This pomp of Nature? what their balmy meads, Their powerful herbs, and Ceres void of pain? › By vagrant birds dispers'd, and wafting winds What their unplanted fruits? what the cool draughts, Th' ambrosial food, rich gums, and spicy health, Their forests yield? Their toiling insects what, Their silky pride, and vegetable robes? Ah! what avail their fatal treasures, hid Deep in the bowels of the pitying earth, Golconda's gems, and sad Potosi's mines; Where dwelt the gentlest children of the sun? What all that Afric's golden rivers roll, Her odorous woods, and shining ivory stores ? Ill-fated race! the softening arts of Peace, Whate'er the humanizing Muses teach; The godlike wisdom of the temper'd breast; Progressive truth, the patient force of thought;
Investigation calm, whose silent powers'
Command the world; the LIGHT that leads to HEAVENS Kind equal rule, the governement of laws, And all-protecting FREEDOM, which alone Sustains the name and dignity of Man : These are not theirs. The parent-sun himself Seems o'er this world of slaves to tyrannize; And, with oppressive ray, the roscate bloom' Of beauty blasting, gives the gloomy hue, And feature gross or worse, to ruthless deeds, Mad jealousy, blind rage, and fell revenge, Their fervid spirit fires. Love dwells not there, The soft regards, the tenderness of life, The heart-shed tear, th' ineffable delight
Of sweet humanity: these court the beam Of milder climes; in selfish fierce desire, And the wild fury of voluptuous sense, an There lost. The very brute-creation there This rage partakes, and burns with horrid fire. Lo! the green serpent, from his dark abode, Which even Imagination fears to tread, At noon forth-issuing, gathers up his train In orbs immense, then, darting out anew, Seeks the refreshing fount; by which diffus'd, He throws his folds: and while, with threatning tongue, And deathful jaws erect, the monster curls His flaming crest, all other thirst appall'd, Or shivering flies, or check'd at distance stands, Nor dares approach. But still more direful he, The small close-lurking minister of fate, Whose high-concocted venom thro' the veins A rapid lightning darts, arresting swift The vital current. Form'd to humble Man, This child of vengeful Nature! There, sublim'd To fearless lust of blood, the savage race Roam, licens'd by the shading hour of guilt, And foul misdeed, when the pure day has shut His sacred eye. The tyger darting fierce Impetuous on the prey his glance has doom'd: The lively-shining leopard, speckled o'er With many a spot, the beauty of the waste;, And, scorning all the taming arts of Man, The keen hyena, fellest of the fell. These, rushing from th' inhospitable woods Of Mauritania, or the tufted isles,
That verdant rise amid the Lybian wild, Innumerous glare around their shaggy king, Majestic, stalking o'er the printed sand; And, with imperious and repeated roars, Demand their fated food. The fearful flocks Croud near the guardian swain; the nobler herds, Where round their lordly bull, in rural ease, They ruminating lie, with horror hear
The coming rage. Th' awakened village starts; And to her fluttering breast the mother strains Her thoughtless infant. From the Pyrate's den, Or stern Morocco's tyrant fang escap'd, The wretch half-wishes for his bonds again : While, uproar all, the wilderness resounds, From Atlas eastward to the frighted Nile.
Unhappy he! who from the first of joys, Society, cut off, is left alone
Amid this world of death. Day after day, Sad on the jutting eminence he sits, And views the main that ever toils below; Still fondly forming in the farthest verge, Where the round ether mixes with the wave, Ships, dim-discover'd, dropping from the clouds; At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart Sinks helpless, while the wonted roar is up, And hiss continual thro' the tedious night. Yet here, even here, into these black abodes Of monsters, unappall'd from stooping Rome, And guilty Cæsar, LIBERTY retir'd,
Her CATO following thro' Numidian wilds : Disdainful of Campania's gentle plains, And all the green delights Ausonia pours; When for them she must bend the servile knee, And fawning take the splendid robber's boon. Nor stop the terrors of these regions here. Commission'd demons oft, angels of wrath, Let loose the raging elements. Breath'd hot, From all the boundless furnace of the sky, And the wide glittering waste of burning sand, A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil, Son of the desert! even the camel feels, Shot thro' his wither'd-heart, the fiery blast. Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad, Sallies the sudden whirl-wind. Strait the sands, Commov'd around, in gathering eddies play : Nearer and nearer still they darkening come; Till, with the general all-involving storm
the whole continuous wilds arise; And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown, Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep, Beneath descending hills, the caravan
Is buried deep. In Cairo's crouded streets Th' impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain, And Mecca saddens at the long delay.
But chief at sea, whose every flexile wave Obeys the blast, the aërial tumult swells. In the dread ocean, undulating wide, Beneath the radiant line that girts the globe,
The circling (1) Typhon, whirl'd from point to point, Exhausting all the rage of all the sky,
And dire (1) Ecnephia reign. Amid the heavens, Falsely serene, deep in a cloudy (2) speck Compress'd, the mighty tempest brooding dwells : Of no regard, save to the skilful eye,
Fiery and foul, the small prognostick hangs Aloft, or on the promontory's brow Musters its force. A faint deceitful calm,
A fluttering gale, the demon sends before, To tempt the spreading sail. Then down at once, Precipitant, descends a mingled mass
Of roaring winds, and flame, and rushing floods. In wild amazement fix'd the sailor stands. Art is too slow. By rapid fate oppress'd,
His broad-wing'd vessel drinks the whelming tide, Hid in the bosom of the black abyss.
With such mad seas the daring (3) GAMA fought, For many a day, and many a dreadful night, Incessant, lab'ring round the stormy Cape ; By bold ambition led, and bolder thirst Of gold. For then from ancient gloom emerg'd The rising world of trade: the Genius, then, Of navigation, that, in hopeless sloth, Had slumber'd on the vast Atlantic deep, For idle ages, startling, heard at last
(1) Typhon and Ecnephia, names of particular storms or hurricanes, known only between the tropics.
(2) Called by sailors the Ox-eye, being in appearance at
(5) VASCO DE GAMA, the first who sailed round Africa, by the Cape of Good Hope, to the East Indies,
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