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| DEEP in the bosom of old Time there stood, | |
| Just on the margin of the sea-green flood, | |
| A virgin form, in lucid robes array’d, | |
| Whose ebon tresses negligently play’d | |
| In flowing ringlets, as the wavy main | 5 |
| Felt the soft breeze that fann’d the verdant plain; | |
| While the young blush of innocence bespoke | |
| Her innate worth in every graceful look; | |
| Her meek-eyed aspect, modest and benign, | |
| Evinced the fair one’s origin divine; | 10 |
| Virtue, at once her ornament and shield, | |
| And truth the trident that the goddess held. | |
| Beneath her reign, behold a happy race, | |
| Who ne’er contested titles, gold, or place. | |
| Ere commerce’s whiten’d sails were wafted wide, | 15 |
| And every bosom caught the swelling pride | |
| Of boundless wealth, surcharged with endless snares, | |
| Exotic follies, and destructive cares; | |
| Ere arts, or elegance, or taste refined, | |
| And tempting luxury assail’d mankind; | 20 |
| There oaks and evergreens, and poplar shades, | |
| In native beauty, rear’d their conic heads; | |
| The purple tinge with golden hues inwrought, | |
| In dappled forms, as sportive nature taught; | |
| The silken foliage open’d through the mead, | 25 |
| And the clear fount in wild meanders play’d; | |
| Beside whose gentle murmuring stream there stood | |
| The humble hamlet, by the peasant trod, | |
| Whose heart, unblacken’d by so mean a vice, | |
| As lust of gold, or carking avarice; | 30 |
| No guilty bribes his whiten’d palm possess’d, | |
| No dark suspicion lurk’d within his breast: | |
| Love, concord, peace, and piety and truth, | |
| Adorn’d grey hairs and dignified the youth; | |
| There stingless pleasures crown’d the temperate feast, | 35 |
| And ruddy health, a constant welcome guest, | |
| Fill’d up the cup, and smiled at every board, | |
| The friend and handmaid of her generous lord. | |
| The rosy finger’d morn, and noontide ray, | |
| The streaked twilight or the evening gray, | 40 |
| Were pass’d alike in innocence and mirth, | |
| No riot gendering slow but certain death; | |
| Unclouded reason guided all their way, | |
| And virtue’s self sat innocently gay. | |
| The winged hours serenely glided by, | 45 |
| Till golden Phœbus deck’d the western sky; | |
| And when enwrapp’d in evening’s sable vest, | |
| And midnight shadows hush’d the world to rest, | |
| On the famed ladder, whose extended bars, | |
| From earth’s low surface reach’d beyond the stars, | 50 |
| From orb to orb, thought reach’d the airy void, | |
| Through widen’d space the busy mind employ’d, | |
| While angel guards to watch his fate were given | |
| Prelusive dreams anticipated heaven. | |
| But ere the bird of dawn had hail’d the day, | 55 |
| Or warbling songsters chirp’d their early lay, | |
| The grateful heart its joyful matins raised, | |
| And nature’s God in morning anthems praised. | |
| Thus happy that ideal golden age, | |
| That lives descriptive in the poet’s page; | 60 |
| But now, alas! in dark oblivion lost, | |
| The sons of Adam know it to their cost; | |
| Since God forbade the mother of mankind | |
| To taste the fruit to which she most inclined: | |
| Her taste so delicate, refined and nice, | 65 |
| That the exuberance even of Paradise, | |
| The grassy banks beside the blue cascade, | |
| The winding streams from Pison’s golden head. | |
| The spicy groves on Gihon’s lengthen’d side, | |
| Hiddekel’s fount, Assyria’s blooming pride, | 70 |
| The fruits luxuriant on Euphrates’ shores, | |
| The rich profusion that all Eden pours, | |
| The shady dome, the rosy vaulted bower, | |
| And nature deck’d with every fruit and flower | |
| Were insufficient, rude, and incomplete. | 75 |
| For taste ran wanton, and the fair must eat. | |
| Since which the garden’s closely lock’d by fate, | |
| And flaming cherubs guard the eastern gate; | |
| This globe is traversed round from pole to pole, | |
| And earth research’d to find so rich a dole | 80 |
| As happiness unmix’d:—the phantom flies, | |
| No son of Eve has ever won the prize. | |
| But nearest those, who nearest nature live, | |
| Despising all that wealth or power can give, | |
| Or glittering grandeur, whose false optics place, | 85 |
| The summum bonum on the frailest base; | |
| And if too near the threshold of their door, | |
| Pride blazes high, and clamors loud for more— | |
| More shining pomp, more elegance and zest, | |
| In all the wild variety of taste; | 90 |
| Peace and contentment are refined away, | |
| And worth, unblemish’d, is the villain’s prey. | |
| Easy the toil, and simple is the task, | |
| That yields to man all nature bids him ask; | |
| And each improvement on the author’s plan, | 95 |
| Adds new inquietudes to restless man. | |
| As from simplicity he deviates, | |
| Fancy, prolific, endless wants creates; | |
| Creates new wishes, foreign to the soul, | |
| Ten thousand passions all the mind control, | 100 |
| So fast they tread behind each other’s heels, | |
| That some new image on the fancy steals; | |
| Ere the young embryo half its form completes, | |
| Some new vagary the old plan defeats; | |
| Down comes the Gothic or Corinthian pile, | 105 |
| And the new vista wears the Doric style. | |
| The finer arts depopulate and waste, | |
| And nations sink by elegance and taste: | |
| Empires are from their lofty summits rent, | |
| And kingdoms down to swift perdition sent, | 110 |
| By soft, corrupt refinements of the heart, | |
| Wrought up to vice by each deceptive art. | |
| Rome, the proud mistress of the world, displays | |
| A lasting proof of what my pen essays; | |
| High-wrought refinement—usher’d in replete, | 115 |
| With all the ills that sink a virtuous state; | |
| Their sumptuary laws grown obsolete, | |
| They, undismay’d, the patriot’s frown could meet; | |
| Their simple manners lost—their censors dead, | |
| Spruce petit maitres o’er the forum tread. | 120 |
| I weep those days when gentle Maro sung, | |
| And sweetest strains bedeck’d the flatterer’s tongue; | |
| When so corrupt and so refined the times, | |
| The muse could stoop to gild a tyrant’s crimes. | |
| Then paint and sculpture, elegance and song, | 125 |
| Were the pursuits of all the busy throng; | |
| When silken commerce held the golden scales, | |
| Empire was purchased at the public sales: | |
| No longer lived the ancient Roman pride, | |
| Her virtue sicken’d, and her glory died. | 130 |
| What blotted out the Carthaginian fame, | |
| And left no traces but an empty name?— | |
| Commerce! the source of every narrow vice, | |
| And honor, barter’d at a trivial price. | |
| By court intrigues, the Commonwealth ’s disgraced, | 135 |
| Both suffetes, and senators debased: | |
| By soft refinement, and the love of gold, | |
| Faction and strife grew emulous and bold, | |
| Till restless Hanno urged his purpose on, | |
| And Scipio’s rival by his arts undone. | 140 |
| From age to age since Hannibal’s hard fate, | |
| From Cæsar’s annals to the modern date, | |
| When Brunswick’s race sits on the British throne, | |
| And George’s folly stains his grandsire’s crown; | |
| When taste improved by luxury high wrought, | 145 |
| And fancy craves what nature never taught; | |
| Affronted virtue mounts her native skies, | |
| And freedom’s genius lifts her bloated eyes; | |
| As late I saw, in sable vestments stand, | |
| The weeping fair, on Britain’s naked strand. | 150 |
| The cloud-capt hills, the echoing woods and dales, | |
| (Where pious Druids dress’d the hallow’d vales; | |
| And wrote their missals on the birchen rind, | |
| And chanted dirges with the hollow wind,) | |
| Breathe murmuring sighs o’er that ill fated isle, | 155 |
| Wrapt in refinements both absurd and vile. | |
| Proud Thames deserted—her commercial ports | |
| Seized and possess’d by hated foreign courts; | |
| No more the lofty ships her marts supply, | |
| The Neriads flap their watery wings and die: | 160 |
| Gray Neptune rises from his oozy bed, | |
| And shakes the sea-weed from his shaggy head; | |
| He bids adieu to fair Britannia’s shore, | |
| The surge rebounds, and all the woodlands roar; | |
| His course he bends toward the western main, | 165 |
| The frowning Titans join the swelling train, | |
| Measure the deep, and lash the foaming sea, | |
| In haste to hail the brave Columbia free: | |
| Ocean rebounds, and earth reverberates, | |
| And heaven confirms the independent states; | 170 |
| While time rolls on, and mighty kingdoms fail, | |
| They, peace and freedom on their heirs entail, | |
| Till virtue sinks, and in far distant times, | |
| Dies in the vortex of European crimes. | |
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