THE TASK.

BOOK II.

THE TIME-PIECE.

Он for a lodge in some vaft wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,

Where rumour of oppreffion and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or fuccefsful war,

Might never reach me more. My ear is pained,
My foul is fick, with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage, with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,

It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is fevered as the flax,
That falls afunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not coloured like his own; and having power

To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause Dooms and devotes him as a lawful prey. Lands interfected by a narrow frith Abhor each other. Mountains interpofed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one. Thus man devotes his brother, and deftroys; And, worse than all, and moft to be deplored As human nature's broadeft, fouleft blot, Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his fweat With ftripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart Weeps, when the fees inflicted on a beast. Then what is man? And what man, seeing this, And having human feelings, does not blush, And hang his head, to think himself a man? I would not have a flave to till my ground,

To

carry me, to fan me while I sleep,

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth,
That finews bought and fold have ever earned.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Juft eftimation prized above all price,

I had much rather be myself the slave,

And wear the bonds, than faften them on him.

We have no flaves at home.-Then why abroad?

And they themselves once ferried over the wave,
That parts us, are emancipate and loofed.
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 such a warrant to destroy?
When did the waves fo haughtily overleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?
Fires from beneath, and meteors † from above,
* Alluding to the calamities in Jamaica.

Auguft 18, 1783.

Portentous, unexampled, unexplained,

And

Have kindled beacons in the skies; and the old
crazy earth has had her fhaking fits
More frequent, and foregone her ufual rest.
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 close of all? But grant her end
More diftant, and that prophecy demands
A longer refpite, unaccomplished yet;
Still they are frowning fignals, and bespeak
Difpleafure in his breaft, who fmites the earth
Or heals it, makes it languifh or rejoice.
And 'tis but feemly, that, where all deferve
And ftand exposed by common peccancy
To what no few have felt, there fhould be peace,
And brethren in calamity fhould love.

Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scattered, where the shapely column ftood.
Her palaces are duft. In all her streets

The voice of finging and the sprightly chord

* Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Afta during the whole fummer of 1783.

Are filent.

Revelry, and dance, and show

Suffer a fyncope and folemn paufe;

While God performs upon the trembling stage
Of his own works his dreadful part alone.
How does the earth receive him?-With what figns
Of gratulation and delight her king?
Pours fhe not all her choiceft fruits abroad,
Her sweetest 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 rise,

The rivers die into offenfive pools,

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

What folid was, by transformation strange,
Grows fluid; and the fix'd and rooted earth,
Tormented into billows, heaves and fwells,
Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl