How many sink in the devouring flood, 330 Or more devouring flame; how many bleed, By shameful variance betwixt man and man; How many pine in want, and dungeonglooms, Shut from the common air and common use Of their own limbs; how many drink the cup 335 Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread Of misery; sore pierced by wintry winds, How many shrink into the sordid hut Of cheerless poverty; how many shake With all the fiercer tortures of the mind, 340 Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, re morse Whence, tumbled headlong from the height of life, They furnish matter for the tragic muse; Even in the vale, where wisdom loves to dwell. Unpitied and unheard where misery moans, Where sickness pines, where thirst and hunger burn, And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice; 365 While in the land of liberty-the land Whose every street and public meeting glow 370 With friendship, peace, and contempla- 375 tion joined, 345 How many, racked with honest passions, droop In deep retired distress; how many stand Around the death-bed of their dearest friends, And point the parting anguish! Thought 380 Of these, and all the thousand nameless 350 That one incessant struggle render life, Vice in his high career would stand And heedless rambling Impulse learn to The conscious heart of Charity would 355 And her wide wish Benevolence dilate; And, into clear perfection, gradual bliss, Refining still, the social passions work. And here can I forget the generous With open freedom-little tyrants raged, Snatched the lean morsel from the starving mouth, Tore from cold wintry limbs the tattered weed, Even robbed them of the last of comforts, sleep, The free-born Briton to the dungeon chained Or, as the lust of cruelty prevailed, At pleasure marked him with inglorious. stripes, And crushed out lives, by secret barbarous ways, That for their country would have toiled or bled. O great design! if executed well, With patient care and wisdom-tempered zeal. Ye sons of mercy! yet resume the search; Drag forth the legal monsters into light, Wrench from their hands Oppression's iron rod, And bid the cruel feel the pains they give. Much still untouched remains; in this rank age, Much is the patriot's weeding hand required. The toils of law-what dark insidious men 385 Have cumbrous added to perplex the truth 360 Who, touched with human woe, redressive 516 searched Into the horrors of the gloomy jail?1 1A committee appointed in 1729 to investigate the conditions of jails and prisons, who discovered that the wardenships of prisons were bought by men who were accustomed to exact heavy fees from prisoners on the penalty of severe punishment. 590 And numberless such offices of love, Thus up the mount, in airy vision rapt, I stray, regardless whither; till the sound Of a near fall of water every sense Wakes from the charm of thought: swift-shrinking back, Beside the dewy border let me sit, I check my steps and view the broken 625 An ample chair moss-lined and over At first, an azure sheet, it rushes broad; 1371 595 Then, whitening by degrees as prone it falls, And from the loud-resounding rocks below Dashed in a cloud of foam, it sends aloft A hoary mist and forms a ceaseless 1375 Incessant rolled into romantic shapes, 955 Low-whispering, lead into their leafstrown walks, And soar above this little scene of things To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their feet, To soothe the throbbing passions into peace, And woo lone Quiet in her silent walks. Thus solitary, and in pensive guise, Oft let me wander o'er the russet mead, And through the saddened grove, where scarce is heard One dying strain to cheer the woodman's toil. Haply some widowed songster pours his plaint Far in faint warblings through the tawny1 copse; While congregated thrushes, linnets, larks, And each wild throat whose artless strains so late Swelled all the music of the swarming shades, Robbed of their tuneful souls, now shivering sit On the dead tree, a dull despondent flock, With not a brightness waving o'er their plumes, And naught save chattering discord in their note. Oh, let not, aimed from some inhuman eye, The gun the music of the coming year 985 Destroy, and harmless, unsuspecting harm, Lay the weak tribes, a miserable prey, In mingled murder fluttering on the ground! The pale descending year, yet pleasing still, A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf And give the season in its latest view. Meantime, light shadowing all, a sober 990 Incessant rustles from the mournful calm grove, Turned to the sun direct, her spotted disk (Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend, And caverns deep, as optic tube descries) A smaller earth, gives all his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day. Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop, Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime. Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild O'er the skied mountain to the shadowy vale, Inflames imagination; through the breast 1100 While rocks and floods reflect the quiv Infuses every tenderness; and far thought. Ten thousand thousand fleet ideas, such 1015 As never mingled with the vulgar dream, Crowd fast into the mind's creative eye. As fast the correspondent passions rise, As varied, and as high-devotion raised To rapture, and divine astonishment; 1020 The love of nature unconfined, and, chief, Of human race; the large ambitious wish To make them blest; the sigh for suffer- 1355 ing worth Lost in obscurity; the noble scorn Of tyrant pride; the fearless great resolve; 1025 The wonder which the dying patriot draws, 1030 Inspiring glory through remotest time; The awakened throb for virtue and for fame; The sympathies of love and friendship dear, With all the social offspring of the heart. Oh! bear me then to vast embowering shades, To twilight groves, and visionary vales, To weeping grottoes, and prophetic glooms; ering gleam, The whole air whitens with a boundless tide Of silver radiance trembling round the world. O Nature! all-sufficient! over all Enrich me with the knowledge of thy works; Snatch me to heaven; thy rolling won- World beyond world, in infinite extent mense, Show me; their motions, periods, and their laws Give me to scan; through the disclosing deep Light my blind way: the mineral strata there; 1360 Thrust blooming thence the vegetable world; Where angel forms athwart the solemn 1365 dusk, Tremendous, sweep, or seem to sweep along; 1035 And voices more than human, through the void O'er that the rising system, more complex, Of animals; and, higher still, the mind, The varied scene of quick-compounded thought, And where the mixing passions endless shift; These ever open to my ravished eye A search, the flight of time can ne'er But, if to that unequal-if the blood Deep-sounding, seize the enthusiastic ear. 1370 Inglorious lay me by the lowly brook, |