No bitter drop, 'midst Nature's kind relief, No tears you shed for patient love abused, And counsel scorned, and kind restraints refused. --For me, as o'er the frequent grave I bend, And pensive down the vale of years descend; Companions, Parents, Kindred called to mourn, Dropt from my side, or from my bosom torn; A boding voice, methinks, in Fancy's ear Speaks from the tomb, and cries "Thy friends are here!" EPISTLE ΤΟ WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, Esq. ON THE REJECTION OF THE BILL FOR ABOLISHING THE SLAVE TRADE. CEASE, Wilberforce, to urge thy generous aim! Has rattled in her sight the Negro's chain; Claim'd Pity's tear, urged Conscience' strong controul The Muse, too soon awaked, with ready tongue At Mercy's shrine applausive peans rung; A new Astrean reign, an age of gold : She knows and she persists-Still Afric bleeds, And on her hardened forehead seals the crime. In vain, to thy white standard gathering round, Wit, Worth, and Parts, and Eloquence are found: In vain, to push to birth thy great design, Contending chiefs, and hostile virtues join; All, from conflicting ranks, of power possest To rouse, to melt, or to inform the breast. Where seasoned tools of Avarice prevail, A Nation's eloquence, combined, must fail: Each flimsy sophistry by turns they try; The plausive argument, the daring lye, The artful gloss, that moral sense confounds, Th' acknowledged thirst of gain that honour wounds : Bane of ingenuous minds! th' unfeeling sneer, Which, sudden, turns to stone the falling tear: They search assiduous, with inverted skill, For forms of wrong, and precedents of ill; With impious mockery wrest the sacred page, And glean up crimes from each remoter age : Wrung Nature's tortures, shuddering, while you tell, From scoffing fiends bursts forth the laugh of hell ; In Britain's senate, Misery's pangs give birth To jests unseemly, and to horrid mirthForbear!-thy virtues but provoke our doom, And swell th' account of vengeance yet to come; For, not unmarked in Heaven's impartial plan, Shall man, proud worm, contemn his fellow-man? And injured Afric, by herself redrest, Darts her own serpents at her Tyrant's breast. 11 Each vice, to minds depraved by bondage known, In sickly languors melts his nerveless frame, The milky innocence of infant veins; There swells the stubborn will, damps learning's fire, The whirlwind wakes of uncontrouled desire, Sears the young heart to images of wo, And blasts the buds of Virtue as they blow. Lo! where reclined, pale Beauty courts the breeze, Diffused on sofas of voluptuous ease; With anxious awe, her menial train around, At once the Scythian, and the Sybarite; With languid tones imperious mandates urge; Nor, in their palmy walks and spicy groves, The form benign of rural Pleasure roves; No milk-maids' song, or hum of village talk, No willing arm the flail unwearied plies, But shrieks and yells disturb the balmy air, And angry eyes thro' dusky features glare. Nor less from the gay East, on essenced wings, Breathing unnamed perfumes, Contagion springs; The soft luxurious plague alike pervades The marble palaces, and rural shades; Hence throng'd Augusta builds her rosy bowers, And decks in summer wreaths her smoky towers ; And hence, in summer bowers, Art's costly hand Pours courtly splendours o'er the dazzled land: The manners melt-One undistinguish'd blaze O'erwhelms the sober pomp of elder days; Corruption follows with gigantic stride, And scarce vouchsafes his shameless front to hide : The spreading leprosy taints ev'ry part, Infects each limb, and sickens at the heart. |