Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their fhackles fall.
That is noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the bleffing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire; that where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

Sure there is need of focial intercourse, Benevolence, and peace, and mutual aid, Between the nations in a world, that seems To toll the death-bell of its own decease, And by the voice of all its elements

To preach the general doom*. When were the winds Let flip with fuch a warrant to deftroy?

When did the waves so haughtily overleap

Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?

Fires from beneath, and meteors + from above,
Portentous, unexampled, unexplained,

Have kindled beacons in the skies; and the old

And crazy earth has had her shaking fits

More frequent, and foregone her usual rest.

Alluding to the calamities in Jamaica.
† August 18, 1783.

Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet seem to fail,
And Nature with a dim and fickly eye
To wait the clofe of all? But grant her end
More diftant, and that prophecy demands
A longer refpite, unaccomplished yet;
Still they are frowning fignals, and bespeak
Difpleasure in his breaft, who fmites the earth
Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice.
And 'tis but feemly, that, where all deferve
And ftand exposed by common peccancy
To what no few have felt, there should be peace,
And brethren in calamity should love.

Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now

Lie fcattered, where the shapely column ftood.
Her palaces are duft. In all her streets

The voice of finging and the sprightly chord
Are filent. Revelry, and dance, and show
Suffer a fyncope and folemn pause;

While God performs upon the trembling stage
Of his own works his dreadful part alone.

How does the earth receive him?-With what figns

Alluding to the fog, that covered both Europe and Afia during the whole fummer of 1783.

Of gratulation and delight her king
Pours the not all her choiceft fruits abroad,
Her fweeteft flowers, her aromatic gums,
Difclofing paradife wherever he treads?

She quakes at his approach. Her hollow womb,
Conceiving thunders, through a thousand deeps
And fiery caverns, roars beneath his foot.

The hills move lightly, and the mountains smoke,
For he has touched them. From the extremeft point
Of elevation down into the abyss

His wrath is busy, and his frown is felt.

The rocks fall headlong, and the vallies rife,

The rivers die into offenfive pools,

And, charged with putrid verdure, breathe a grofs
And mortal nuisance into all the air.

What folid was, by transformation ftrange,
Grows fluid; and the fixt and rooted earth,
Tormented into billows, heaves and swells,
Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl
Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immenfe
The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs
And agonies of human and of brute
Multitudes, fugitive on every fide,
And fugitive in vain. The fylvan fcene
Migrates uplifted; and, with all its foil
Alighting in far diftant fields, finds out

A new poffeffor, and furvives the change.
Ocean has caught the frenzy, and, upwrought
To an enormous and overbearing height,
Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice,
Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore
Refiftlefs. Never such a sudden flood,

Upridged fo high, and fent on such a charge,
Poffeffed an inland fcene. Where now the throng,
That preffed the beach, and, hafty to depart,
Looked to the fea for fafety? They are gone,
Gone with the refluent wave into the deep-
A prince with half his people! Ancient towers,
And roofs embattled high, the gloomy scenes,
Where beauty oft and lettered worth consume
Life in the unproductive shades of death,
Fall prone: the pale inhabitants come forth,
And, happy in their unforeseen release
From all the rigours of restraint, enjoy

The terrors of the day, that fets them free.
Who then that has thee, would not hold thee faft,
Freedom! whom they that lofe thee fo regret,
That even a judgment, making way for thee,
Seems in their eyes a mercy for thy fake?

Such evil fin hath wrought; and fuch a flame Kindled in heaven, that it burns down to earth,

And in the furious inqueft, that it makes

On God's behalf, lays wafte his fairest works.
The very elements, though each be meant

The minifter of man, to serve his wants,
Confpire against him. With his breath he draws
A plague into his blood; and cannot use
Life's neceffary means, but he muft die.
Storms rife to overwhelm him: or if stormy winds
Rife not, the waters of the deep shall rise,
And, needing none affiftance of the ftorm,
Shall roll themselves afhore, and reach him there.
The earth fhall shake him out of all his holds,
Or make his house his grave: nor fo content,
Shall counterfeit the motions of the flood,
And drown him in her dry and dufty gulphs.
What then!-were they the wicked above all,
And we the righteous, whose faft anchored isle
Moved not, while their's was rocked, like a light skiff,
The fport of every wave? No: none are clear,
And none than we more guilty. But, where all
Stand chargeable with guilt, and to the shafts
Of wrath obnoxious, God may choose his mark:
May punish, if he please, the less, to warn
The more, malignant. If he spared not them,
Tremble and be amazed at thine escae,

Far guiltier England, left he spare not thee!