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"ORGANIC LIFE beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the wat'ry mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,

New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.

"Thus the tall oak, the giant of the wood,
Which bears Britannia's thunders on the flood;
The whale, unmeasur'd monster of the main,
The lordly lion, monarch of the plain,
The eagle soaring in the realms of air,
Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare,
Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd,
Of language, reason, and reflection proud,
With brow erect, who scorns this earthy sod,
And styles himself the image of his God;
Arose from rudiments of form and sense,
An embryon point, or microscopic ens!

"Now in vast shoals beneath the brineless tide,
On earth's firm crust testaceous tribes reside;
Age after age expands the peopled plain,
The tenants perish, but their cells remain;
Whence coral walls and sparry hills ascend
From pole to pole, and round the line extend.

"Next, when imprison'd fires in central caves
Burst the firm earth, and drank the headlong waves;
And, as new airs with dread explosion swell,
Form'd lava-isles, and continents of shell;

Pil'd rocks on rocks, on mountains mountains raised,
And high in heaven the first volcanoes blazed;
In countless swarms an insect-myriad moves
From sea-fan gardens, and from coral groves;
Leaves the cold caverns of the deep, and creeps
On shelving shores, or climbs on rocky steeps.
As in dry air the sea-born stranger roves,
Each muscle quickens, and each sense improves;
Cold gills aquatic form respiring lungs,
And sounds aerial flow from slimy tongues.

"So trapa rooted in pellucid tides,

In countless threads her breathing leaves divides,
Waves her bright tresses in the watʼry mass,
And drinks with gelid gills the vital gas;

Then broader leaves in shadowy files advance,
Spread o'er the crystal flood their green expanse;

And, as in air the adherent dew exhales,
Court the warm sun, and breathe ethereal gales.

"So still the tadpole cleaves the wat❜ry vale
With balanc'd fins, and undulating tail;
New lungs and limbs proclaim his second birth,
Breathe the dry air, and bound upon the earth.
So from deep lakes the dread musquito springs,
Drinks the soft breeze, and dries his tender wings,
In twinkling squadrons cuts his airy way,
Dips his red trunk in blood, and man his prey.

"So still the diodons, amphibious tribe,
With two-fold lungs the sea or air imbibe;
Allied to fish, the lizard cleaves the flood
With one-cell'd heart, and dark frigescent blood;
Half-reasoning beavers long-unbreathing dart
Thro' Erie's waves with perforated heart;
With gills and lungs respiring lampreys steer,
Kiss the rude rocks, and suck till they adhere;
The lazy remora's inhaling lips,

Hung on the keel, retard the struggling ships;
With gills pulmonic breathes the enormous whale,
And spouts aquatic columns to the gale;
Sports on the shining wave at noontide hours,
And shifting rainbows crest the rising showers.

"So erst, ere rose the science to record
In letter'd syllables the volant word;
Whence chemic arts, disclos'd in pictur'd lines,
Liv'd to mankind by hieroglyphic signs;

And clustering stars, pourtray'd on mimic spheres,
Assumed the forms of lions, bulls, and bears;
-So erst, as Egypt's rude designs explain,
Rose young DIONE from the shoreless main;
Type of organic Nature! source of bliss!
Emerging Beauty from the vast abyss!
Sublime on Chaos borne, the Goddess stood,
And smil'd enchantment on the troubled flood;
The warring elements to peace restor❜d,
And young Reflection wonder'd and ador'd,"

EXTENT of MORAL EVIL.

[From the same.]

OW few," the Muse in plaintive accents cries,

H And mingles with her words pathetic sighs.—
HOW

"How

"How few, alas! in Nature's wide domains
The sacred charm of SYMPATHY restrains!
Uncheck'd desires from appetite commence,
And pure reflection yields to selfish sense!
-Blest is the sage, who, learn'd in Nature's laws,
With nice distinction marks effect and cause;
Who views the insatiate grave with eye sedate,
Nor fears thy voice, inexorable Fate!

"When War, the demon, lifts his banner high,
And loud artillery rends the affrighted sky;
Swords clash with swords, on horses horses rush,
Man tramples man, and nations nations crush;
Death his vast sithe with sweep enormous wields,
And shudd'ring Pity quits the sanguine fields.

"The wolf, escorted by his milk-drawn dam,
Unknown to mercy, tears the guiltless lamb;
The tow'ring eagle, darting from above,
Unfeeling rends the inoffensive dove;

The lamb and dove on living nature feed,
Crop the young herb, or crush the embryon seed.
Nor spares the loud owl in her dusky flight,
Smit with sweet notes, the minstrel of the night;
Nor spares, enamour'd of his radiant form,
The hungry nightingale the glowing worm;
Who with bright lamp alarms the midnight hour,
Climbs the green stem, and slays the sleeping flower.

"Fell œstrus buries, in her rapid course,
Her countless brood in stag, or bull, or horse;
Whose hungry larva eats its living way,
Hatch'd by the warmth, and issues into day.
The wing'd ichneumon for her embryon young
Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng.
The cruel larva mines its silky course,
And tears the vitals of its fost'ring nurse.
While fierce libellula, with jaws of steel
Ingulfs an insect-province at a meal;

Contending bee-swarms rise on rustling wings,
And slay their thousands with envenom'd stings.

"Yes! smiling Flora drives her armed car
Thro' the thick ranks of vegetable war;
Herb, shrub, and tree, with strong emotions rise
For light and air, and battle in the skies ;
Whose roots diverging with opposing toil
Contend below for moisture and for soil;
Round the tall elm the flatt'ring ivies bend,

And strangle, as they clasp, their struggling friend;

Envenom'd

Envenom'd dews from mancinella flow,
And scald with caustic touch the tribes below;
Dense shadowy leaves on stems aspiring borne
With blight and mildew thin the realms of corn;
And insect hordes with restless tooth devour
The unfolded bud, and pierce the ravell'd flower.

"In ocean's pearly haunts, the waves beneath
Sits the grim monarch of insatiate Death;
The shark rapacious with descending blow
Darts on the scaly brood, that swims below;
The crawling crocodiles, beneath that move,
Arrest with rising jaw the tribes above;
With monstrous gape sepulchral whales devour
Shoals at a gulp, a million in an hour.
-Air, earth, and ocean, to astonish'd day
One scene of blood, one mighty tomb display!
From Hunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd,
And one great slaughter-house the warring world!

"The brow of man erect, with thought elate,
Ducks to the mandate of resistless fate;
Nor Love retains him, nor can Virtue save
Her sages, saints, or heroes from the grave.
While cold and hunger by defect oppress,
Repletion, heat, and labour by excess,
The whip, the sting, the spur, the fiery brand,
And, cursed Slavery! thy iron hand;
And led by Luxury Disease's trains,
Load human life with unextinguish'd pains.

"Here laughs Ebriety more fell than arms,
And thins the nations with her fatal charms,
With Gout, and Hydrops groaning in her train,
And cold Debility, and grinning Pain,
With harlot's, smiles deluded man salutes,
Revenging all his cruelties to brutes !
There the curst spells of Superstition blind,
And fix her fetters on the tortured mind;
She bids in dreams tormenting shapes appear,
With shrieks that shock Imagination's ear,
E'en o'er the grave a deeper shadow flings,

And maddening Conscience darts a thousand stings.

"There writhing Mania sits on Reason's throne,
Or Melancholy marks it for her own,
Sheds o'er the scene a voluntary gloom,
Requests oblivion, and demands the tomb.
And last Association's train suggest

Ideal ills, that harrow up the breast,

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Call

Call for the dead from Time's o'erwhelming main,
And bid departed Sorrow live again.

"Here ragged Avarice guards with bolted door
His useless treasures from the starving poor;
Loads the lorn hours with misery and care,
And lives a beggar to enrich his heir.

Unthinking crowds thy forms, Imposture, gull,
A saint in sackcloth, or a wolf in wool.

While mad with foolish fame, or drunk with power,
Ambition slays his thousands in an hour;
Demoniac Envy scowls with haggard mien,
And blights the bloom of other's joys, unseen;
Or wrathful Jealousy invades the grove,
And turns to night meridian beams of Love!

"Here wide o'er earth impetuous waters sweep,
And fields and forests rush into the deep;
Or dread Volcano with explosion dire
Involves the mountains in a flood of fire;
Or yawning Earth with closing jaws inhumes
Unwarned nations, living in their tombs ;
Or Famine seizes with her tiger-paw,
And swallows millions with unsated maw.

"There livid Pestilence in league with Dearth
Walks forth malignant o'er the shuddering earth,
Her rapid shafts with airs volcanic wings,
Or steeps in putrid vaults her venom'd stings.
Arrests the young in Beauty's vernal bloom,
And bears the innocuous strangers to the tomb!

"And now, e'en I, whose verse reluctant sings
The changeful state of sublunary things,
Bend o'er Mortality with silent sighs,
And wipe the secret tear-drops from my eyes,
Hear through the night one universal groan,
And mourn unseen for evils not my own,
With restless limbs and throbbing heart complain,
Stretch'd on the rack of sentimental pain!
-Ah, where can Sympathy reflecting find
One bright idea to console the mind?
One ray of light in this terrene abode

To prove to man the goodness of his God?"

"Hear, O ye Sons of Time!" the nymph replies,

Quick indignation darting from her eyes;
When in soft tones the Muse lamenting sings,

And weighs with tremulous hand the sum of things;

She

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