CHARITY.

Quâ nihil majus meliusve terris
Fata donavere, bonique divi;
Nec dabunt, quamvis redeant in aurum
Tempora priscum.

HOR. lib. iv. ode 2.

AIREST and foremost of the train that wait On man's most dignified and happiest state, Whether we name thee Charity or Love, Chief grace below, and all in all above, Prosper (I press thee with a powerful plea) A task I venture on, impelled by thee: Oh never seen but in thy blest effects, Or felt but in the soul that Heaven selects;

Who seeks to praise thee, and to make thee known
To other hearts, must have thee in his own.
Come, prompt me with benevolent desires,
Teach me to kindle at thy gentle fires,

And, though disgraced and slighted, to redeem
A poet's name, by making thee the theme.

God, working ever on a social plan,

By various ties attaches man to man:

He made at first, though free and unconfined,
One man the common father of the kind;
That every tribe, though placed as He sees best,
Where seas or deserts part them from the rest,
Differing in language, manners, or in face,
Might feel themselves allied to all the race.
When Cook-lamented, and with tears as just
As ever mingled with heroic dust-

Steered Britain's oak into a world unknown,
And in his country's glory sought his own,
Wherever he found man, to nature true,
The rights of man were sacred in his view;
He soothed with gifts and greeted with a smile
The simple native of the new-found isle;
He spurned the wretch that slighted or withstood
The tender argument of kindred blood;

Nor would endure that any should control

His freeborn brethren of the southern pole.

But, though some nobler minds a law respect,

That none shall with impunity neglect,

In baser souls unnumbered evils meet,

To thwart its influence, and its end defeat.

While Cook is loved for savage lives he saved,
See Cortez odious for a world enslaved !

Where wast thou then, sweet Charity? where then,
Thou tutelary friend of helpless men?

Wast thou in monkish cells and nunneries found,
Or building hospitals on English ground?

Harbour in the South Seas visited by Cook.

No!-Mammon makes the world his legatee
Through fear, not love; and Heaven abhors the fee.
Wherever found, (and all men need thy care,)
Nor age nor infancy could find thee there.
The hand that slew till it could slay no more
Was glued to the sword-hilt with Indian gore.
Their prince as justly seated on his throne
As vain imperial Philip on his own,

Tricked out of all his royalty by art,

That stripped him bare, and broke his honest heart,
Died, by the sentence of a shaven priest,

For scorning what they taught him to detest.
How dark the veil that intercepts the blaze
Of Heaven's mysterious purposes and ways!
God stood not, though He seemed to stand, aloof;
And at this hour the conqueror feels the proof:
The wreath he won drew down an instant curse,
The fretting plague is in the public purse,
The cankered spoil corrodes the pining state,
Starved by that indolence their mines create.
Oh, could their ancient Incas rise again,
How would they take up Israel's taunting strain!
Art thou too fallen, Iberia? Do we see

The robber and the murderer weak as we?

Thou, that hast wasted earth, and dared despise
Alike the wrath and mercy of the skies,
Thy pomp is in the grave, thy glory laid
Low in the pits thine avarice has made.
We come with joy from our eternal rest,
To see the oppressor in his turn oppressed.
Art thou the god, the thunder of whose hand
Rolled over all our desolated land,
Shook principalities and kingdoms down,

And made the mountains tremble at his frown?
The sword shall light upon thy boasted powers,
And waste them, as thy sword has wasted ours.
'Tis thus Omnipotence his law fulfils,

And Vengeance executes what Justice wills.