Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees 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 slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home:- -Then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.*
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire; that where Britain's power
* These noble lines must have greatly aided the result at which they aimed. The case of Somerset, in which the judges determined that "Slaves cannot breathe in England," occurred in 1772. In May 1787, nearly two years after the publication of "The Task," the Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade was instituted. On the 9th of May, 1788, the first motion against the slave trade was made in the House of Commons. It was abolished on the 25th of March, 1807; slavery ceased on the 1st of August, 1834; and the 1st of August, 1838, was the day of final and complete emancipation.
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too,
Sure there is need of social intercourse,
Benevolence, and peace, and mutual aid,
Between the nations, in a world that seems
To toll the deathbell of its own decease,
And by the voice of all its elements
To preach the general doom.* When were the winds
Let slip with such a warrant to destroy?
When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap
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.
Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet seem to fail,
And Nature, with a dim and sickly eye,
To wait the close of all? But grant her end
More distant, and that prophecy demands
A longer respite, unaccomplished yet;
Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak
Displeasure in his breast who smites the earth
Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice.
And 'tis but seemly, that where all deserve
* Alluding to the late calamities in Jamaica.-(C. 1785.) † August 18, 1783.-(C.) A description of these singular meteoric lights may be read in the "Annual Register" for 1783, p. 214]. Many of the facts stated seem to indicate an unusually bright display of the Northern Lights.
Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Asia during the whole summer of 1783.-(C.) There are several allusions to this unusual accompaniment of summer in Cowper's letters; see especially those to Newton of 13th and 17th of June, 1783.
And stand exposed by common peccanoy
To what no few have felt, there should be peace,
And brethren in calamity should love.
Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scattered where the shapely column stood.
Her palaces are dust. In all her streets
The voice of singing and the sprightly chord
Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show,
Suffer a syncope and solemn pause,
While God performs, upon the trembling stage
Of his own works, his dreadful part alone.
How does the earth receive him?—with what signs
Of gratulation and delight, her King?
Pours she not all her choicest fruits abroad,
Her sweetest flowers, her aromatic gums,
Disclosing Paradise where'er 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 extremest point
Of elevation down into the abyss,
His wrath is busy, and his frown is felt.
The rocks fall headlong, and the valleys rise,
The rivers die into offensive pools,
And, charged with putrid verdure, breathe a gross
And mortal nuisance into all the air.
What solid was, by transformation strange,
Grows fluid; and the fixed and rooted earth, 100
Tormented into billows, heaves and swells,
Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl
Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense
The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs
And agonies of human and of brute
Multitudes, fugitive on every side,
And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene
Migrates uplifted, and, with all its soil,
Alighting in far distant fields, finds out
A new possessor, and survives the change.
Ocean has caught the frenzy, and upwrought
To an enormous and o'erbearing height,
Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice
Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore
Resistless. Never such a sudden flood,
Upridged so high, and sent on such a charge, Possessed an inland scene. Where now the throng That pressed the beach, and hasty to depart Looked to the sea for safety? They are gone, Gone with the refluent wave into the deep- 120 A prince with half his people!* Ancient towers,
* The frightful earthquake, or rather succession of earthquakes, which took place in Calabria and Sicily in February, 1783, is still remembered with astonishment and horror. The particular incident to which Cowper here alludes occurred at Scylla. The first shocks of the earthquake having almost destroyed the town, the aged Prince of the place persuaded a great number of the surviving inhabitants that they would be safer at sea than on shore among the ruined buildings. On the evening of the 5th of February he and they betook themselves to the supposed shelter of a large fleet of fishingboats, whilst others sought safety on a level plain slightly elevated above the sea. In the night a great mass, suddenly torn from Mount Jaci, overwhelmed the multitude upon the plain, whilst the sea, rising many feet above its ordinary level, rolled foaming over them. In a moment "the refluent wave" retreated, and then again rushed back with greater violence, dashing the swamped boats upon the beach, and sweeping the wrecks of many of them far inland. Prince and people were involved in universal ruin. The numbers killed were stated to be from 1500 to 2500; more corpses
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 sets them free.
Who then that has thee, would not hold thee fast,
Freedom! whom they that lose thee so regret, 130
That even a judgment, making way for thee,
Seems, in their eyes, a mercy, for thy sake.
Such evil Sin hath wrought, and such a flame Kindled in Heaven, that it burns down to earth, And in the furious inquest that it makes On God's behalf, lays waste his fairest works. The very elements, though each be meant The minister of man, to serve his wants, Conspire against him. With his breath, he draws A plague into his blood; and cannot use Life's necessary means, but he must die. Storms rise to o'erwhelm him; or if stormy winds Rise not, the waters of the deep shall rise,
And needing none assistance of the storm,
Shall roll themselves ashore, and reach him there.
The earth shall shake him out of all his holds, 146
Or make his house his grave: nor so content,
Shall counterfeit the motions of the flood,
And drown him in her dry and dusty gulfs.
What then? Were they the wicked above all, 150
And we the righteous, whose fast-anchored isle
were thrown upon the beach on the following day than there remained people alive to bury them.-See LYELL's Principles of Geology, p. 488, ed. 1853.
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