Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride The foliage of the undecaying trees; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace, Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring, Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit Reflects its tint and blushes into love.
The habitable earth is full of bliss; Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, Where matter dared nor vegetate nor live, But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed; And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls
Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves And melodize with man's blest nature there.
The vast tract of the parched and sandy waste Now teems with countless rills and shady woods, Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness did hear A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, Hymning his victory, or the milder snake. Crushing the bones of some frail antelope Within his brazen folds-the dewy lawn, Offering sweet incense to the sun-rise, smiles To see a babe before his mother's door, Share with the green and golden basilisk That comes to lick his feet, his morning's meal.
Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail Has seen above the illimitable plain, Morning on night, and night on morning rise, Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,
Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves So long have mingled with the gusty wind In melancholy loneliness, and swept The desert of those ocean solitudes, But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek, The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm, Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds Of kindliest human impulses respond: Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem, With lightsome clouds and shining seas between, And fertile vallies, resonant with bliss, Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore, To meet the kisses of the flowrets there.
Man chief perceives the change, his being notes The gradual renovation, and defines
Each movement of its progress on his mind. Man, where the gloom of the long polar night Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil, Where scarce the hardest herb that braves the frost Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow, Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night; Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed Unnatural vegetation, where the land
Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease, Was man a nobler being; slavery
Had crushed him to his country's bloodstained dust.
Even where the milder zone afforded man
A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, Blighting his being with unnumbered ills, Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availed Till late to arrest its progress, or create That peace which first in bloodless victory waved Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime: There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
The mimic of surrounding misery,
The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,
The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.
Here now the human being stands adorning This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind; Blest from his birth with all bland impulses, Which gently in his noble bosom wake All kindly passions and all pure desires.
Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal
Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise In time-destroying infiniteness, gift
With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks
The unprevailing hoariness of age,
And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene Swift as an unremembered vision, stands
Immortal upon earth: no longer now
He slays the beast that sports around his dwelling
And horribly devours its mangled flesh,
Or drinks its vital blood, which like a stream Of poison thro' his fevered veins did flow. Feeding a plague that secretly consumed. His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief, The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime. No longer now the wingèd habitants,
That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, Flee from the form of man; but gather round, And prune their sunny feathers on the hands Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of their play. All things are void of terror: man has lost His desolating privilege, and stands An equal amidst equals: happiness
And science dawn though late upon the earth;
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,
Reason and passion cease to combat there;
Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends
Its all-subduing energies, and wields The sceptre of a vast dominion there.
Mild is the slow necessity of death: The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp, Without a groan, almost without a fear, Resigned in peace to the necessity, Calm as a voyager to some distant land, And full of wonder, full of hope as he. The deadly germs of languor and disease. Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts With choicest boons her human worshippers. How vigorous now the athletic form of age! How clear its open and unwrinkled brow! Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care, Had stamped the seal of grey deformity On all the ningling lineaments of time. How lovely the intrepid front of youth! How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.
Within the massy prison's mouldering courts, Fearless and free the ruddy children play, Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows With the green ivy and the red wall-flower, That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom; The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, There rust amid the accumulated ruins Now mingling slowly with their native earth: There the broad beam of day, which feebly once Lighted the cheek of lean captivity
With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair
Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds And merriment are resonant around.
The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more The voice that once waked multitudes to war Thundering thro' all their aisles: but now respond
To the death dirge of the melancholy wind:
It were a sight of awfulness to see
The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!
Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall. A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death To-day, the breathing marble glows above To decorate its memory, and tongues Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms In silence and in darkness seize their prey. These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind: Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe, To happier shapes are moulded, and become Ministrant to all blissful impulses:
Thus human things are perfected, and earth, Even as a child beneath its mother's love, Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows Fairer and nobler with each passing year.
Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past Fades from our charnièd sight. My task is done: Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own, With all the fear and all the hope they bring. My spells are past: the present now recurs.
Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains
Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.
Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue
The gradual paths of an aspiring change:
For birth and life and death, and that strange state
Before the naked powers that thro' the world
Wander like winds have found a human home, All tend to perfect happiness, and urge The restless wheels of being on their way, Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal: For birth but wakes the universal mind Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow
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