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74 O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal Where virtue fixes universal peace, And midst the ebb and flow of human things, Shew somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary waves.

The habitable earth is full of bliss; Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, Where matter dared not vegetate or live, But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed; And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles Ruffle the placid ocean-deep that rolls Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves And melodize with man's blest nature there.

Those deserts of immeasurable sand, Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring, Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love Broke on the sultry silentness alone, Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, Corn-fields, and pastures, and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness beheld A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, A tygress sating with the flesh of lambs, The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,