My rock-raised world in Alleganian clouds,
The Atlantic waste its coral kingdom spread,
And scaly nations here their gambols led;
Till by degrees, through following tracts of time,
From laboring ocean rose the sedgy clime,
As from unloaded waves, the rising sand
Swell’d into light and gently drew to land.
For, moved by trade winds o’er the flaming zone,
The waves roll westward with the constant sun,
Meet my firm isthmus, scoop that gulfy bed,
Wheel to the north and here their current spread.
Those ravaged banks, that move beneath their force,
Borne on the tide and lost along their course,
Create the shore, consolidate the soil
And hither lead the enlighten’d steps of toil.
Think not the lust of gold shall here annoy,
Enslave the nation and its nerve destroy.
No useles mine these northern hills enclose,
No ruby ripens and no diamond glows;
But richer stores and rocks of useful mold
Repay in wealth the penury of gold.
Freedom’s unconquer’d race with healthy toil
Shall lop the grove and warm the furrow’d soil,
From iron ridges break the rugged ore
And plant with men the man-ennobling shore;
Sails, villas, towers and temples round them heave,
Shine o’er the realms and light the distant wave.
Nor think the native tribes shall rue the day
That leads our heroes o’er the watery way;
A cause like theirs no mean device can mar,
Nor bigot rage nor sacerdotal war.
From eastern tyrants driven, resolved and brave,
To build new states or seek a distant grave,
Our sons shall try a new colonial plan,
To tame the soil, but spare their kindred man.
Through Europe’s wilds when feudal nations spread,
The pride of conquest every legion led.
Each fur-clad chief, by servile crowds adored,
O’er conquer’d realms assumed the name of lord,
Built the proud castle, ranged the savage wood,
Fired his grim host to frequent fields of blood,
With new made honors lured his subject bands,
Price of their lives, and purchase of their lands;
For names and titles bade the world resign
Their faith, their freedom and their rights divine.
Contending baronies their terrors spread,
And slavery follow’d where the standard led;
Till, little tyrants by the great o’erthrown,
The spoils of nobles build the regal crown;
Wealth, wisdom, virtue, every claim of man
Unguarded fall to consummate the plan.
Ambitious cares, that nature never gave,
Torment alike the monarch and the slave,
Through all degrees in gradual pomp ascend,
Honor the name, but tyranny the end.
Far different honors here the heart shall claim,
Sublimer objects, deeds of happier fame;
A new creation waits the western shore,
And moral triumphs o’er monarchic power.
Thy freeborn sons, with genius unconfined,
Nor sloth can slacken nor a tyrant bind;
With self-wrought fame and worth internal blest
No venal star shall brighten on their breast,
Nor king-created name nor courtly art
Damp the bold thought or desiccate the heart.
Above all fraud, beyond all titles great,
Truth in their voice and sceptres at their feet,
Like sires of unborn states they move sublime,
Look empires through and span the breadth of time,
Hold o’er the world, that men may choose from far,
The palm of peace, or scourge of barbarous war;
Till their example every nation charms,
Commands its friendship and its rage disarms.
Here social man a second birth shall find,
And a new range of reason lift his mind,
Feed his strong intellect with purer light,
A nobler sense of duty and of right,
The sense of liberty; whose holy fire
His life shall temper and his laws inspire,
Purge from all shades the world-embracing scope
That prompts his genius and expands his hope.
When first his form arose erect on earth,
Parturient nature hail’d the wondrous birth,
With fairest limbs and finest fibres wrought
And framed for vast and various toils of thought.
To aid his promised powers with loftier flight
And stretch his views beyond corporeal sight,
Prometheus came and from the floods of day
Sunn’d his clear soul with heaven’s internal ray,
The expanding spark divine, that round him springs
And leads and lights him through the immense of things,
Probes the dense earth, explores the soundless main,
Remolds their mass through all its threefold reign,
O’er great, o’er small extends his physic laws,
Impalms the empyrean or dissects a gaz,
Weighs the vast orbs of heaven, bestrides the sky,
Walks on the windows of an insect’s eye;
Turns then to self, more curious still to trace
The whirls of passion that involve the race,
That cloud with mist the visual lamp of God,
And plunge the poniard in fraternal blood.
Here fails his light. The proud Titanian ray
O’er physic nature sheds indeed its day;
Yet leaves the moral in chaotic jars,
The spoil of violence, the sport of wars,
Presents contrasted parts of one great plan,
Earth, heaven subdued, but man at swords with man;
His wars, his errors into science grown,
And the great cause of all his ills unknown.
But when he steps on these regenerate shores,
His mind unfolding for superior powers,
Freedom, his new Prometheus, here shall rise,
Light her new torch in my refulgent skies,
Touch with a stronger life his opening soul,
Of moral systems fix the central goal,
Her own resplendent essence. Thence expand
The rays of reason that illume the land;
Thence equal rights proceed and equal laws,
Thence holy Justice all her reverence draws;
Truth with untarnish’d beam descending thence
Strikes every eye, and quickens every sense,
Bids bright Instruction spread her ample page
To drive dark dogmas from the inquiring age,
Ope the true treasures of the earth and skies
And teach the student where his object lies.
Sun of the moral world! effulgent source
Of man’s best wisdom and his steadiest force,
Soul-searching Freedom! here assume thy stand
And radiate hence to every distant land;
Point out and prove how all the scenes of strife,
The shock of states, the impassion’d broils of life,
Spring from unequal sway; and how they fly
Before the splendor of thy peaceful eye;
Unfold at last the genuine social plan,
The mind’s full scope, the dignity of man,
Bold nature bursting through her long disguise
And nations daring to be just and wise.
Yes! righteous Freedom, heaven and earth and sea
Yield or withold their various gifts for thee;
Protected Industry beneath thy reign
Leads all the virtues in her filial train;
Courageous Probity with brow serene
And Temperance calm presents her placid mien;
Contentment, Moderation, Labor, Art
Mold the new man and humanize his heart;
To public plenty private ease dilates,
Domestic peace to harmony of states.
Protected Industry, careering far,
Detects the cause and cures the rage of war
And sweeps with forceful arm to their last graves
Kings from the earth and pirates from the waves.
But slow proceeds the work. Long toils, my son,
Must
