Book X

Hesper again his heavenly power display'd,And shook the yielding canopy of shade.Sudden the stars their trembling fires withdrew.Returning splendors burst upon the view,Floods of unfolding light the skies adorn,And more than midday glories grace the morn.So shone the earth, as if the sideral train,Broad as full suns, had sail'd the ethereal plain;When no distinguisht orb could strike the sight,But one clear blaze of all-surrounding lightO'erflow'd the vault of heaven. For now in viewRemoter climes and future ages drew;Whose deeds of happier fame, in long array,Call'd into vision, fill the newborn day.

Far as seraphic power could lift the eye,Or earth or ocean bend the yielding sky,Or circling sutis awake the breathing gale,Drake lead the way, or Cook extend the sail;Where Behren sever'd, with adventurous prow,Hesperia's headland from Tartaria's brow;Where sage Vancouvre's patient leads were hurl'd,Where Deimen stretch'd his solitary world;All lands, all seas that boast a present name,And all that unborn time shall give to fame,Around the Pair in bright expansion rise,And earth, in one vast level, bounds the skies.

They saw the nations tread their different shores,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 thro the rangeOf man's unheeded but unceasing change.Columbus traced them with experienced eye,And class'd and counted all the flags that fly;He mark'd 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 islesAnd old Indostan, with their wealthy spoilsAttract adventures masters, and o'ershadeTheir 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 divideThe shatter'd empire to the Pontic tide.He mark'd impervious Afric, where aloneShe lies encircled with the verdant zoneThat lines her endless coast, and still sustainsHer northern pirates and her eastern swains,Mourns her interior tribes purloined away,And chain'd and sold beyond Atlantic day.Brazilla's wilds, Mackensie's savage landsWith bickering strife inflame their furious bands;Atlantic isles and Europe's cultured shoresHeap 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 sound,Fill'd his fond heart with reveries profound;He felt the infinitude of thoughts that passAnd 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 courseWhich cures their weakness and confirms their force,Lends that experience which alone can closeThe scenes of strife, and give the world repose.Yet here thou seest the same progressive planThat draws for mutual succour man to man,From twain to tribe, from tribe to realm dilates,In federal union groups a hundred states,Thro 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 firstWith feeble force and lonely murmurs burst,From myriad unseen fountains draw the rillsAnd 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 plough the mounds of earth,And tear the fostering flanks that gave them birth;Mad with the strength they gain, they thicken deepTheir 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,Thro broader banks they shape their seaward way,From different climes converging, join and spreadTheir mingled waters in one widening bed,Profound, transparent; till the liquid zoneBands 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;Thro 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;Enlightened interest, moral sense at lengthCombine their aids to elevate her strength,Lead o'er the world her peace-commanding sway.And light her steps with everlasting day.

From that mark'd 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 seeHis 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.Tho still her inland realms the combat wageAnd hold in lingering broils the unsettled age,Yet no rude shocks that shake the crimson plainShall 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 look'd; beneath his wondering eyesGay 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.Thro Calpe's strait that leads the Midland main,From Adria, Pontus, Nile's resurgent reign,The sails look forth and wave their bandrols highAnd 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 unrol,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 margins boast,Or Chili bluffs or Plata flats the coast.Where, clothed in splendor, his Atlantic waySpreads the blue borders of Hesperian day,From all his havens, with majestic sweep,The swiftest boldest daughters of the deepSwarm forth before him; till the cloudlike trainFrom pole to pole o'ersheet the whitening main.

So some primeval seraph, placed on high,From heaven's sublimest point o'erlooke'd the sky,When space unfolding heard the voice of God,And suns and stars and systems roll'd abroad,Caught their first splendors from his beamful eye,Began their years and vaulted round their sky;Their social spheres in bright confusion play,Exchange their beams and fill the newborn day.

Nor seas alone the countless barks behold;Earth's inland realms their naval paths unfold.Her plains, long portless, now no more complainOf useless rills and fountains nursed in vain;Canals curve thro them many a liquid line,Prune their wild streams, their lakes and oceans join.Where Darien hills o'erlook the gulphy tide,Cleft in his view the enormous banks divide;Ascending sails their opening pass pursue,And waft the sparkling treasures of Peru.Moxoe resigns his stagnant world of fen,Allures, rewards the cheerful toils of men,Leads their long new-made rivers round his reign,Drives off the stench and waves his golden grain,Feeds a whole nation from his cultured shore,Where not a bird could skim the skies before.

From Mohawk's mouth, far westing with the sun,Thro all the midlands recent channels run,Tap the redundant lakes, the broad hills brave,And Hudson marry with Missouri's wave.From dim Superior, whose uncounted sailsShade his full seas and bosom all his gales,New paths unfolding seek Mackensie's tide,And towns and empires rise along their side;Slave's crystal highways all his north adorn,Like coruscations from the boreal morn.Proud Missisippi, tamed and taught his road,Flings forth irriguous from his generous floodTen thousand watery glades; that, round him curl'd,Vein the broad bosom of the western world.

From the red banks of Arab's odorous tideTheir Isthmus opens, and strange waters glide;Europe from all her shores, with crowded sails,Looks thro the pass and calls the Asian gales.Volga and Obi distant oceans join.Delighted Danube weds the wasting Rhine;Elbe, Oder, Neister channel many a plain,Exchange their barks and try each other's main.All infant streams and every mountain rillChoose their new paths, some useful task to fill,Each acre irrigate, re-road the earth,And serve at last the purpose of their birth.

Earth, garden'd all, a tenfold burden brings;Her fruits, her odors, her salubrious springsSwell, breathe and bubble from the soil they grace,String with strong nerves the renovating race,Their numbers multiply in every land,Their toils diminish and their powers expand;And while she rears them with a statelier frameTheir soul she kindles with diviner flame,Leads their bright intellect with fervid glowThro all the mass of things that still remains to know.

He saw the aspiring genius of the ageSoar in the Bard and strengthen in the Sage:The Bard with bolder hand assumes the lyre,Warms the glad nations with unwonted fire,Attunes to virtue all the tones that rollTheir tides of transport thro the expanding soul.For him no more, beneath their furious gods,Old ocean crimsons and Olympus nods,Uprooted mountains sweep the dark profound,Or Titans groan beneath the rending ground,No more his clangor maddens up the mindTo crush, to conquer and enslave mankind,To build on ruin'd realms the shrines of fame,And load his numbers with a tyrant's name.Far nobler objects animate his tongue,And give new energies to epic song;To moral charms he bids the world attend,Fraternal states their mutual ties extend,O'er cultured earth the rage of conquest cease,War sink in night and nature smile in peace.Soaring with science then he learns to stringHer highest harp, and brace her broadest wing,With her own force to fray the paths untrod,With her own glance to ken the total God,Thro heavens o'ercanopied by heavens beholdNew suns ascend and other skies unfold,Social and system'd worlds around him shine,And lift his living strains to harmony divine.

The Sage with steadier lights directs his ken,Thro twofold nature leads the walks of men,Remoulds her moral and material frames,Their mutual aids, their sister laws proclaims,Disease before him with its causes flies,And boasts no more of sickly soils and skies;His well-proved codes the healing science aid,Its base establish and its blessing spread,With long-wrought life to teach the race to glow,And vigorous nerves to grace the locks of snow.

From every shape that varying matter gives,That rests or ripens, vegetates or lives,His chymic powers new combinations plan,Yield new creations, finer forms to man,High springs of health for mind and body trace,Add force and beauty to the joyous race,Arm with new engines his adventurous hand,Stretch o'er these elements his wide command,Lay the proud storm submissive at his feet,Change, temper, tame all subterranean heat,Probe laboring earth and drag from her dark sideThe mute volcano, ere its force be tried;Walk under ocean, ride the buoyant air,Brew the soft shower, the labor'd land repair,A fruitful soil o'er sandy deserts spread,And clothe with culture every mountain's head.

Where system'd realms their mutual glories lend,And well-taught sires the cares of state attend,Thro every maze of man they learn to wind,Note each device that prompts the Proteus mind,What soft restraints the tempered breast requires,To taste new joys and cherish new desires,Expand the selfish to the social flame,And rear the soul to deeds of nobler fame.

They mark, in all the past records of praise,What partial views heroic zeal could raise;What mighty states on others' ruins stood,And built unsafe their haughty seats in blood;How public virtue's ever borrow'd nameWith proud applauses graced the deeds of shame,Bade each imperial standard wave sublime,And wild ambition havoc every clime;From chief to chief the kindling spirit ran,Heirs of false fame and enemies of man.

Where Grecian states in even balance hung,And warm'd with jealous fires the patriot's tongue,The exclusive ardor cherish'd in the breastLove to one land and hatred to the rest.And where the flames of civil discord rage,And Roman arms with Roman arms engage,The mime of virtue rises still the same,To build a Cesar's as a Pompey's name.

But now no more the patriotic mind,To narrow views and local laws confined,Gainst neighboring lands directs the public rage.Plods for a clan or counsels for an age;But soars to loftier thoughts, and reaches farBeyond the power, beyond the wish of war;For realms and ages forms the general aim,Makes patriot views and moral views the same,Works with enlighten'd zeal, to see combinedThe strength and happiness of humankind.

Long had Columbus with delighted eyesMark'd all the changes that around him rise,Lived thro descending ages as they roll,And feasted still the still expanding soul;When now the peopled regions swell more near,And a mixt noise tumultuous stuns his ear.At first, like heavy thunders roll'd in air,Or the rude shock of cannonading war,Or waves resounding on the craggy shore,Hoarse roll'd the loud-toned undulating roar.But soon the sounds like human voices rise,All nations pouring undistinguisht cries;Till more distinct the wide concussion grownRolls forth at times an accent like his own.By turns the tongues assimilating blend,And smoother idioms over earth ascend;Mingling and softening still in every gale,O'er discord's din harmonious tones prevail.At last a simple universal soundWinds thro the welkin, sooths the world around,From echoing shores in swelling strain replies,And moves melodious o'er the warbling skies.

Such wild commotions as he heard and view'd,In fixt astonishment the Hero stood,And thus besought the Guide: Celestial friend,What good to man can these dread scenes intend?Some sore distress attends that boding soundThat breathed hoarse thunder and convulsed the ground.War sure hath ceased; or have my erring eyesMisread the glorious visions of the skies?Tell then, my Seer, if future earthquakes sleep,Closed in the conscious caverns of the deep,Waiting the day of vengeance, when to rollAnd rock the rending pillars of the pole.Or tell if aught more dreadful to my raceIn these dark signs thy heavenly wisdom trace;And why the loud discordance melts againIn the smooth glidings of a tuneful strain.

The guardian god replied: Thy fears give o'er;War's hosted hounds shall havoc earth no more;No sore distress these signal sounds foredoom,But give the pledge of peaceful years to come;The tongues of nations here their accents blend.Till one pure language thro the world extend.

Thou know'st the tale of Babel; how the skiesFear'd for their safety as they felt him rise,Sent unknown jargons mid the laboring bands,Confused their converse and unnerved their hands,Dispersed the bickering tribes and drove them far,From peaceful toil to violence and war;Bade kings arise with bloody flags unfurl'd,Bade pride and conquest wander o'er the world,Taught adverse creeds, commutual hatreds bred,Till holy homicide the climes o'erspread.--For that fine apologue, writh mystic strain,Gave like the rest a golden age to man,Ascribed perfection to his infant state,Science unsought and all his arts innate;Supposed the experience of the growing raceMust lead him retrograde and cramp his pace,Obscure his vision as his lights increast,And sink him from an angel to a beast.

Tis thus the teachers of despotic swayStrive in all times to blot the beams of day,To keep him curb'd, nor let him lift his eyesTo see where happiness, where misery lies.They lead him blind, and thro the world's broad wastePerpetual feuds, unceasing shadows cast,Crush every art that might the mind expand,And plant with demons every desert land;That, fixt in straiten'd bounds, the lust of powerMay ravage still and still the race devour,An easy prey the hoodwink'd hordes remain,And oceans roll and shores extend in vain.

Long have they reign'd; till now the race at lastShake off their manacles, their blinders cast,Overrule the crimes their fraudful foes produce,By ways unseen to serve the happiest use,Tempt the wide wave, probe every yielding soil,Fill with their fruits the hardy hand of toil,Unite their forces, wheel the conquering car,Deal mutual death, but civilize by war.

Dear-bought the experiment and hard the strifeOf social man, that rear'd his arts to life.His Passions wild that agitate the mind,His Reason calm, their watchful guide designed,While yet unreconciled, his march restrain,Mislead the judgment and betray the man.Fear, his first passion, long maintain'd the sway,Long shrouded in its glooms the mental ray,Shook, curb'd, controll'd his intellectual force,And bore him wild thro many a devious course.Long had his Reason, with experienced eye,Perused the book of earth and scaled the sky,Led fancy, memory, foresight in her train,And o'er creation stretch'd her vast domain;Yet would that rival Fear her strength appal;In that one conflict always sure to fall,Mild Reason shunn'd the foe she could not brave,Renounced her empire and remained a slave.

But deathless, tho debased, she still could findSome beams of truth to pour upon the mind;And tho she dared no moral code to scan,Thro physic forms she learnt to lead the man;To strengthen thus his opening orbs of sight,And nerve and clear them for a stronger light.That stronger light, from nature's double codes,Now springs expanding and his doubts explodes;All nations catch it, all their tongues combineTo hail the human morn and speak the day divine.

At this blest period, when the total raceShall speak one language and all truths embrace,Instruction clear a speedier course shall find,And open earlier on the infant mind.No foreign terms shall crowd with barbarous rulesThe dull unmeaning pageantry of schools;Nor dark authorities nor names unknownFill the learnt head with ignorance not its own;But wisdom's eye with beams unclouded shine,And simplest rules her native charms define;One living language, one unborrow'd dressHer boldest flights with fullest force express;Triumphant virtue, in the garb of truth,Win a pure passage to the heart of youth,Pervade all climes where suns or oceans roll,And warm the world with one great moral soul,To see, facilitate, attain the scopeOf all their labor and of all their hope.

As early Phosphor, on his silver throne,Fair type of truth and promise of the sun,Smiles up the orient in his dew-dipt ray,Illumes the front of heaven and leads the day;Thus Physic Science, with exploring eyes,First o'er the nations bids her beauties rise,Prepares the glorious way to pour abroadHer Sister's brighter beams, the purest light of God.Then Moral Science leads the lively mindThro broader fields and pleasures more refined;Teaches the temper'd soul, at one vast view,To glance o'er time and look existence thro,See worlds and worlds, to being's formless end,With all their hosts on her prime power depend,Seraphs and suns and systems, as they rise,Live in her life and kindle from her eyes,Her cloudless ken, her all-pervading soulIllume, sublime and harmonize the whole;Teaches the pride of man its breadth to boundIn one small point of this amazing round,To shrink and rest where nature fixt its fate,A line its space, a moment for its date;Instructs the heart an ampler joy to taste,And share its feelings with each human breast,Expand its wish to grasp the total kindOf sentient soul, of cogitative mind;Till mutual love commands all strife to cease,And earth join joyous in the songs of peace.

Thus heard Columbus, eager to beholdThe famed Apocalypse its years unfold;The soul stood speaking thro his gazing eyes,And thus his voice: Oh let the visions rise!Command, celestial Guide, from each far pole,John's vision'd morn to open on my soul,And raise the scenes, by his reflected light,Living and glorious to my longing sight.Let heaven unfolding show the eternal throne,And all the concave flame in one clear sun;On clouds of fire, with angels at his side,The Prince of Peace, the King of Salem ride,With smiles of love to greet the bridal earth,Call slumbering ages to a second birth,With all his white-robed millions fill the train,And here commence the interminable reign!Such views, the Saint replies, for sense too bright,Would seal thy vision in eternal night;Man cannot face nor seraph power displayThe mystic beams of such an awful day.Enough for thee, that thy delighted mindShould trace the temporal actions of thy kind;That time's descending veil should ope so farBeyond the reach of wretchedness and war,Till all the paths in nature's sapient planFair in thy presence lead the steps of man,And form at last, on earth's extended ball,Union of parts and happiness of all.To thy glad ken these rolling years have shownThe boundless blessings thy vast labors crown,That, with the joys of unborn ages blest,Thy soul exulting may retire to rest,But see once more! beneath a change of skies,The last glad visions wait thy raptured eyes.

Eager he look'd. Another train of yearsHad roll'd unseen, and brighten'd still their spheres;Earth more resplendent in the floods of dayAssumed new smiles, and flush'd around him lay.Green swell the mountains, calm the oceans roll,Fresh beams of beauty kindle round the pole;Thro all the range where shores and seas extend,In tenfold pomp the works of peace ascend.Robed in the bloom of spring's eternal year,And ripe with fruits the same glad fields appear;O'er hills and vales perennial gardens run,Cities unwall'd stand sparkling to the sun;The streams all freighted from the bounteous plainSwell with the load and labor to the main,Whose stormless waves command a steadier galeAnd prop the pinions of a bolder sail:Sway'd with the floating weight each ocean toils,And joyous nature's full perfection smiles.

Fill'd with unfolding fate, the vision'd ageNow leads its actors on a broader stage;When clothed majestic in the robes of state,Moved by one voice, in general congress meetThe legates of all empires. Twas the placeWhere wretched men first firm'd their wandering pace;Ere yet beguiled, the dark delirious hordesBegan to fight for altars and for lords;Nile washes still the soil, and feels once moreThe works of wisdom press his peopled shore.

In this mid site, this monumental clime,Rear'd by all realms to brave the wrecks of timeA spacious dome swells up, commodious great,The last resort, the unchanging scene of state.On rocks of adamant the walls ascend,Tall columns heave and sky-like arches bend;Bright o'er the golden roofs the glittering spiresFar in the concave meet the solar fires;Four blazing fronts, with gates unfolding high,Look with immortal splendor round the sky:Hither the delegated sires ascend,And all the cares of every clime attend.

As that blest band, the guardian guides of heaven,To whom the care of stars and suns is given,(When one great circuit shall have proved their spheres,And time well taught them how to wind their years)Shall meet in general council; call'd to stateThe laws and labors that their charge await;To learn, to teach, to settle how to holdTheir course more glorious, as their lights unfold:From all the bounds of space (the mandate known)They wing their passage to the eternal throne;Each thro his far dim sky illumes the road,And sails and centres tow'rd the mount of God;There, in mid universe, their seats to rear,Exchange their counsels and their works compare:So, from all tracts of earth, this gathering throngIn ships and chariots shape their course along,Reach with unwonted speed the place assign'dTo hear and give the counsels of mankind.

South of the sacred mansion, first resortThe assembled sires, and pass the spacious court.Here in his porch earth's figured Genius stands,Truth's mighty mirror poizing in his hands;Graved on the pedestal and chased in gold,Man's noblest arts their symbol forms unfold,His tillage and his trade; with all the storeOf wondrous fabrics and of useful lore:Labors that fashion to his sovereign swayEarth's total powers, her soil and air and sea;Force them to yield their fruits at his known call,And bear his mandates round the rolling ball.Beneath the footstool all destructive things,The mask of priesthood and the mace of kings,Lie trampled in the dust; for here at lastFraud, folly, error all their emblems cast.Each envoy here unloads his wearied handOf some old idol from his native land;One flings a pagod on the mingled heap,One lays a crescent, one a cross to sleep;Swords, sceptres, mitres, crowns and globes and stars,Codes of false fame and stimulants to warsSink in the settling mass; since guile began,These are the agents of the woes of man.

Now the full concourse, where the arches bend,Pour thro by thousands and their seats ascend.Far as the centred eye can range around,Or the deep trumpet's solemn voice resound,Long rows of reverend sires sublime extend,And cares of worlds on every brow suspend.High in the front, for soundest wisdom known,A sire elect in peerless grandeur shone;He open'd calm the universal cause,To give each realm its limit and its laws,Bid the last breath of tired contention cease,And bind all regions in the leagues of peace;Till one confederate, condependent swaySpread with the sun and bound the walks of day,One centred system, one all-ruling soulLive thro the parts and regulate the whole.

Here then, said Hesper, with a blissful smile,Behold the fruits of thy long years of toil.To yon bright borders of Atlantic dayThy swelling pinions led the trackless way,And taught mankind such useful deeds to dare,To trace new seas and happy nations rear;Till by fraternal hands their sails unfurl'dHave waved at last in union o'er the world.

Then let thy steadfast soul no more complainOf dangers braved and griefs endured in vain,Of courts insidious, envy's poison'd stings,The loss of empire and the frown of kings;While these broad views thy better thoughts composeTo spurn the malice of insulting foes;And all the joys descending ages gain,Repay thy labors and remove thy pain.