The Task and Other Poems | Page 9

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 loosed.?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 every vein?Of all your empire; that where Britain's power?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 to its own decease;?And by the voice of all its elements?To preach the general 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??Fires from beneath and meteors from above,?Portentous, unexampled, unexplained,?Have kindled beacons in the skies, and the old?And crazy earth has had her shaking fits?More frequent, and foregone 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, unaccomplished yet;?Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak?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 exposed 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 scattered 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 flowers, 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 touched them. From the extremest point?Of elevation down into the abyss,?His wrath is busy and His frown is felt.?The rocks fall headlong and the valleys rise,?The rivers die into offensive pools,?And, charged with putrid verdure, breathe a gross?And mortal nuisance into all the air.?What solid was, by transformation strange?Grows fluid, and the fixed 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 every side,?And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene?Migrates uplifted, and, with all its soil?Alighting in far-distant fields, finds out?A new possessor, and survives the change.?Ocean has caught the frenzy, and upwrought?To an enormous and o'erbearing height,?Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice?Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore?Resistless. Never such a sudden flood,?Upridged so high, and sent on such a charge,?Possessed an inland scene. Where now the throng?That pressed the beach and hasty to depart?Looked to the sea for safety? They are gone,?Gone with the refluent wave into the deep,?A prince with half his people. Ancient towers,?And roofs embattled high, the gloomy scenes?Where beauty oft and lettered worth consume?Life in the unproductive shades of death,?Fall prone: the pale inhabitants come forth,?And, happy in their unforeseen release?From all the rigours of restraint, enjoy?The terrors of the day that sets them free.?Who then, that has thee, would not hold thee fast,?Freedom! whom they that lose thee so regret,?That even a judgment, making way for thee,?Seems in their eyes a mercy, for thy sake.
Such evil sin hath wrought; and such a flame?Kindled in heaven, that it burns down to earth,?And, in the furious inquest that it makes?On God's behalf, lays waste His fairest works.?The very elements, though each be meant?The minister of man to serve his wants,?Conspire against him. With his breath he draws?A plague into his blood; and cannot use?Life's necessary means, but he must die.?Storms rise to o'erwhelm him: or, if stormy winds?Rise not, the waters of the deep shall rise,?And, needing none assistance of the storm,?Shall roll themselves ashore, and reach him there.?The earth shall shake him out of all his holds,?Or make his house his grave; nor so content,?Shall counterfeit the motions of the flood,?And drown him in her dry and dusty gulfs.?What then--were they the wicked above all,?And we the righteous, whose fast-anchored isle?Moved not, while theirs was rocked like a light skiff,?The sport of every wave? No: none are clear,?And none than we more guilty. But where all?Stand chargeable with guilt, and to the shafts?Of wrath obnoxious, God may choose His mark,?May punish, if He please, the less, to warn?The more malignant. If He spared