-When Pitt, supreme, amid the senate, rose The Negro's friend, among the Negro's foes; Yet while his tone like heaven's high thunder broke, No fire descended to consume the yoke: -When Fox, all eloquent, for freedom stood, With speech resistless as the voice of blood, The voice that cries through all the patriot's veins, When at his feet his country groans in chains; The voice that whispers in the mother's breast, When smiles her infant in his rosy rest; Of power to bid the storm of passion roll, Or touch with sweetest tenderness the soulHe spake in vain;-till, with his latest breath, He broke the spell of Africa in death. High on her rock in solitary state, Sublimely musing, pale Britannia sate : Her awful forehead on her spear reclined, Her robe and tresses streaming with the wind; Chill through her frame foreboding tremors crept; The Mother thought upon her sons, and wept : -She thought of Nelson in the battle slain, And his last signal beaming o'er the main;' In Glory's circling arms the hero bled, While Victory bound the laurel on his head; At once immortal, in both worlds, became His soaring spirit and abiding name; -She thought of Pitt, heart-broken on his bier; And "O my Country!" echoed in her ear; -She thought of Fox ;-she heard him faintly speak, His parting breath grew cold upon her cheek, His dying accents trembled into air; 66 Spare injured Africa! the Negro spare!" Muse! take the harp of prophecy :-behold! Unutterable mysteries of fate Involve, O Africa! thy future state. -On Niger's banks, in lonely beauty wild, A Negro-mother carols to her child: "Son of my widow'd love, my orphan joy! Avenge thy father's murder, O, my boy!' Along those banks the fearless infant strays, Bathes in the stream, among the eddies plays; See the boy, bounding through the eager race; The fierce youth, shouting foremost in the chase, Drives the grim lion from his ancient woods, And smites the crocodile amidst his floods. To giant strength in unshorn manhood grown, He haunts the wilderness, he dwells alone. A tigress with her whelps to seize him sprung; He tears the mother, and he tames the young In the drear cavern of their native rock; Thither wild slaves and fell banditti flock: He heads their hordes; they burst, like torrid rains, In death and devastation o'er the plains; Stronger and bolder grows his ruffian band, Prouder his heart, more terrible his hand. He spreads his banner; crowding from afar, Innumerable armies rush to war; Resistless as the pillar'd whirlwinds fly O'er Libyan sands, revolving to the sky, In fire and wrath through every realm they run; Where the noon-shadow shrinks beneath the sun; She started from her trance!—and round the shore, Till at the Conqueror's feet, from sea to sea, A hundred nations bow the servile knee, fence of Las Casas was published in 1803, by H. D. Symonds, Paternoster-Row. 1"England expects every man to do his duty." Dim through the night of these tempestuous years A Sabbath dawn o'er Africa appears; 204 Then shall her neck from Europe's yoke be freed, Nor in the isles and Africa alone Be the Redeemer's cross and triumph known: Father of Mercies! speed the promised hour; Thy kingdom come with all-restoring power; Peace, virtue, knowledge, spread from pole to pole, As round the world the ocean waters roll! PREFACE. The World before the Flood. THERE is no authentic history of the world from the Creation to the Deluge, besides that which is found in the first chapters of Genesis. He, therefore, who fixes the date of a fictitious narrative within that period, is under obligation to no other authority whatever for conformity of manners, events, or even localities: he has full power to accommodate these to his peculiar purposes, observing only such analogy as shall consist with the brief information contained in the sacred records, concerning mankind in the earliest ages. The present writer acknowledges, that he has exercised this undoubted right with great freedom. Success alone sanctions bold innovation: if he has succeeded in what he has attempted, he will need no arguments to justify it; if he has miscarried, none will avail him. Those who imagine that he has exhibited the antediluvians as more skilful in arts and arms than can be supposed, in their stage of Society, may read the Eleventh Book of PARADISE LOST-and those who think he has made the religion of the Patriarchs too evangelical, may read the Tod fth. With respect to the personages and incidents of his story, the Author having deliberately adopted them, under the conviction, that in the characters of the one he was not stepping out of human nature, and in the construction of the other not exceeding the limits of poetical probability, he asks no favor, he deprecates no censure, on behalf of either; nor shall the facility. with which "much malice, and a little wit" might turn into ridicule every line that he has written, deter him from leaving the whole to the mercy of general Readers. But, here is a large web of fiction involving a small fact of Scripture! Nothing could justify a work of this kind, if it were, in any way, calculated to impose on the credulity, pervert the principles, or corrupt the affections, of its approvers. Here, then, the appeal lies to conscience rather than to taste; and the decision on this point is of infinitely more importance to the Poet than his name among men, or his interests on earth. It was his design, in this. composition, to present a similitude of events, that might be imagined to have happened in the first age of the world, in which such Scripture-characters -Hope waits the morning of celestial light: The New Creation shines in purer skies. as are introduced would probably have acted and spoken as they are here made to act and speak. The story is told as a parable only; and its value, in this view, must be determined by its moral, or rather by its religious influence on the mind and on the heart. Fiction though it be, it is the fiction that represents Truth; and that is Truth,-Truth in the essence, though not in the name; Truth in the spirit, though not in the letter. TO THE SPIRIT OF A DEPARTED FRIEND. MANY, my friend, have mourn'd for Thee, Long as thy name on earth shall be By those who loved Thee here, and love For while thine absence they deplore, -Thou art not dead, Thou couldst not die. In silent anguish, O my friend! In loftier mood, I fain would raise, THOU art not dead, Thou couldst not die; To nobler life new-born, Thou look'st in pity from the sky Yet didst Thou prize the Poet's art; How pure, When first this dream of ancient times That hand with awe resumed the lyre, Then did thy voice my hope inspire, Alone, in sickness, care, and woe, Afraid to trust the bold design To less indulgent ears than thine. "T is done ;-nor would I dread to meet The world's repulsive brow, Had I presented at thy feet The Muse's trophy now, Full well I know, if Thou wert here, Dear as my theme was once, and dear Too mean to yield Thee pure delight, The strains that now the world invite. Yet could they reach Thee where thou art, Their better, their diviner part, My task is o'er; and I have wrought, With self-rewarding toil, To raise the scatter'd seed of thought Upon a desert soil: O for soft winds and clement showers! I seek not fruit, I planted flowers. Those flowers I train'd, of many a hue, And little thought, that I must strew Farewell, but not a long farewell; In heaven may I appear, The trials of my faith to tell In thy transported ear, And sing with Thee the eternal strain, "Worthy the Lamb that once was slain." January 23, 1813. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. No place having been found, in Asia, to correspond exactly with the Mosaic description of the site of Paradise, the Author of the following Poem has disregarded both the learned and the absurd hypotheses on the subject; and at once imagining an inaccessible tract of land at the confluence of four rivers, which after their junction take the name of the largest, and become the Euphrates of the ancient world, he has placed "the happy garden" there. Milton's noble fiction of the Mount of Paradise being removed by the deluge, and push'd Down the great river to the opening gulf, and there converted into a barren isle, implies such a change in the water-courses as will, poetically at least, account for the difference between the scene of this story and the present face of the country, at the point where the Tigris and Euphrates meet. On the eastern side of these waters, the Author supposes the descendants of the younger Children of Adam to dwell, possessing the land of Eden; the rest of the world having been gradually colonized by emigrants from these, or peopled by the posterity of Cain. In process of time, after the Sons of God had formed connexions with the daughters of men, and there were Giants in the earth, the latter assumed to be Lords and Rulers over mankind, till among themselves arose One, excelling all his brethren in knowledge and power, who became their King, and by their aid, in the course of a long life, subdued all the inhabited earth, except the land of Eden. This land, at the head of a mighty army, principally composed of the descendants of Cain, he has invaded and conquered, even to the banks of the Euphrates, at the opening of the action of the poem. It is only necessary to add, that for the sake of distinction, the invaders are frequently denominated from Cain, as 66 the host of Cain,"-" the force of Cain,"-" the camp of Cain ;"-and the remnant of the defenders of Eden are, in like manner, denominated from Eden. -The Jews have an ancient tradition, that some of the Giants, at the Deluge, fled to the top of a high mountain, and escaped the ruin that involved the rest of their kindred. In the tenth Canto of the following Poem, a hint is borrowed from this tradition, but it is made to yield to the superior authority of Scripturetestimony. THE WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD. CANTO I. The Invasion of Eden by the Descendants of Cain. The Flight of Javan from the Camp of the Invaders to the Valley where the Patriarchs dwelt The story of Javan's former life. EASTWARD of Eden's early-peopled plain, When Abel perish'd by the hand of Cain, The murderer from his Judge's presence fled : Thence to the rising sun his offspring spread; But he, the fugitive of care and guilt, Ages meanwhile, as ages now are told, Yet long on Eden's fair and fertile plain, Age, at his fig-tree, rested from his toil, One sole-surviving remnant, void of fear, For all they once had known, and loved, and lost; But since he fell, within their triple bound, The midnight watch was ended; down the west Now from the east, supreme in arts and arms, From earth to heaven, had wing'd his homeward flight, To waste their brethren's lands with sword and flame. Glorious at first, but lessening by the way, In vain the younger race of Adam rose, From track of man and herd his path he chose, While dark amidst the dews that glitter'd round, Far on the left, to man for ever closed, |
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