They prey like scorpions on the springs-The drones of the community; they of life. There needeth not the hell that bigots On the mechanic's labour: the starved frame feed hind yield To punish those who err: earth in itself For them compels the stubborn glebe to How justly to proportion to the fault Is it strange That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe? Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, His soul asserts not its humanity? not strange. Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form, Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, Drags out in labour a protracted death, To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil, That few may know the cares and woe of sloth. Whence, think'st thou, kings and parasites arose? Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap Toil and unvanquishable penury On those who build their palaces, and bring Their daily bread?--From vice, black loathsome vice; From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong; From all that genders misery, and makes He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts Of earth this thorny wilderness; from Just as his father did; the unconquered Revenge, and murder. . . . And when powers Of precedent and custom interpose Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet, To those who know not nature, nor deduce The future from the present, it may seem, That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes reason's voice, Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked The nations; and mankind perceive that vice Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue Is peace, and happiness and harmony; When man's maturer nature shall disdain The playthings of its childhood;-kingly glare Of this unnatural being; not one wretch, More free and fearless than the tremb- The frightful desolation spread, and felt ling judge, Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove A new created sense within his soul Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound; To bind the impassive spirit ;—when he | Think'st thou his grandeur had not falls, His mild eye beams benevolence no The force of human kindness? and, more : overcome when Rome, tyrant down, Withered the hand outstretched but to With one stern blow, hurled not the relieve; Sunk reason's simple eloquence, that Crushed not the arm red with her dearest rolled But to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless frost blood, Had not submissive abjectness destroyed Nature's suggestions? Look on yonder earth : Withered that arm but the unfading The golden harvests spring; the unfailfame ing sun Which virtue hangs upon its votary's Sheds light and life; the fruits, the tomb; flowers, the trees, The deathless memory of that man, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, harmony, and love. The uni whom kings Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance verse, In nature's silent eloquence, declares Which time is fast maturing, Will swiftly, surely come; That all fulfil the works of love and joy,All but the outcast man. He fabricates The sword which stabs his peace; he And the unbounded frame, which thou The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams, Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth pervadest, Will be without a flaw Marring its perfect symmetry. IV How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh, Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude A step-dame to her numerous sons, who That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that peace Which men alone appreciate? Spirit of Nature! no. ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love had spread To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs So stainless, that their white and glitter Whose changeless paths thro' Heaven's In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless deep silence lie; Soul of that smallest being, Man, like these passive things, Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : Like theirs, his age of endless peace, field Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day; And vesper's image on the western main In proud and vigorous health; of all the Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes : hearts Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepen- That beat with anxious life at sunset Roll o'er the blackened waters; the How few survive, how few are beating deep roar Of distant thunder mutters awfully; Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, now! All is deep silence, like the fearful calm That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause; Save when the frantic wail of widowed love With all his winds and lightnings, tracks Comes shuddering on the blast, or the The torn deep yawns,-the vessel finds With which some soul bursts from the a grave Beneath its jagged gulph. Ah! whence yon glare That fires the arch of heaven?-that dark red smoke frame of clay The gray morn Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke Blotting the silver moon? The stars Before the icy wind slow rolls away, are quenched And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms, And lifeless warriors, whose hard linea ments Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path Of the outsallying victors: far behind, Black ashes note where their proud city stood. Within yon forest is a gloomy glenEach tree which guards its darkness from the day Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. I see thee shrink, Surpassing Spirit !- -wert thou human else? I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet The discord grows; till pale death shuts Across thy stainless features: yet fear not; the scene, This is no unconnected misery, And o'er the conqueror and the con- Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. quered draws Man's evil nature, that apology His cold and bloody shroud.-Of all Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up Whom day's departing beam saw bloom- For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the men ing there, the blood Which desolates the discord-wasted land. war arose, Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, Whose grandeur his debasement. the axe Of desolate society. The child, His baby-sword even in a hero's mood. Strike at the root, the poison-tree will Of devastated earth; whilst specious fall; And where its venomed exhalations spread names, Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, Ruin, and death, and woe, where Serve as the sophisms with which manmillions lay hood dims Quenching the serpent's famine, and Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the their bones Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, Hath Nature's soul, That formed this world so beautiful, that spread Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord Strung to unchanging unison, that gave The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, That yielded to the wanderers of the deep The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, For happiness and sympathy, how stern And filled the meanest worm that crawls And desolate a tract is this wide world! How withered all the buds of natural in dust Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul Of pitiless power! On its wretched Blasted with withering curses; placed afar The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, But serving on the frightful gulph to glare, Rent wide beneath his footsteps? frame, Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung By morals, law, and custom, the pure Nature-no! Of heaven, that renovate the insect Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower Even in its tender bud; their influence darts The untainting light May visit not its longings. It is bound Like subtle poison through the bloodless Ere it has life: yea, all the chains are |