This pomp of Nature? what their balmy meads,
Their powerful herbs, and Ceres void of pain?
By vagrant birds dispersed, and wafting winds, "
What their unplanted fruits? what the cool draughts,
The' 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 heaven;
Kind equal rule, the government of laws,
And all-protecting Freedom, which alone
Sustains the name and dignity of man:

These are not theirs. The parent sun himself od
Seems o'er this world of slaves to tyrannize;
And, with oppressive ray, the roseate bloom at
Of beauty blasting, gives the gloomy hue, fiti
And feature gross or worse, to ruthless deeds, onl
Mad jealousy, blind rage, and fell revenge, vlsvil fl

Their fervid spirit fires. Love dwells not there,
The soft regards, the tenderness of life,
The heart-shed tear, the' ineffable delight
Of sweet humanity: these court the beam
Of milder climes; in selfish fierce desire,
And the wild fury of voluptuous sense,
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 diffused,
He throws his folds: and while with threatening 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 through the veins
A rapid lightning darts, arresting swift
The vital current. Form'd to humble man,
This child of vengeful Nature! there, sublimed
To fearless lust of blood, the savage race
Roam, licensed by the shading hour of guilt,
And foul misdeed, when the pure day has shut
His sacred eye. The tiger 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 the' inhospitable woods
Of Mauritania, or the tufted isles
That verdant rise amid the Libyan 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
Crowd near the guardian swain; the nobler herds,
Where round their lordly bull, in rural ease,
They ruminating lie, with horror hear

The coming rage. The' awaken'd village starts;
And to her fluttering breast the mother strains
Her thoughtless infant. From the pirate's den,
Or stern Morocco's tyrant fang escaped,
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, vor
Sad on the jutting eminence he sits, Cls L
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 through the tedious night.
Yet here, e'en here, into these black abodes
Of monsters, unappall'd, from stooping Rome, I'
And guilty Cæsar, Liberty retired,

Her Cato following through 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. Breathed 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 through his wither'd heart, the fiery blast. Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad, Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands, Commoved around, in gathering eddies play: Nearer and nearer still they darkening come; Till, with the general all involving storm Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise; And by their noonday fount dejected thrown, Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep, it

1

Beneath descending hills, the caravan

Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
The' 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' aerial tumult swells.
In the dread ocean, undulating wide,
Beneath the radiant line that girts the globe,
The circling Typhon *, whirl'd from point to point,
Exhausting all the rage of all the sky,

And dire Ecnephia* reign. Amid the heavens,
Falsely serene, deep in a cloudy speck +
Compress'd, the mighty tempest brooding dwells;
Of no regard, save to the skilful eye,
Fiery and foul, the small prognostic 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...d 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,

#

Typhon and Ecnephia, names of particular storms or hurricanes, known only between the tropics.

+ Called by sailors the Ox-eye, being in appearance at first no bigger.