On Contemplation, or the hallowed ear Of poet, swelling to seraphic strain.'

APOSTROPHE TO THE BEATIFIED SPIRIT OF A YOUNG LADY
DECEASED. CONSOLATION.

And art thou, Stanley,' of that sacred band?
Alas, for us so soon! though raised above
The reach of human pain, above the flight
Of human joy; yet, with a mingled ray
Of sadly pleased remembrance, must thou feel
A mother's love, a mother's tender woe,
Who seeks thee still, in many a former scene;
Seeks thy fair form, thy lovely beaming eyes,
Thy pleasing converse, by gay, lively sense
Inspired, where moral wisdom mildly shone
Without the toil of art; and virtue glowed,
In all her smiles, without forbidding pride.
But, O thou best of parents! wipe thy tears;
Or rather to Parental Nature pay
The tears of grateful joy, who for a while
Lent thee this younger self, this opening bloom
Of thy enlightened mind and gentle worth.
Believe the muse the wintry blast of death
Kills not the buds of virtue; no, they spread,
Beneath the heavenly beam of brighter suns,
Through endless ages, into higher powers.

Wakes from the charm of thought: swift-shrinking
I check my steps, and view the broken scene.
Smooth to the shelving brink a copious flood
Rolls fair and placid, where collected all,
In one impetuous torrent, down the steep

It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round.
At first, an azure sheet, it rushes broad;
Then whitening by degrees, as prone it falls,
And, from the loud-resounding rocks below,
Dashed in a cloud of foam, it sends aloft
A hoary mist, and forms a ceaseless shower.
Nor can the tortured wave here find repose;
But, raging still amid the shaggy rocks,
Now flashes o'er the scattered fragments, now
Aslant the hollowed channel rapid darts;
And falling fast from gradual slope to slope,
With wild infracted course and lessened roar,
It gains a safer bed, and steals, at last,
Along the mazes of the quiet vale.

THE MOUNTING EAGLE SOARS IN THE SUNLIGHT. THE SMALL
BIRDS SEEK THE SHADE. THE STOCK-DOVE'S PLAINT.
Invited from the cliff, to whose dark brow
He clings, the steep-ascending eagle soars,
With upward pinions, through the flood of day;
And, giving full his bosom to the blaze,
Gains on the sun; while all the tuneful race,
Smit by afflictive noon, disordered droop,

1 A young lady, well known to the author, who died at the age of eighteen, in the year 1738.

Deep in the thicket; or, from bower to bower
Responsive, force an interrupted strain.
The stock-dove only through the forest coos,
Mournfully hoarse; oft ceasing from his plaint,
Short interval of weary woe! again
The sad idea of his murdered mate,
Struck from his side by savage fowler's guile,
Across his fancy comes; and then resounds
A louder song of sorrow through the grove.

THE POET, ON HIS COOL MOSSY SEAT, INVOKES FANCY TO DESCRIBE THE TORRID ZONE.

Beside the dewy border let me sit,
All in the freshness of the humid air;
There in that hollowed rock, grotesque and wild,
An ample chair moss-lined, and over head
By flowering umbrage shaded; where the bee
Strays diligent, and with the extracted balm
Of fragrant woodbine loads his little thigh.

Now, while I taste the sweetness of the shade,
While nature lies around deep-lulled in noon,
Now come, bold Fancy, spread a daring flight,
And view the wonders of the torrid zone :
Climes unrelenting! with whose rage compared
Yon blaze is feeble, and yon skies are cool.

MORNING IN THE TORRID ZONE. THE TRADE-WINDS AND MONSOONS. SCENERY OF THE TROPICS.

See, how at once the bright-effulgent sun,
Rising direct, swift chases from the sky
The short-lived twilight, and with ardent blaze
Looks gayly fierce through all the dazzling air :
He mounts his throne; but kind before him sends,
Issuing from out the portals of the morn,
The general breeze,' to mitigate his fire
And breathe refreshment on a fainting world.
Great are the scenes, with dreadful beauty crowned
And barbarous wealth, that see, each circling year,
Returning suns and double seasons pass ;?
Rocks rich in gems, and mountains big with mines,
That on the high equator ridgy rise,
Whence many a bursting stream auriferous plays :
Majestic woods, of every vigorous green,
Stage above stage, high-waving o'er the hills;
Or to the far horizon wide diffused,

A boundless deep immensity of shade.
Here lofty trees, to ancient song unknown,
The noble sons of potent heat and floods
Prone-rushing from the clouds, rear high to heaven
Their thorny stems, and broad around them throw
Meridian gloom. Here, in eternal prime,
Unnumbered fruits, of keen delicious taste
And vital spirit, drink amid the cliffs,
And burning sands that bank the shrubby vales,

1 Which blows constantly between the tropics from the east, or the collateral points, the north-east and south-east: caused by the pressure of air towards the space rarefied progressively beneath the sun's rays, thus following his diurnal motion from east to west.

2 In all climates between the tropics, the sun, as he passes and repasses in his annual motion, is twice a year vertical, which produces this effect.

Redoubled day, yet in their rugged coats A friendly juice to cool its rage contain.

THE COOLING TROPICAL FRUITS. THE LEMON; LIME;
ORANGE; TAMARIND; FIG; CEDAR; PALMETTO; COCOA ;
PALM POMEGRANATE; BERRIES; PINE-APPLE.
Bear me, Pomona, to thy citron groves,
To where the lemon and the piercing lime,
With the deep orange, glowing through the green,
Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined
Beneath thy spreading tamarind, that shakes,
Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit.
Deep in the night the massy locust sheds

Quench my hot limbs; or lead me through the maze,
Embowering endless, of the Indian fig;

Or, thrown at gayer ease on some fair brow,
Let me behold, by breezy murmurs cooled,
Broad o'er my head the verdant cedar wave,
And high palmettos lift their graceful shade.
Or, stretched amid these orchards of the sun,
Give me to drain the cocoa's milky 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 scorned;
Nor, creeping through the woods, the gelid race
Of berries. Oft in humble station dwells
Unboastful worth, above fastidious pomp.
Witness, thou best anana, thou the pride
Of vegetable life, beyond whate'er
The poets imaged in the golden age :
Quick let me strip thee of thy tufty coat,
Spread thy ambrosial stores, and feast with Jove.

TROPICAL PROSPECT AND FLORA.

From these the prospect varies. Plains immense Lie stretched below, interminable meads, And vast savannas, where the wandering eye, Unfixed, 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.

THE SOLITUDES OF THE TROPICS. THE CROCODILE; HIPPOPOTAMUS.

Along those lonely regions, where, retired
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-concealed,
Like a fallen cedar, far-diffused his train,
Cased in green scales, the crocodile extends.
The flood disparts: behold! in plaited mail,
Behemoth rears his head. Glanced 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,
And at the harmless stranger wondering gaze.

THE ELEPHANT. NIGER. — GANGES.

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-raised in solemn theatre around, Leans the huge elephant: wisest of brutes! O truly wise, with gentle might endowed, 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, Astonished at the madness of mankind.

THE BRIGHT BIRDS OF THE TROPICS; NOT MELODIOUS.—

PHILOMEL.

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 decked

The plumy nations, there her gayest hues

Profusely pours. But, if she bids them shine,
Arrayed in all the beauteous beams of day,
Yet, frugal still, she humbles them in song.1
Nor envy we the gaudy robes they lent
Proud Montezuma's realm, whose legions cast
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.

THE MUSE VISITS SENNAAR AND ABYSSINIA.ITS LOFTY
PLAINS AND CHARMING CLIMATES.

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 Sennar, 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 comest 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.

1 In all the regions of the torrid zone, the birds, though more beautiful in their plumage, are observed to be less melodious than ours.

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 cultured 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 disembowelled 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
Enamored, and delighting there to dwell.

TREMENDOUS SHOWERS OF THE TROPICS. TERRIFIC THUN-
DER AND LIGHTNING.

How changed the scene! In blazing height of noon,

The sun, oppressed, is plunged in thickest gloom.
Still horror reigns, a dreary twilight round
Of struggling night and day malignant mixed.
For to the hot equator crowding fast,
Where, highly rarefied, the yielding air
Admits their stream, incessant vapors roll,
Amazing clouds on clouds continual heaped ;
Or whirled tempestuous by the gusty wind,
Or silent borne along, heavy, and slow,
With the big stores of steaming oceans charged.
Meantime, amid these upper seas, condensed
Around the cold aërial mountain's brow,
And by conflicting winds together dashed,
The thunder holds his black tremendous throne :
From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage;
Till, in the furious elemental war
Dissolved, the whole precipitated mass
Unbroken floods and solid torrents pours.

THE NILE DESCRIBED.

The treasures these, hid from the bounded search Of ancient knowledge, whence, with annual pomp, Rich king of floods! o'erflows the swelling Nile. From his two springs, in Gojam's sunny realm, Pure-welling out,' he through the lucid lake Of fair Dambea rolls his infant stream. There, by the Naiads nursed, he sports away His playful youth, amid the fragrant isles, That with unfading verdure smile around. Ambitious, thence the manly river breaks; And gathering many a flood, and copious fed With all the mellowed treasures of the sky, Winds in progressive majesty along : Through splendid kingdoms now devolves his maze, Now wanders wild o'er solitary tracts Of life-deserted sand; till glad to quit

1 Another branch rises south of the equator.

The joyless desert, down the Nubian rocks,
From thundering steep to steep, he pours his urn,
And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave.

THE NIGER, AND RIVERS OF THE EAST.-MENAM. — INDUS.

His brother Niger too, and all the floods In which the full-formed maids of Afric lave Their jetty limbs; and all that from the tract Of woody mountains stretched through gorgeous Ind Fall on Cor'mandel's coast, or Malabar; From Menam's1 orient stream, that nightly shines With insect lamps, to where Aurora sheds On Indus' smiling banks the rosy shower; All, at this bounteous season, ope their urns, And pour untoiling harvest o'er the land.

THE TROPICAL REGIONS OF AMERICA; THE ORINOCO; AMAZON; PLATA AND OTHER RIVERS.

Nor less thy world, Columbus, drinks, refreshed,
The lavish moisture of the melting year.
Wide o'er his isles the branching Oronoque
Rolls a brown deluge, and the native drives
To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees,

At once his dome, his robe, his food, and arms.
Swelled by a thousand streams, impetuous hurled
From all the roaring Andes, huge descends
The mighty Orellana. Scarce the Muse
Dares stretch her wing o'er this enormous mass
Of rushing water; scarce she dares attempt
The sea-like Plata, to whose dread expanse,
Continuous depth, and wondrous length of course,
Our floods are rills. With unabated force,
In silent dignity they sweep along,

And traverse realms unknown, and blooming wilds,
And fruitful deserts, worlds of solitude,
Where the sun smiles, and seasons teem in vain,
Unseen, and unenjoyed. Forsaking these,
O'er peopled plains they fair-diffusive flow,
And many a nation feed, and circle safe,
In their soft bosom, many a happy isle;
The seat of blameless Pan, yet undisturbed
By Christian crimes and Europe's cruel sons.
Thus pouring on they proudly seek the deep,
Whose vanquished tide, recoiling from the shock,
Yields to this liquid weight of half the globe,
And Ocean trembles for his green domain.

LAMENTABLE CONDITION OF MAN IN THE TROPICS. -NO
ARTS, SCIENCE, POETRY, OR FREEDOM.
But what avails this wondrous waste of wealth
This gay profusion of luxurious bliss-
This pomp of Nature? what their balmy meads,
Their powerful herbs, and Ceres void of pain?
By vagrant birds dispersed, and wafting winds;
What their unplanted fruits? what the cool
draughts,

The ambrosial food, rich gums, and spicy health,
Their forests yield? Their toiling insects what?
Their silky pride, and vegetable robes?

1 The river that runs through Siam, on whose banks a vast multitude of those insects called fire-flies make a beautiful appearance at night.

Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,
Beneath descending hills the caravan
Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
Th' impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
And Mecca saddens at the long delay.

OCEANIC TROPICAL STORMS; TYPHOONS; ECNEPHIA; HURRI-
CANES; TORNADOES; THE FOUNDERING SHIP.

But chief at sea, whose every flexile wave
Obeys the blast, the aërial tumult swells.
In the dread ocean, undulating wide,
Beneath the radiant line that girts the globe,

The circling Typhon, whirled from point to point,
Exhausting all the rage of all the sky,
And dire Ecnephia,' reign. Amid the heavens,
Falsely serene, deep in a cloudy speck 2
Compressed, the mighty tempest brooding dwells;
Of no regard save to the skilful 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 fixed the sailor stands.
Art is too slow by rapid fate oppressed,
His broad-winged vessel drinks the whelming tide,
Hid in the bosom of the black abyss.

VASCO DE GAMA.

With such mad seas the daring Gama 3 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 emerged The rising world of trade: the Genius, then,

Of navigation, that, in hopeless sloth,

Had slumbered on the vast Atlantic deep

For idle ages, starting, heard at last

The Lusitanian prince; who, Heaven-inspired,

To love of useful glory roused mankind,
And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.

THE SHARK; SLAVERS; VICTIMS.

Increasing still the terrors of these storms, His jaws horrific armed with three-fold fate, Here dwells the direful shark. Lured 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,

1 Typhon and Ecnephia, names of particular storms or hurricanes, known only between the tropics.

Called by sailors the Ox-eye, being in appearance at first no bigger.

* Vasco de Gama, the first who sailed round Africa, by the Cape of Good Hope, to the East Indies.

4 Don Henry, third son to John the First, King of Portugal. His strong genius to the discovery of new countries was the chief source of all the modern improvements in navigation.

When o'er this world, by equinoctial rains
Flooded immense, looks out the joyless sun,
And draws the copious stream: 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 wrapt,
Whose gloomy horrors yet no desperate foot
Has ever dared to pierce; then, wasteful, forth
Walks the dire Power of pestilent disease.
A thousand hideous fiends her course attend,
Sick nature blasting, and to heartless woe
And feeble desolation, casting down
The towering hopes and all the pride of man.

THE EPIDEMIC IN VERNON'S FLEET, AT CARTHAGENA, NEW
GRENADA, DESCRIBED.

Such as of late, at Carthagena, quenched The British fire. You, gallant Vernon, saw The miserable scene; you, pitying, saw To infant weakness sunk the warrior's arm; Saw the deep-racking pang, the ghastly form, The lip pale-quivering, and the beamless eye No more with ardor bright: you heard the groans Of agonizing ships, from shore to shore ; Heard nightly plunged amid the sullen waves The frequent corse; while on each other fixed, In sad presage, the blank assistants seemed, Silent, to ask, whom Fate would next demand.

THE PLAGUE; ETHIOPIA; CAIRO; FROM PUTRID LOCUSTS.— EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE ON THE PRINCE; JUDGE; TRADER; CITY; THE IMPRISONED VICTIM ; GENERAL SELFISHNESS; DESPAIR.

Her awful rage

What need I mention those inclement skies,
Where, frequent o'er the sickening city, Plague,
The fiercest child of Nemesis divine,
Descends? From Ethiopia's poisoned woods,
From stifled Cairo's filth and fetid fields
With locust armies putrefying heaped,1
This great destroyer sprung.
The brutes escape; man is her destined prey,
Intemperate man! and o'er his guilty domes
She draws a close incumbent cloud of death;
Uninterrupted by the living winds,
Forbid to blow a wholesome breeze; and stained
With many a mixture by the sun, suffused,
Of angry aspect. Princely wisdom, then,
Dejects his watchful eye; and from the hand
Of feeble justice, ineffectual, drop

The sword and balance: mute the voice of joy,
And hushed the clamor of the busy world.
Empty the streets, with uncouth verdure clad ;

1 These are the causes supposed to be the first origin of the plague, in Dr. Mead's elegant book on that subject.