Ply their own toils and wield their local powers,
Their present state in all its views disclose,
Their gleams of happiness, their shades of woes,
Plodding in various stages through the range
Of man’s unheeded but unceasing change.
Columbus traced them with experienced eye
And class’d and counted all the flags that fly;
He markt what tribes still rove the savage waste,
What cultured realms the sweets of plenty taste;
Where arts and virtues fix their golden reign,
Or peace adorns or slaughter dyes the plain.
He saw the restless Tartar proud to roam,
Move with his herds and pitch a transient home;
Tibet’s long tracts and China’s fixt domain,
Dull as their despots, yield their cultured grain;
Cambodia, Siam, Asia’s myriad isles
And old Indostan, with their wealthy spoils
Attract adventures masters, and o’ershade
Their sunbright ocean with the wings of trade.
Arabian robbers, Syrian Kurds combined,
Create their deserts and infest mankind;
The Turk’s dim crescent, like a day-struck star,
As Russia’s eagle shades their haunts of war,
Shrinks from insulted Europe, who divide
The shatter’d empire to the Pontic tide.
He traced impervious Afric, where alone
She lies encircled with the verdant zone
That lines her endless coast and still sustains
Her northern pirates and her eastern swains,
Mourns her interior tribes purloin’d away
And chain’d and sold beyond Atlantic day.
Brazilla’s wilds, Mackensie’s savage lands
With bickering strife inflame their furious bands;
Atlantic isles and Europe’s cultured shores
Heap their vast wealth, exchange their growing stores,
All arts inculcate, new discoveries plan,
Tease and torment but school the race of man.
While his own federal states, extending far,
Calm their brave sons now breathing from the war,
Unfold their harbors, spread their genial soil
And welcome freemen to the cheerful toil.
A sight so solemn, as it varied round,
Fill’d his fond heart with reveries profound;
He felt the infinitude of thoughts that pass
And guide and govern that enormous mass.
The cares that agitate, the creeds that blind,
The woes that waste the many-master’d kind,
The distance great that still remains to trace,
Ere sober sense can harmonize the race,
Held him suspense, imprest with reverence meek,
And choked his utterance as he wish’d to speak:
When Hesper thus: The paths they here pursue,
Wide as they seem unfolding to thy view,
Show but a point in that long circling course
Which cures their weakness and confirms their force,
Lends that experience which alone can close
The scenes of strife and give the world repose.
Yet here thou seest the same progressive plan
That draws for mutual succour man to man,
From twain to tribe, from tribe to realm dilates,
In federal union groups a hundred states,
Through all their turns with gradual scale ascends,
Their powers, their passions and their interest blends;
While growing arts their social virtues spread,
Enlarge their compacts and unlock their trade;
Till each remotest clan, by commerce join’d,
Links in the chain that binds all humankind,
Their bloody banners sink in darkness furl’d
And one white flag of peace triumphant walks the world.
As infant streams, from oozing earth at first
With feeble force and lonely murmurs burst,
From myriad unseen fountains draw the rills
And curl contentious round their hundred hills,
Meet, froth and foam, their dashing currents swell,
O’er crags and rocks their furious course impel,
Impetuous plunging plow the mounds of earth
And tear the fostering flanks that gave them birth;
Mad with the strength they gain, they thicken deep
Their muddy waves and slow and sullen creep,
O’erspread whole regions in their lawless pride,
Then stagnate long, then shrink and curb their tide;
Anon more tranquil grown, with steadier sway,
Through broader banks they shape their seaward way,
From different climes converging, join and spread
Their mingled waters in one widening bed,
Profound, transparent; till the liquid zone
Bands half the globe and drinks the golden sun,
Sweeps onward still the still expanding plain
And moves majestic to the boundless main.
’Tis thus Society’s small sources rise;
Through passions wild her infant progress lies;
Fear, with its host of follies, errors, woes,
Creates her obstacles and forms her foes;
Misguided interest, local pride withstand,
Till long-tried ills her growing views expand,
Till tribes and states and empires find their place,
Whose mutual wants her widest walks embrace;
Enlighten’d interest, moral sense at length,
Combine their aids to elevate her strength,
Lead o’er the world her peace-commanding sway
And light her steps with everlasting day.
From that markt stage of man we now behold
More rapid strides his coming paths unfold;
His continents are traced, his islands found,
His well taught sails on all his billows bound,
His varying wants their new discoveries ply
And seek in earth’s whole range their sure supply.
First of his future stages, thou shalt see
His trade unfetter’d and his ocean free.
From thy young states the code consoling springs
To strip from vulture War his naval wings;
In views so just all Europe’s powers combine,
And earth’s full voice approves the vast design.
Though still her inland realms the combat wage
And hold in lingering broils the unsettled age,
Yet no rude shocks that shake the crimson plain
Shall more disturb the labors of the main;
The main that spread so wide his travell’d way,
Liberal as air, impartial as the day,
That all thy race the common wealth might share,
Exchange their fruits and fill their treasures there,
Their speech assimilate, their counsels blend,
Till mutual interest fix the mutual friend.
Now see, my son, the destined hour advance;
Safe in their leagues commercial navies dance,
Leave their curst cannon on the quay-built strand
And like the stars of heaven a fearless course command.
The Hero lookt; beneath his wondering eyes
Gay streamers lengthen round the seas and skies;
The countless nations open all their stores,
Load every wave and crowd the lively shores;
Bright sails in mingling mazes streak the air,
And commerce triumphs o’er the rage of war.
From Baltic streams, from Elba’s opening side,
From Rhine’s long course and Texel’s laboring tide,
From Gaul, from Albion, tired of fruitless fight,
From green Hibernia, clothed in recent light,
Hispania’s strand that two broad oceans lave,
From Senegal and Gambia’s golden wave,
Tago the rich and Douro’s viny shores,
The sweet Canaries and the soft Azores,
Commingling barks their mutual banners hail
And drink by turns the same distending gale.
Through Calpe’s strait that leads the Midland main,
From Adria, Pontus, Nile’s resurgent reign,
The sails look forth and wave their bandrols high
And ask their breezes from a broader sky.
Where Asia’s isles and utmost shorelands bend,
Like rising suns the sheeted masts ascend;
Coast after coast their flowing flags unroll,
From Deimen’s rocks to Zembla’s ice-propt pole,
Where Behren’s pass collapsing worlds divides,
Where California breaks the billowy tides,
Peruvian streams their golden
