hery,
That stirred the pity of the gods, to see.
But, no, thy race is not akin to ours;
No sorrow framed thy melodies;
Thy voice of crime unconscious, pleases less,
Along the dusky valley heard.
Ah, since the mansions of Olympus all
Are desolate, and without guide, the bolt,
That, wandering o'er the cloud-capped mountain-tops,
In horror cold dissolves alike
The guilty and the innocent;
Since this, our earthly home,
A stranger to her children has become,
And brings them up, to misery;
Lend thou an ear, dear Nature, to the woes
And wretched fate of mortals, and revive
The ancient spark within my breast;
If thou, indeed, dost live, if aught there is,
In heaven, or on the sun-lit earth,
Or in the bosom of the sea,
That pities? No; but _sees_ our misery.

HYMN TO THE PATRIARCHS.

OR OF THE BEGINNINGS OF THE HUMAN RACE.

Illustrious fathers of the human race,
Of you, the song of your afflicted sons
Will chant the praise; of you, more dear, by far,
Unto the Great Disposer of the stars,
Who were not born to wretchedness, like ours.
Immedicable woes, a life of tears,
The silent tomb, eternal night, to find
More sweet, by far, than the ethereal light,
These things were not by heaven's gracious law
Imposed on you. If ancient legends speak
Of sins of yours, that brought calamity
Upon the human race, and fell disease,
Alas, the sins more terrible, by far,
Committed by your children, and their souls
More restless, and with mad ambition fixed,
Against them roused the wrath of angry gods,
The hand of all-sustaining Nature armed,
By them so long neglected and despised.
Then life became a burden and a curse,
And every new-born babe a thing abhorred,
And hell and chaos reigned upon the earth.

Thou first the day, and thou the shining lights
Of the revolving stars didst see, the fields,
And their new flocks and herds, O leader old
And father of the human family!
The wandering air that o'er the meadows played,
When smote the rocks, and the deserted vales,
The torrent, rustling headlong from the Alps,
With sound, till then, unheard; and o'er the sites
Of future nations, noisy cities, yet unknown
To fame, a peace profound, mysterious reigned;
And o'er the unploughed hills, in silence, rose
The ray of Phoebus, and the golden moon.
O world, how happy in thy loneliness,
Of crimes and of disasters ignorant!