in kindred blood,
     Hymmng his victory, or the milder snake
     Crushing the bones of some frail antelope
     Within his brazen folds—the dewy lawn,
     Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles               380
     To see a babe before his mother's door,
     Share with the green and golden basilisk
     That comes to lick his feet, his morning's meal.

       Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail
     Has seen, above the illimitable plain,                      385
     Morning on night and night on morning rise,
     Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread
     Its shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea,
     Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves
     So long have mingled with the gusty wind                    390
     In melancholy loneliness, and swept
     The desert of those ocean solitudes,
     But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,
     The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,
     Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds                   395
     Of kindliest human impulses respond:
     Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,
     With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,
     And fertile valleys resonant with bliss,
     Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,                     400
     Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,
     To meet the kisses of the flowerets there.

       Man chief perceives the change, his being notes
     The gradual renovation, and defines
     Each movement of its progress on his mind.                  405
     Man, where the gloom of the long polar night
     Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,
     Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost
     Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,
     Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;        410
     Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day
     With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,
     Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere
     Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed
     Unnatural vegetation, where the land                        415
     Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,
     Was man a nobler being; slavery
     Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust.

       Even where the milder zone afforded man
     A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,                     420
     Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,
     Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availed
     Till late to arrest its progress, or create
     That peace which first in bloodless victory waved
     Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime:                425
     There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
     The mimic of surrounding misery,
     The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,
     The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.

       Here now the human being stands adorning                  430
     This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;
     Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,
     Which gently in his noble bosom wake
     All kindly passions and all pure desires.
     Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing,            435
     Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal
     Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise
     In time-destroying infiniteness gift
     With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks