She thought of Pitt, heart-broken on his bier;
And "O my country!" echoed in her ear;

She thought of Fox;-she heard him faintly speak,
His parting breath grew cold upon her cheek,
His dying accents trembled into air;

"Spare injured Africa! the negro spare!"

She started from her trance!-and round the shore
Beheld her supplicating sons once more
Pleading the suit so long, so vainly tried,
Renewed, resisted, promised, pledged, denied,
The negro's claim to all his Maker gave,
And all the tyrant ravished from the slave.
Her yielding heart confessed the righteous claim,
Sorrow had softened it, and love o'ercame;

Shame flushed her noble cheek, her bosom burned;
To helpless, hopeless Africa she turned;
She saw her sister in the mourner's face,

And rushed, with tears, into her dark embrace:
"All hail!" exclaimed the empress of the sea,
"Thy chains are broken: Africa, be free!”

Muse! take the harp of prophecy :-behold! The glories of a brighter age unfold :

Friends of the outcast! view the accomplished plan,
The negro towering to the height of man.

The blood of Romans, Saxons, Gauls, and Danes,
Swelled the rich fountain of the Briton's veins ;
Unmingled streams a warmer life impart,
And quicker pulses to the negro's heart :
A dusky race, beneath the evening sun,
Shall blend their spousal currents into one:
Is beauty bound to colour, shape, or air?
No; GOD created all His offspring fair.
Tyrant and slave their tribes shall never see,
For GOD created all His offspring free;
Then justice, leagued with mercy, from above,
Shall reign in all the liberty of love;

And the sweet shores beneath the balmy West,
Again shall be "the islands of the blest."
Unutterable mysteries of fate

Involve, O Africa! thy future state.
On Niger's banks, in lonely beauty wild,

A negro-mother carols to her child :

66

Son of my widowed love, my orphan joy!

Avenge thy father's murder, O my boy!"
Along those banks the fearless infant strays,
Bathes in the stream, among the eddies plays;

See the boy bounding through the eager race;
The fierce youth, shouting foremost in the chase,
Drives the grim lion from his ancient woods,
And smites the crocodile amidst his floods.
To giant strength in unshorn manhood grown,
He haunts the wilderness, he dwells alone.
A tigress with her whelps to seize him sprung,
He tears the mother, and he tames the young
In the drear cavern of their native rock;
Thither wild slaves and fell banditti flock;

He heads their hordes; they burst, like torrid rains,
In death and devastation o'er the plains;
Stronger and bolder grows his ruffian band,
Prouder his heart, more terrible his hand.
He spreads his banner; crowding from afar,
Innumerable armies rush to war;

Resistless as the pillared whirlwinds fly
O'er Lybian sands, revolving to the sky,

In fire and wrath through every realm they run,
Where the noon-shadow shrinks beneath the sun;
Till at the conqueror's feet, from sea to sea,
A hundred nations bow the servile knee,
And throned in nature's unrevealed domains,
The Jenghis Khan of Africa he reigns.

Dim through the night of these tempestuous years
A Sabbath dawn o'er Africa appears;

Then shall her neck from Europe's yoke be freed,
And healing arts to hideous arms succeed;
At home, fraternal bonds her tribes shall bind,
Commerce abroad espouse them with mankind,
While truth shall build, and pure religion bless
The Church of GOD amidst the wilderness.

Nor in the isles and Africa alone

Be the Redeemer's cross and triumph known:
Father of Mercies! speed the promised hour;
Thy kingdom come with all-restoring power;
Peace, virtue, knowledge, spread from pole to pole,
As round the world the ocean waters roll!
Hope waits the morning of celestial light;
Time plumes his wings for everlasting flight;
Unchanging seasons have their march begun;
Millennial years are hastening to the sun;

Seen through thick clouds, by Faith's transpiercing eyes,
The new creation shines in purer skies.

All hail!-the age of crime and suffering ends;
The reign of righteousness from heaven descends;

Vengeance for ever sheathes the afflicting sword;
Death is destroyed, and Paradise restored;
Man, rising from the ruins of his fall,
Is one with GOD, and GOD is All in All

THE

WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

O place having been found in Asia to correspond exactly with the Mosaic description of the site of Paradise, the Author of the following Poem has disregarded both the learned and the absurd hypotheses on the subject, and at once imagining an inaccessible tract of land, at the confluence of four rivers, which after their junction take the name of the largest, and become the Euphrates of the ancient world, he has placed "the happy garden" there. Milton's noble fiction of the Mount of Paradise being removed by the Deluge, and pushed

"Down the great river to the opening gulf,"

and there converted into a barren isle, implies such a change in the water-courses as will, poetically at least, account for the difference between the scene of this story and the present face of the country, at the point where the Tigris and Euphrates meet. On the eastern side of these waters the author supposes the descendants of the younger children of Adam to dwell, possessing the land of Eden: the rest of the world having been gradually colonized by emigrants from these, or peopled by the posterity of Cain. In process of time, after the Sons of God had formed connections with the daughters of men, and there were giants in the earth, the latter assumed to be lords and rulers over mankind, till among themselves arose one, excelling all his brethren in knowledge and power, who became their king, and by their aid, in the course of a long life, subdued all the inhabited earth, except the land of Eden. This land, at the head of a mighty army, principally composed of the descendants of Cain, he has invaded and conquered, even to the banks of the Euphrates, at the opening of the action of the poem. It is only necessary to add, that for the sake of distinction, the invaders are frequently denominated from Cain, as "the host of Cain," "the force of

Cain," "the camp of Cain," and the remnant of the defenders of Eden are, in like manner, denominated from Eden. The Jews have an ancient tradition that some of the giants, at the Deluge, fled to the top of a high mountain, and escaped the ruin that involved the rest of their kindred. In the tenth Canto of the following poem a hint is borrowed from this tradition, but it is made to yield to the superior authority of Scripture testimony.

TO THE SPIRIT OF A DEPARTED FRIEND.*

MANY, my friend, have mourned for thee,

And yet shall many mourn,
Long as thy name on earth shall be

In sweet remembrance borne,

By those who loved thee here, and love
Thy spirit still in realms above.

For while thine absence they deplore,
'Tis for themselves they weep;
Though they behold thy face no more,
In peace thine ashes sleep,

And o'er the tomb they lift their eye,—
Thou art not dead, thou couldst not die.

In silent anguish, O my friend!
When I recall thy worth,
Thy lovely life, thine early end,
I feel estranged from earth;
My soul with thine desires to rest,
Supremely and for ever blest.

In loftier mood, I fain would raise
With my victorious breath
Some fair memorial of thy praise,
Beyond the reach of death;

Proud wish, and vain!—I cannot give

The word that makes the dead to live.

David Parker, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, who had taken much interest in the poem while it was in progress, but who died before it was completed.