Eternal Nature! when thy giant hand

Had heaved the floods, and fix'd the trembling land,

When life sprung startling at thy plastic call,

Endless her forms, and man the lord of all!

Say, was that lordly form inspired by thee,

To wear eternal chains and bow the knee?

Was man ordain'd the slave of man to toil,

Yoked with the brutes, and fetter'd to the soil;
Weigh'd in a tyrant's balance with his gold?
No! Nature stamp'd us in a heavenly mould!
She bade no wretch his thankless labour urge,

Nor, trembling, take the pittance and the scourge !
No homeless Lybian, on the stormy deep,

To call upon his country's name, and weep! —

Lo! once in triumph, on his boundless plain,
The quiver'd chief of Congo loved to reign;

With fires proportion'd to his native sky,
Strength in his arm, and lightning in his eye;
Scour'd with wild feet his sun-illumined zone,
The spear, the lion, and the woods, his own;
Or led the combat, bold without a plan,

An artless savage, but a fearless man!

The plunderer came!-alas! no glory smiles

For Congo's chief on yonder Indian isles ;

For ever fall'n! no son of Nature now,

With freedom charter'd on his manly brow!

Faint, bleeding, bound, he weeps the night away,

And when the sea-wind wafts the dewless day,

Starts, with a bursting heart, for ever more

To curse the sun that lights their guilty shore!

The shrill horn blew k; at that alarum knell

His guardian angel took a last farewell!

That funeral dirge to darkness hath resign'd
The fiery grandeur of a generous mind!

Poor fetter'd man! I hear thee whispering low

Unhallow'd vows to Guilt, the child of Woe!

Friendless thy heart; and canst thou harbour there

A wish but death-a passion but despair?

The widow'd Indian, when her lord expires,

Mounts the dread pile, and braves the funeral fires!

So falls the heart at Thraldom's bitter sigh!

So Virtue dies, the spouse of Liberty!

But not to Lybia's barren climes alone,

To Chili, or the wild Siberian zone,

Belong the wretched heart and hagard eye,

Degraded worth, and poor misfortune's sigh!—

Ye orient realms, where Ganges' waters run!

Prolific fields! dominions of the sun!

How long your tribes have trembled and obey'd! How long was Timour's iron sceptre sway'd!' Whose marshall'd hosts, the lions of the plain,

From Scythia's northern mountains to the main, Raged o'er your plunder'd shrines and altars bare, With blazing torch and gory scymitar,

Stunn'd with the cries of death each gentle gale, And bathed in blood the verdure of the vale! Yet could no pangs the immortal spirit tame, When Brama's children perish'd for his name

The martyr smiled beneath avenging power,

And braved the tyrant in his torturing hour!

When Europe sought your subject realms to gain, And stretch'd her giant sceptre o'er the main,

Taught her proud barks the winding way to shape,

And braved the stormy spirit of the Cape;

Children of Brama! then was mercy nigh

To wash the stain of blood's eternal dye?

Did Peace descend, to triumph and to save,

m

When freeborn Britons cross'd the Indian wave?

Ah, no!-to more than Rome's ambition true,

The Nurse of Freedom gave it not to you!
She the bold route of Europe's guilt began,
And, in the march of nations, led the van!