And sly confessors with their secret scroll,
Accusers hired, for each conviction paid,
Judges retain’d and witnesses by trade.
Dragged from a thousand jails her victim trains,
Jews, Moors and Christians clank alike their chains,
Read their known sentence in her fiery eyes
And breathe to heaven their unavailing cries;
Lasht on the pile their writhing bodies turn
And veil’d in doubling smoke begin to burn.
Where the flames open, lo their limbs in vain
Reach out for help, distorted by the pain;
Till folded in the fires they disappear
And not a sound invades the startled ear.
See Philip throned in insolence and pride
Enjoy their wailings and their pangs deride;
While o’er the same dread scenes on Albion’s isles
His well-taught spouse, the cruel Mary smiles.
What clouds of smoke hang heavy round the shore!
What altars hecatomb’d with christian gore!
Her sire’s best friends, the wise, the brave, the good,
Roll in the flames or fly the land of blood.
To Gallia’s plains the maddening frenzy turns,
Religion raves and civil discord burns;
Leaguers and Huguenots their vengeance pour,
They swell Bartholemy’s wide feast of gore,
Alternate victors bid their gibbets rise,
And the foul stench of victims chokes the skies.
Now cease the factions with the Valois line,
And Bourbon’s virtues every voice combine.
Quell’d by his fame, the furious sects accord,
Europe respires beneath his guardian sword;
Batavia’s states to independence soar
And curb the cohorts of Iberian power.
From Albion’s ports her infant navies heave,
Stretch forth and thunder on the Flandrian wave;
Her Howard there first foils the force of Spain
And there begins her mastery of the main.
The Seraph spoke; when full beneath their eye,
A new-form’d squadron rose along the sky,
High on the tallest deck majestic shone
Sage Raleigh, pointing to the western sun;
His eye, bent forward, ardent and sublime,
Seem’d piercing nature and evolving time;
Beside him stood a globe, whose figures traced
A future empire in each present waste;
All former works of men behind him shone
Graved by his hand in ever during stone;
On his calm brow a various crown displays
The hero’s laurel and the scholar’s bays;
His graceful limbs in steely mail were drest,
The bright star burning on his lofty breast;
His sword high waving flash’d the solar ray,
Illumed the shrouds and rainbow’d far the spray;
The smiling crew rose resolute and brave,
And the glad sails hung bounding o’er the wave.
Storms of wild Hatteras, suspend your roar,
Ye tumbling billows, cease to shake the shore;
Look through the doubling clouds, thou lamp of day,
Teach the bold Argonauts their chartless way;
Your viewless capes, broad Chesapeake, unfold
And show your promised Colchis fleeced with gold.
No plundering squadron your new Jason brings;
No pirate demigods nor hordes of kings
From shore to shore a faithless miscreant steers
To steal a maid and leave a sire in tears,
But yon wise chief conducts with careful ken
The queen of colonies, the best of men,
To wake to fruitful life your slumbering soil
And rear an empire with the hand of toil.
Your fond Medea too, whose dauntless breast
All danger braves to screen her hunted guest,
Shall quit her native tribe, but never share
The crimes and sufferings of the Colchian fair.
Blest Pocahontas, fear no lurking guile;
Thy hero’s love shall well reward thy smile.
Ah, sooth the wanderer in his desperate plight,
Hide him by day and calm his cares by night;
Though savage nations with thy vengeful sire
Pursue their victim with unceasing ire,
And though their threats thy startled ear assail,
Let virtue’s voice o’er filial fears prevail.
Fly with the faithful youth, his steps to guide,
Pierce the known thicket, breast the fordless tide,
Elude the scout, avoid the ambusht line
And lead him safely to his friends and thine;
For thine shall be his friends, his heart, his name;
His camp shall shout, his nation boast thy fame.
But now the bay unfolds a passage wide
And leads the squadron up the freshening tide;
Where Pohatan spreads deep her sylvan soil,
And grassy lawns allure the steps of toil.
Here, lodged in peace, they tread the welcome land,
An instant harvest waves beneath their hand,
Spontaneous fruits their easy cares beguile,
And opening fields in living culture smile.
With joy Columbus view’d; when thus his voice:
Ye grove-clad shores, ye generous hosts rejoice;
Exchange your benefits, your gifts combine;
What nature fashions, let her sons refine.
Be thou, my seer, the people’s guardian friend,
Protect their virtues and their lives defend;
May wealth and wisdom with their arts unfold,
Yet save, oh save them from the thirst of gold.
Let the poor guardless natives never feel
The flamen’s fraud, the soldier’s fateful steel;
But learn the blessings that alone attend
On civil rights where social virtues blend,
In these brave leaders find a welcome guide,
And rear their fanes and empires by their side.
Smile, great Hesperia, smile; the star of morn
Illumes thy heavens and bids thy day be born;
Thy opening forests show the work begun,
Thy plains unshaded drink a purer sun;
Yield now thy bounties, load the laboring main,
Give birth to nations, and begin thy reign.
The Hero spoke; when thus the Saint rejoin’d,
Approved his joy and feasted still his mind:
Well may thy voice, with patriarch pride elate,
Burst forth triumphant at a scene so great.
Here springs indeed the day, since time began,
The brightest, broadest, happiest morn of man.
In these prime settlements thy raptures trace
The germ, the genius of a sapient race,
Predestined here to methodize and mold
New codes of empire to reform the old.
A work so vast a second world required,
By oceans bourn’d, from elder states retired;
Where, uncontaminated, unconfined,
Free contemplation might expand the mind,
To form, fix, prove the well-adjusted plan
And base and build the commonwealth of man.
This arm, that leads the stellar host of even,
That stretcht o’er yon rude ridge the western heaven,
That heal’d the wounded earth when from her side
The moon burst forth and left the South Sea tide,
That calm’d these elements and taught them where
To mold their mass and rib the crusted sphere,
Line the closed continent with wrecks of life,
And recommence their generating strife,
That rear’d the mountain, spread the subject plain,
Led the long stream and roll’d the billowy main,
Stole from retiring tides the growing strand,
Heaved the green banks, the shadowy inlets plann’d,
Strow’d the wild fruitage, gave the beast his place
And form’d the region for thy filial race—
This arm prepared their future seats of state,
Design’d their limits and prescribed their date.
When first the staggering globe its breach repair’d,
And this bold hemisphere its shoulders rear’d,
Back to those heights, whose hovering
