Her wallowing womb of subterranean war
Waits but the fissure that my wave shall find,
To force the foldings of the rocky rind,
Crash your curst continent, and whirl on high
The vast avulsion vaulting through the sky,
Fling far the bursting fragments, scattering wide
Rocks, mountains, nations o’er the swallowing tide.
Plunging and surging with alternate sweep,
They storm the day-vault and lay bare the deep,
Toss, tumble, plow their place, then slow subside,
And swell each ocean as their bulk they hide;
Two oceans dasht in one! that climbs and roars,
And seeks in vain the exterminated shores,
The deep drencht hemisphere. Far sunk from day,
It crumbles, rolls, it churns the settling sea,
Turns up each prominence, heaves every side,
To pierce once more the landless length of tide;
Till some poized Pambamarca looms at last
A dim lone island in the watery waste,
Mourns all his minor mountains wreckt and hurl’d,
Stands the sad relic of a ruin’d world,
Attests the wrath our mother kept in store
And rues her judgments on the race she bore.
No saving Ark around him rides the main,
Nor Dove weak-wing’d her footing finds again;
His own bald eagle skims alone the sky,
Darts from all points of heaven her searching eye,
Kens through the gloom her ancient rock of rest
And finds her cavern’d crag, her solitary nest.
Thus toned the Titan his tremendous knell
And lasht his ocean to a loftier swell;
Earth groans responsive and with laboring woes
Leans o’er the surge and stills the storm he throws.
Fathers and friends, I know the boding fears
Of angry genii and of rending spheres
Assail not souls like yours; whom science bright
Through shadowy nature leads with surer light;
For whom she strips the heavens of love and hate,
Strikes from Jove’s hand the brandisht bolt of fate,
Gives each effect its own indubious cause,
Divides her moral from her physic laws,
Shows where the virtues find their nurturing food,
And men their motives to be just and good.
You scorn the Titan’s threat; nor shall I strain
The powers of pathos in a task so vain
As Afric’s wrongs to sing; for what avails
To harp for you these known familiar tales;
To tongue mute misery, and re-rack the soul
With crimes oft copied from that bloody scroll
Where Slavery pens her woes? though ’tis but there
We learn the weight that mortal life can bear.
The tale might startle still the accustom’d ear,
Still shake the nerve that pumps the pearly tear,
Melt every heart and through the nation gain
Full many a voice to break the barbarous chain.
But why to sympathy for guidance fly,
(Her aids uncertain and of scant supply)
When your own self-excited sense affords
A guide more sure, and every sense accords?
Where strong self-interest join’d with duty lies,
Where doing right demands no sacrifice,
Where profit, pleasure, life-expanding fame
League their allurements to support the claim,
’Tis safest there the impleaded cause to trust;
Men well instructed will be always just.
From slavery then your rising realms to save,
Regard the master, notice not the slave;
Consult alone for freemen, and bestow
Your best, your only cares to keep them so.
Tyrants are never free; and, small and great,
All masters must be tyrants soon or late;
So nature works; and oft the lordling knave
Turns out at once a tyrant and a slave,
Struts, cringes, bullies, begs, as courtiers must,
Makes one a god, another treads in dust,
Fears all alike, and filches whom he can,
But knows no equal, finds no friend in man.
Ah, would you not be slaves, with lords and kings,
Then be not masters; there the danger springs.
The whole crude system that torments this earth,
Of rank, privation, privilege of birth,
False honor, fraud, corruption, civil jars,
The rage of conquest and the curse of wars,
Pandora’s total shower, all ills combined
That erst o’erwhelm’d and still distress mankind,
Boxt up secure in your deliberate hand,
Wait your behest, to fix or fly this land.
Equality of Right is nature’s plan;
And following nature is the march of man.
Whene’er he deviates in the least degree,
When, free himself, he would be more than free,
The baseless column, rear’d to bear his bust,
Falls as he mounts and whelms him in the dust.
See Rome’s rude sires, with autocratic gait,
Tread down their tyrant and erect their state;
Their state secured, they deem it wise and brave
That every freeman should command a slave,
And flusht with franchise of his camp and town,
Rove through the world and hunt the nations down;
Master and man the same vile spirit gains,
Rome chains the world, and wears herself the chains.
Mark modern Europe with her feudal codes,
Serfs, villains, vassals, nobles, kings and gods,
All slaves of different grades, corrupt and curst
With high and low, for senseless rank athirst,
Wage endless wars; not fighting to be free,
But cujum pecus, whose base herd they’ll be.
Too much of Europe, here transplanted o’er,
Nursed feudal feelings on your tented shore,
Brought sable serfs from Afric, call’d it gain,
And urged your sires to forge the fatal chain.
But now, the tents o’erturn’d, the war dogs fled,
Now fearless Freedom rears at last her head
Matcht with celestial Peace—my friends, beware
To shade the splendors of so bright a pair;
Complete their triumph, fix their firm abode,
Purge all privations from your liberal code,
Restore their souls to men, give earth repose,
And save your sons from slavery, wars and woes.
Based on its rock of Right your empire lies,
On walls of wisdom let the fabric rise;
Preserve your principles, their force unfold,
Let nations prove them and let kings behold.
Equality, your first firm-grounded stand;
Then free election; then your federal band;
This holy Triad should forever shine
The great compendium of all rights divine,
Creed of all schools, whence youths by millions draw
Their themes of right, their decalogues of law;
Till men shall wonder (in these codes inured)
How wars were made, how tyrants were endured.
Then shall your works of art superior rise,
Your fruits perfume a larger length of skies,
Canals careering climb your sunbright hills,
Vein the green slopes and strow their nurturing rills,
Through tunnel’d heights and sundering ridges glide,
Rob the rich west of half Kenhawa’s tide,
Mix your wide climates, all their stores confound,
And plant new ports in every midland mound.
Your lawless Mississippi, now who slimes
And drowns and desolates his waste of climes,
Ribb’d with your dikes, his torrent shall restrain
And ask your leave to travel to the main;
Won from his wave while rising cantons smile,
Rear their glad nations and reward their toil.
Thus Nile’s proud flood to human hands of
