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T'enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause

Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith

Abhor each other. Mountains interpos'd
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplor'd,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,

Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.

Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn’d.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's

Just estimation priz'd above all price,

I had much rather be myself the slave,

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves 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 blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through ev'ry vein

Of all your empire; that where Britain's pow'r
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

Sure there is need of social 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 th' gen'ral doom. When were the

winds

Let slip with such a warrant to destroy?

When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?

C

Fires from beneath, and meteors from above,

Portentous, unexampled, unexplain'd,

Have kindled beacons in the skies; and th' old
And crazy earth has had her shaking fits

More frequent, and forgone her usual rest.
Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet seem to fail,
And Nature with a dim and sickly eye
To wait the close of all? But grant her end
More distant, and that prophecy demands
A longer respite, unaccomplish'd yet;

Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak

b Alluding to the calamities at Jamaica.

August 18, 1783.

d Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Asia during the summer of 1783.

Displeasure in his breast who smites the earth
Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice.

And 'tis but seemly, that, where all deserve
And stand expos'd by common peccancy

To what no few have felt, there should be peace, And brethren in calamity should love.

Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scatter'd where the shapely column stood.
Her palaces are dust. In all her streets
The voice of singing and the sprightly chord
Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show,
Suffer a syncope and solemn pause;

While God performs upon the trembling stage
Of his own works his dreadful part alone.

How does the earth receive him?—With what signs
Of gratulation and delight, her king?

Pours she not all her choicest fruits abroad,

Her sweetest flow'rs, her aromatic gums,
Disclosing paradise where'er he treads?

She quakes at his approach. Her hollow womb, Conceiving thunders, through a thousand deeps And fiery caverns roars beneath his foot.

The hills move lightly, and the mountains smoke, For he has touch'd them. From th' extremest point Of elevation down into th' abyss

His wrath is busy, and his frown is felt.

The rocks fall headlong, and the vallies rise,

The rivers die into offensive pools,

And, charg'd with putrid verdure, breathe a gross
And mortal nuisance into all the air.

What solid was, by transformation strange,
Grows fluid; and the fixt and rooted earth,
Tormented into billows, heaves and swells,
Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl
Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense
The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs
And agonies of human and of brute
Multitudes, fugitive on ev'ry side,

And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene

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