Note 286 — PART II
Reading edition
Text from the edition of 1809. The poem seems first to have been published in the National Gazette of July 21, 1792, under the title, "The Island Field Hand," with the note: "Written some years ago at a sugar plantation in Jamaica." The present text contains numerous minor variations from the edition of 1795. The four lines beginning "The eternal driver" are original in the 1809 edition.