposed chant of a Hispaniolian or Haitian girl, sent to gather a garland for her sister, but who purposely spares the night-blooming Marvel of Peru, a plant whose pretty, rough, oval seeds, supplying children with materials for necklaces, is particularly cherished by them.
Wake up from thy sunset bower, Spread thy leaves my pretty flower; Spread thy leaves, unclose thine eyes, For the silver moon doth rise, And the golden stars are coming, And the beetle's at his humming, And the moth is from his bed, And the cricket from his shed, And the fire-fly comes to roam, With his lanthorn-light from home, Briskly wandering here and there, Up and down and every where, Whispering to each flower he sees, What a night, without a breeze!
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12024-09-14T16:04:43+00:00Hill, Richard1Person record for Richard Hillplain2024-09-14T16:04:43+00:00