Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,
To meet the kisses of the flowrets there.

Man chief perceives the change, his being notes The gradual renovation, and defines

Each movement of its progress on his mind.
Man, where the gloom of the long polar night
Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,
Where scarce the hardest herb that braves the frost
Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,
Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;
Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day
With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,
Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere
Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed
Unnatural vegetation, where the land

Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,
Was man a nobler being; slavery

Had crushed him to his country's bloodstained dust.

Even where the milder zone afforded man

A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,
Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,
Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availed
Till late to arrest its progress, or create

That peace which first in bloodless victory waved

Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime :

There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
The mimic of surrounding misery,

The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,

The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.

Here now the human being stands adorning This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind; Blest from his birth with all bland impulses, Which gently in his noble bosom wake

All kindly passions and all pure desires.

Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise In time-destroying infiniteness, gift

With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks

The unprevailing hoariness of age,

And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene
Swift as an unremembered vision, stands

Immortal upon earth: no longer now

He slays the beast that sports around his dwelling
And horribly devours its mangled flesh,

Or drinks its vital blood, which like a stream
Of poison thro' his fevered veins did flow
Feeding a plague that secretly consumed
His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind

Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief,
The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.
No longer now the winged habitants,

That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,
Flee from the form of man; but gather round,
And prune their sunny feathers on the hands
Which little children stretch in friendly sport
Towards these dreadless partners of their play.
All things are void of terror: man has lost
His desolating privilege, and stands
An equal amidst equals: happiness

And science dawn though late upon the earth;

Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;

Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,
Reason and passion cease to combat there;
Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends
Its all-subduing energies, and wields
The sceptre of a vast dominion there.

Mild is the slow necessity of death:
The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Resigned in peace to the necessity,
Calm as a voyager to some distant land,
And full of wonder, full of hope as he.
The deadly germs of languor and disease

Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts
With choicest boons her human worshippers.
How vigorous now the athletic form of age!
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care,
Had stamped the seal of grey deformity
On all the mingling lineaments of time.
How lovely the intrepid front of youth!
How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.

Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,
Fearless and free the ruddy children play,
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows
With the green ivy and the red wall-flower,
That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;
The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,
There rust amid the accumulated ruins

Now mingling slowly with their native earth:
There the broad beam of day, which feebly once
Lighted the cheek of lean captivity

With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness :
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair
Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes
Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds

And merriment are resonant around.

The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more
The voice that once waked multitudes to war
Thundering thro' all their aisles: but now respond
To the death dirge of the melancholy wind:
It were a sight of awfulness to see

The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!

Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall.
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
To-day, the breathing marble glows above
To decorate its memory, and tongues
Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms
In silence and in darkness seize their prey.
These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind:
Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe,
To happier shapes are moulded, and become
Ministrant to all blissful impulses:
Thus human things are perfected, and earth,
Even as a child beneath its mother's love,
Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows
Fairer and nobler with each passing year.

Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past

Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done :

Thy lore is learned.

Earth's wonders are thine own,