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To ecstasy too big to be suppressed;-
These, and a thousand images of bliss,
With which kind nature graces every scene
Where cruel man defeats not her design,
Impart to the benevolent, who wish
All that are capable of pleasure pleased,
A far superior happiness to theirs,
The comfort of a reasonable joy.

Man scarce had risen, obedient to His call
Who form'd him, from the dust his future grave,
When he was crown'd as never king was since.
God set the diadem upon his head,
And angel choirs attended. Wondering stood
The new-made monarch, while before him pass'd,
All happy and all perfect in their kind,

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The creatures, summon'd from their various haunts

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To see their sovereign, and confess his sway.
Vast was his empire, absolute his power,
Or bounded only by a law whose force
'Twas his sublimest privilege to feel
And own, the law of universal love.

He ruled with meekness, they obeyed with joy.

No cruel purpose lurk'd within his heart,

And no distrust of his intent in theirs.

So Eden was a scene of harmless sport,

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Where kindness on his part who ruled the whole 365
Begat a tranquil confidence in all,

And fear as yet was not, nor cause for fear.
But sin marr'd all; and the revolt of man,
That source of evils not exhausted yet,
Was punish'd with revolt of his from him.
Garden of God, how terrible the change

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Thy groves and lawns then witness'd! every heart,
Each animal of every name, conceived

A jealousy and an instinctive fear,
And conscious of some danger, either fled
Precipitate the loathed abode of man,
Or growl'd defiance in such angry sort,
As taught him too to tremble in his turn.

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Thus harmony and family accord

Were driven from Paradise; and in that hour
The seeds of cruelty that since have swell'd

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To such gigantic and enormous growth,

Were sown in human nature's fruitful soil.

Hence date the persecution and the pain

That man inflicts on all inferior kinds,

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Regardless of their plaints. To make him sport,

To gratify the frenzy of his wrath,

Or his base gluttony, are causes good

And just in his account, why bird and beast

Should suffer torture, and the streams be dyed
With blood of their inhabitants impaled.
Earth groans beneath the burthen of a war
Waged with defenceless innocence, while he,
Not satisfied to prey on all around,

Adds tenfold bitterness to death, by pangs
Needless, and first torments ere he devours.
Now happiest they that occupy the scenes
The most remote from his abhorr'd resort,
Whom once as delegate of God on earth
They fear'd, and as his perfect image loved.
The wilderness is theirs with all its caves,
Its hollow glens, its

Unvisited by man.

thickets, and its plains
There they are free,

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And howl and roar as likes them, uncontrol'd,
Nor ask his leave to slumber or to play.
Woe to the tyrant if he dare intrude

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Within the confines of their wild domain;
The Lion tells him-I am monarch here,-

And if he spares him, spares him on the terms
Of royal mercy, and through generous scorn
To rend a victim trembling at his foot.
In measure as by force of instinct drawn,
Or by necessity constrain'd, they live
Dependent upon man, those in his fields,

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These at his crib, and some beneath his roof;
They prove too often at how dear a rate
He sells protection. Witness, at his foot
The spaniel dying for some venial fault,
Under dissection of the knotted scourge.
Witness the patient ox, with stripes and yells
Driven to the slaughter, goaded as he runs
To madness, while the savage at his heels
Laughs at the frantic sufferer's fury spent
Upon the guiltless passenger o'erthrown.
He too is witness, noblest of the train
That wait on man, the flight-performing horse:
With unsuspecting readiness he takes

His murtherer on his back, and push'd all day

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With bleeding sides and flanks that heave for life
To the far-distant goal, arrives and dies.

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So little mercy shows who needs so much!
Does law, so jealous in the cause of man,
Denounce no doom on the delinquent? None.
He lives, and o'er his brimming beaker boasts
(As if barbarity were high desert,)

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The inglorious feat, and clamorous in praise
Of the poor brute, seems wisely to suppose
The honours of his matchless horse his own.
But many a crime deem'd innocent on earth
Is register'd in heaven, and these, no doubt,
Have each their record, with a curse annex'd.
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
But God will never. When he charged the Jew
To assist his foe's down-fallen beast to rise,
And when the bush-exploring boy that seized
The young, to let the parent bird go free,
Proved he not plainly that his meaner works
Are yet his care, and have an interest all,
All, in the universal Father's love?
On Noah, and in him on all mankind
The charter was conferr'd by which we hold
The flesh of animals in fee, and claim
O'er all we feed on, power of life and death.
But read the instrument, and mark it well.
The oppression of a tyrannous controul

Can find no warrant there. Feed then, and yield
Thanks for thy food. Carnivorous through sin
Feed on the slain, but spare the living brute.
The Governor of all, himself to all

So bountiful, in whose attentive ear
The unfledged raven and the lion's whelp
Plead not in vain for pity on the pangs
Of hunger unassuaged, has interposed,
Not seldom, his avenging arm, to smite
The injurious trampler upon nature's law
That claims forbearance even for a brute.
He hates the hardness of a Balaam's heart;
And.prophet as he was, he might not strike

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The blameless animal, without rebuke,
On which he rode: her opportune offence
Saved him, or the unrelenting seer had died.
He sees that human equity is slack

To interfere, though in so just a cause

And makes the task his own; inspiring dumb
And helpless victims with a sense so keen

Of injury, with such knowledge of their strength,
And such sagacity to take revenge,

That oft the beast has seem'd to judge the man.
An ancient, not a legendary tale,

By one of sound intelligence rehearsed,

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(If such, who plead for Providence, may seem
In modern eyes,) shall make the doctrine clear.
Where England stretch'd towards the setting sun
Narrow and long, o'erlooks the western wave,
Dwelt young Misagathus; a scorner he
Of God and goodness, atheist in ostent,
Vicious in act, in temper savage-fierce.

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He journey'd, and his chance was as he went,
To join a traveller of far different note,
Evander, famed for piety, for years
Deserving honour, but for wisdom more.
Fame had not left the venerable man
A stranger to the manners of the youth,
Whose face too was familiar to his view.
Their way was on the margin of the land,
O'er the green summit of the rocks whose base
Beats back the roaring surge 16, scarce heard so high.
The charity that warm'd his heart was moved

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The murmuring surge,

Cannot be heard so high.

King Lear, iv. 6.

That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,

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