OH for a lodge in fome vaft wilderness,
Ο
Some boundless contiguity of fhade,
Where rumour of oppreffion and deceit,
Of unfuccefsful or fuccefsful war,
Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd, My foul is fick with ev'ry day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man. The nat'ral bond
Of brotherhood is fever'd as the flax
That falls afunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colour'd like his own, and having pow'r
T'inforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands interfected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed,
Make enemies of nations who had elfe
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And worse than all, and moft to be deplor'd
As human nature's broadeft, fouleft blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his
fweat
With ftripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps when she fees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man feeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a flave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I fleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That finews bought and fold have ever earn'd.
No dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Juft eftimation priz'd above all price,
I had much rather be myself the flave
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no flaves at home. Then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free,
They touch our country and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the bleffing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through ev'ry vein
Of all your empire. That where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.
Sure there is need of focial intercourse,
Benevolence and peace and mutual aid.
Between the nations, in a world that seems
To toll the death-bell of its own decease,
And by the voice of all its elements
To preach the gen'ral doom. When were the
Let flip with fuch a warrant to destroy ;
When did the waves fo haughtily o'erleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?
Fires from beneath, and meteors + from above
Portentous, unexampled, unexplained,
Alluding to the late calamities at Jamaica. † August 18, 1783.
Have kindled beacons in the fkies, and th' old
And crazy earth has had her shaking fits
More frequent, and foregone her usual reft.
Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet feem to fail,
And Nature with a dim and fickly eye
To wait the clofe of all? But grant her end
More diftant, and that prophecy demands
A longer refpite, unaccomplished yet;
Still they are frowning fignals, and bespeak
Displeasure in his breast who fmites the earth
Or heals it, makes it languifh or rejoice.
And 'tis but feemly, that where all deferve
And ftand exposed by common peccancy
To what no few have.felt, there fhould be peace,
And brethren in calamity should love.
Alas, for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scatter'd where the fhapely column ftood.
Her palaces are duft. In all her streets
The voice of finging and the sprightly chord
Are filent. Revelry and dance and show
Suffer a fyncope and folemn pause,
↑ Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Afia during the whole fummer of 1783.
While God performs upon the trembling stage Of his own works, his dreadful part alone.
How does the earth receive him?-With what
Of gratulation and delight, her king?
Pours fhe not all her choiceft fruits abroad,
Her sweetest flow'rs, her aromatic gums,
Difclofing paradife where'er he treads ?
She quakes at his approach. Her hollow womb
Conceiving thunders, through a thousand deeps
And fiery caverns roar beneath his foot.
The hills move lightly and the mountains smoke, For he has touch'd them. From th' extremeft
Of elevation down into th' abyfs,
His wrath is bufy and his frown is felt.
The rocks fall headlong and the vallies rise,
The rivers die into offenfive pools,
And charged with putrid verdure, breathe a grofs
And mortal nuisance into all the air.
What folid was, by transformation strange
Grows fluid, and the fixt and rooted earth
Tormented into billows heaves and fwells,
Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl
Sucks down its prey infatiable: Immenfe
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