And at the harmless stranger wondering gaze.
Peaceful, beneath primeval trees that cast
Their ample shade o'er Niger's yellow stream,
And where the Ganges rolls his sacred wave,
Or 'mid the central depth of blackening woods
High-rais'd in solemn theater around,
Leans the huge elephant; wisest of brutes!
Oh, truly wise! with gentle might endow'd,
Though powerful, not destructive. Here he sees
Revolving ages sweep the changeful earth,
And empires rise and fall; regardless he
Of what the never-resting race of men
Project: thrice happy! could he 'scape their guile.
Who mine, from cruel avarice, his steps,
Or with his towery grandeur swell their state,
The pride of kings! or else his strength pervert,
And bid him rage amid the mortal fray,
Astonish'd at the madness of mankind.
Wide o'er the winding umbrage of the floods,
Like vivid blossoms glowing from afar,
Thick-swarm the brighter birds. For Nature's hand.
That with a sportive vanity has deck'd
The plumy nations, there her gayest hues
Profusely pours. But, if she bids them shine,
Array'd in all the beauteous beams of day,
Yet frugal still, she humbles them in song.
Nor envy we the gaudy robes they lent

maze,

Embowering, endless, of the Indian fig;

Or thrown at gayer ease, on some fair brow,
Let me behold, by breezy murmurs cool'd,
Broad o'er my head the verdant cedar wave,
And high palmettos lift their graceful shade.
Oh! stretch'd amid these orchards of the sun,
Give me to drain the cocoa's tailky bowl,
And from the palm to draw its freshening wine;
More bounteous far than all the frantic juice
Which Bacchus pours. Nor, on its slender twigs
Low-bending, be the full pomegranate scorn'd;
Nor, creeping through the woods, the gelid race
Of berries. Oft in humble station dwells
Unboastful worth, above fastidious pomp.
Witness, thou best ananas, thou the pride
Of vegetable life, beyond whate'er
The poets imag'd in the golden age:
Quick let me strip thee of thy tufty coat,
Spread thy ambrosial stores, and feast with Jove!
From these the prospect varies. Plains immense
Lie stretch'd below, interminable meads,
And vast savannas, where the wandering eye,
Unfix'd, is in a verdant ocean lost.
Another Flora there, of bolder hues

And richer sweets, beyond our garden's pride,
Plays o'er the fields, and showers with sudden hand
Exuberant Spring; for oft these valleys shift
Their green-embroidered robe to fiery brown,
And swift to green again, as scorching suns,
Or streaming dews and torrent rains, prevail.
Along these lonely regions, where, retir'd
From little scenes of art, great Nature dwells
In awful solitude, and naught is seen

But the wild herds that own no master's stall,
Prodigious rivers roll their fattening seas;
On whose luxuriant herbage, half-conceal'd,
Like a fall'n cedar, far diffus'd his train,
Cas'd in green scales, the crocodile extends.
The flood disparts: behold! in plaited mail,
Behemoth rears his head. Glanc'd from his side,
The darted steel in idle shivers flies:

He fearless walks the plain, or seeks the hills;
Where, as he crops his varied fare, the herds,
In widening circle round, forget their food,

A boundless radiance waving on the sun,
While philomel is ours; while in our shades,
Through the soft silence of the listening night,
The sober-suited songstress trills her lay.

But come, my muse, the desert-barrier burst,
A wild expanse of lifeless sand and sky,
And, swifter than the toiling caravan,
Shoot o'er the vale of Sennaar, ardent climb
The Nubian mountains, and the secret bounds
Of jealous Abyssinia boldly pierce.
Thou art no ruffian, who beneath the mask
Of social commerce com'st to rob their wealth,
No holy fury thou, blaspheming Heaven.
With consecrated steel to stab their peace,
And through the land, yet red from civil wounds,
To spread the purple tyranny of Rome.
Thou, like the harmless bee, may'st freely range,
From mead to mead bright with exalted flowers,
From jasmine grove to grove; may'st wander gay,
Through palmy shades and aromatic woods,
That grace the plains, invest the peopled hills,
And up
the more than Alpine mountains wave.
There on the breezy summit, spreading fair
For many a league; or on stupendous rocks.
That from the sun-redoubling valley lift,
Cool to the middle air their lawny tops;
Where palaces, and fanes, and villas rise,
And gardens smile around, and cultur'd fields:
And fountains gush; and careless herds and flocks
Securely stray; a world within itself,
Disdaining all assault: there let me draw
Ethereal soul, there drink reviving gales.
Profusely breathing from the spicy groves,
And vales of fragrance; there at distance hear
The roaring floods, and cataracts, that sweep
From disembowel'd earth the virgin gold;
And o'er the varied landscape, restless, rove,
Fervent with life of every fairer kind.
A land of wonders! which the sun still eyes
With ray direct, as of the lovely realm
Enamor'd, and delighting there to dwell.

How chang'd the scene! In blazing height of

noon.

The sun, oppress'd, is plung'd in thickest gloom. Still horror reigns, a dreary twilight round,

And the wild fury of voluptuous sense,
There lost. The very brute creation there
This rage partakes, and burns with horrid fire.
Lo! the green serpent, from his dark abode,
Which even imagination fears to tread,
At noon forth-issuing, gathers up his train
In orbs immense, then, darting out anew,
Seeks the refreshing fount, by which diffus'd

He throws his folds; and while, with threatening tongue

And dreadful jaws erect, the monster curls
His flaming crest, all other thirst appall'd,
Or shivering flies, or check'd at distance stands,
Nor dares approach. But still more direful he,
The small close-lurking minister of fate,
Whose high concocted venom through the veins
A rapid lightning darts, arresting swift
The vital current. Form'd to humble man,
This child of vengeful Nature! There, sublim'd
To fearless lust of blood, the savage race
Roam, licens'd by the shading hour of guilt,
And foul misdeed, when the pure day has shut
His sacred eye. The tiger, darting fierce,
Impetuous on the prey his glance has doom'd;
The lively-shining leopard, speckled o'er
With many a spot, the beauty of the waste;
And, scorning all the taming arts of man,
The keen hyena, fellest of the fell:
These, rushing from the inhospitable woods
Of Mauritania, or the tufted isles
That verdant rise amid the Libyan wild,
Innumerous glare around their shaggy king,
Majestic, stalking o'er the printed sand;
And, with imperious and repeated roars,
Demand their fated food. The fearful flocks
Crowd near the guardian swain; the nobler herds,
Where round their lordly bull, in rural ease,
They ruminating lie, with horror hear
The coming rage. The awaken'd village starts;
And to her fluttering breast the mother strains
Her thoughtless infant. From the pirate's den,
Or stern Morocco's tyrant fang, escap'd,
The wretch half-wishes for his bonds again;
While, uproar all, the wilderness resounds,
From Atlas eastward to the frighted Nile.
Unhappy he! who from the first of joys,
Society, cut off, is left alone

Amid this world of death. Day after day,
Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,
And views the main that ever toils below;
Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,
Where the round ether mixes with the wave,
Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds.
At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart
Sinks helpless; while the wonted roar is up,
And hiss continual through the tedious night.
Yet here, even here, into these black abodes
Of monsters, unappall'd, from stooping Rome,
And guilty Cæsar, Liberty retired,

Her Cato following through Numidian wilds;
Disdainful of Campania's gentle plains
And all the green delights Ausonia pours-
When for them she must bend the servile knee,
And fawning take the splendid robber's boon.

Nor stop the terrors of these regions here.
Commission'd demons oft, angels of wrath,
Let loose the raging elements. Breath'd bot
From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
And the wide glittering waste of burning sand,
A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,
Son of the desert! even the camel feels,

Shot through his wither d heart, the fiery plast.
Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands.
Commov'd around, in gathering eddies play;
Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;
Till, with the general all-involving storm
Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;
And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,
Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,
Beneath descending hills, the caravan

Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vam.
And Mecca saddens at the long delay.

But chief at sea, whose every flexile wave
Obeys the blast, the aerial tumult swells.
In the dread ocean, undulating wide,
Beneath the radiant line that girts the globe,
The circling typhon, whirl'd from point to point,
Exhausting all the rage of all the sky,

And dire ecnephias, reign. Amid the heavens,
Falsely serene, deep in a cloudy speck
Compress'd, the mighty tempest brooding dwells
Of no regard save to the skillful eye,
Fiery and foul, the small prognostic hangs
Aloft, or on the promontory's brow
Musters its force. A faint deceitful calm,
A fluttering gale, the demon sends before,
To tempt the spreading sail. Then down at once,
Precipitant, descends a mingled mass

Of roaring winds, and flame, and rushing floods.
In wild amazement fix'd the sailor stands.
Art is too slow. By rapid fate oppress'd,
His broad-wing'd vessel drinks the whelming tide,
Hid in the bosom of the black abyss.
With such mad seas the daring Gama fought,
For many a day, and many a dreadful night,
Incessant, laboring round the stormy cape;
By bold ambition led, and bolder thirst
Of gold. For then, from ancient gloom, emerg'd
The rising world of trade: the genius, then,
Of navigation, that in hopeless sloth
Had slumber'd on the vast Atlantic deep
For idle ages, starting, heard at last
The Lusitanian prince; who, heaven-inspired,
To love of useful glory rous'd mankind,
And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.
Increasing still the terrors of these storms,
His jaws horrific arm'd with threefold fate,
Here dwells the direful shark. Lur'd by the scent
Of steaming crowds, of rank disease, and death,
Behold! he rushing cuts the briny flood,
Swift as the gale can bear the ship along;
And from the partners of that cruel trade
Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons,
Demands his share of prey-demands themselves
The stormy fates descend: one death involves
Tyrants and slaves; when straight their mangled
limbs

Crashing at once, he dyes the purple seas
With gore, and riots in the vengeful meal.

When o'er this world, by equinoctial rains
Flooded immense, looks out the joyless sun,
And draws the copious steam; from swampy fens
Where putrefaction into life ferments,
And breathes destructive myriads; or from woods.
Impenetrable shades, recesses foul,

In vapors rank and blue corruption wrapp'd,
Whose gloomy horrors yet no desperate foot
Has ever dar'd to pierce-then, wasteful, forth
Walks the dire power of pestilent disease.
A thousand hideous fiends her course attend,
Sick nature blasting, and a heartless woo,
And feeble desolation, casting down