Yet once it was the busiest haunt, Whither as to a common centre, flocked Strangers, and ships, and merchandise: Once peace and freedom blest The cultivated plain :
But wealth, that curse of man, Blighted the bud of its prosperity: Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, Fled, to return not, until man shall know That they alone can give the bliss Worthy a soul that claims
Its kindred with eternity.
There's not one atom of yon earth But once was living man; Nor the minutest drop of rain, That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, But flowed in human veins: And from the burning plains Where Lybian monsters yell, From the most gloomy glens Of Greenland's sunless clime, To where the golden fields Of fertile England spread Their harvest to the day, Thou canst not find one spot Whereon no city stood.
How strange is human pride! I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass, That springeth in the morn And perisheth ere noon,
Is an unbounded world;
I tell thee that those viewless beings, Whose mansion is the smallest particle Of the impassive atmosphere, Think, feel, and live like man; That their affections and antipathies, Like his, produce the Laws Ruling their moral state;
And the minutest throb That through their frame diffuses The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fixed and indispensable As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs.
The Fairy paused. The Spirit, In extacy of admiration, felt
All knowledge of the past revived; the events Of old and wondrous times, Which dim tradition interruptedly
Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded In just perspective to the view; Yet dim from their infinitude. The Spirit seemed to stand High on an isolated pinnacle; The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe Above, and all around Nature's unchanging harmony.
FAIRY! the Spirit said, And on the Queen of Spells Fixed her ethereal eyes,
I thank thee. Thou hast given
A boon which I will not resign, and taught A lesson not to be unlearned. I know The past, and thence I will essay to glean A warning for the future, so that man May profit by his errors, and derive Experience from his folly:
For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.
Turn thee, surpassing Spirit! Much yet remains unscanned. Thou knowest how great is man, Thou knowest his imbecility: Yet learn thou what he is; Yet learn the lofty destiny Which restless time prepares For every living soul.
Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid
Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops Of centinels, in stern and silent ranks, Encompass it around: the dweller there Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not The curses of the fatherless, the groans Of those who have no friend? He passes on: The King, the wearer of a gilded chain That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave Even to the basest appetites-that man
Heeds not the shriek of penury: he smiles At the deep curses which the destitute
Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan But for those morsels which his wantonness
Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save
All that they love from famine: when he hears The tale of horror, to some ready-made face Of hypocritical assent he turns,
Smothering the glow of shame, that spite of him, Flushes his bloated cheek.
Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags His palled, unwilling appetite. If gold, Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled From every clime, could force the loathing sense To overcome satiety,-if wealth
The spring it draws from poisons not,―or vice, Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not Its food to deadliest venom; then that king Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils His unforced task, when he returns at even, And by the blazing faggot meets again Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, Tastes not a sweeter meal.
Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain
Reels dizzily awhile: But, ah! too soon The slumber of intemperance subsides,
And conscience, that undying serpent, calls Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye Oh! mark that deadly visage.
Oh! must this last for ever! Awful death, I wish, yet fear to clasp thee!-Not one moment Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace! Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity
In penury and dungeons? wherefore lurkest With danger, death, and solitude; yet shunn'st The palace I have built thee? Sacred peace! Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed One drop of balm upon my withered soul.
Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart, And peace defileth not her snowy robes
In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters; His slumbers are but varied agonies,
They prey like scorpions on the springs of life. There needeth not the hell that bigots frame To punish those who err: earth in itself
Contains at once the evil and the cure;
And all-sufficing nature can chastise
Those who transgress her law,-she only knows How justly to proportion to the fault
The punishment it merits.
That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe? Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug
The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, His soul asserts not its humanity?
That man's mild nature rises not in war Against a king's employ? No-'tis not strange. He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives Just as his father did; the unconquered powers Of precedent and custom interpose
Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet, To those who know not nature, nor deduce The future from the present, it may seem, That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes Of this unnatural being; not one wretch, Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm To dash him from his throne!
Those gilded flies That, basking in the sunshine of a court, Fatten on its corruption !—what are they? -The drones of the community; they feed On the mechanic's labour: the starved hind For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form, Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, Drags out in labour a protracted death,
To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil, That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.
Whence, think'st thou, kings and parasites arose ? Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap Toil and unvanquishable penury
On those who build their palaces, and bring Their daily bread?-From vice, black loathsome vice; From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong; From all that genders misery, and makes Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust, Revenge, and murder......And when reason's voice, Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked The nations; and mankind perceive that vice Is discord, war, and misery;-that virtue Is peace, and happiness, and harmony; When man's maturer nature shall disdain The playthings of its childhood;-kingly glare Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade Shall be as hateful and unprofitable As that of truth is now.
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