Eternal Nature! when thy giant hand.

Had heav'd the floods, and fix'd the trembling land, 490

When life sprung startling at thy plastic call,

Endless her forms, and Man the lord of all!
Say, was that lordly form inspir'd by thee
To wear eternal chains, and bow the knee?
Was man ordain'd the slave of man to toil,

Yok'd with the brutes, and fetter'd to the soil;

495

Weigh'd in a tyrant's balance with his gold?

No!-Nature stamp'd us in a heav'nly mould!

She bade no wretch his thankless labour

urge,

Nor, trembling, take the pittance and the scourge !

500

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 lov'd 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-illumin'd zone,

505

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 fallen! no son of Nature now,

With Freedom charter'd on his manly brow!

510

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

And, when the sea-wind wafts the dewless day,

515

Starts, with a bursting heart, for ever more

To curse the sun that lights their guilty shore.

The shrill horn blew; 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!

520

Friendless thy heart; and, canst thou harbour there 525 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!

530

But not to Lybia's barren climes alone,

To Chili, or the wild Siberian zone,

Belong the wretched heart and haggard 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!

Whose marshall'd hosts, the lions of the plain,
From Scythia's northern mountains to the main,
Rag'd 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 bath'd in blood the verdure of the vale!
Yet could no pangs the immortal spirit tame,

When Brama's children perish'd for his name ;

535

540

545

The martyr зmil'd beneath avenging pow'r,

And brav'd 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 their winding way to shape,

And brav'd 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,

I 2

550

555

When free-born 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!

560