To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves 370 And melodise with man's blest nature there. The vast tract of the parched and sandy waste Now teems with countless rills and shady woods, Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness did hear 375 A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, Hymmng his victory, or the milder snake Crushing the bones of some frail antelope Within his brazen folds—the dewy lawn, Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles 380 To see a babe before his mother's door, Share with the green and golden basilisk That comes to lick his feet, his morning's meal. Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail Has seen, above the illimitable plain, 385 Morning on night and night on morning rise, Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread Its shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea, Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves So long have mingled with the gusty wind 390 In melancholy loneliness, and swept The desert of those ocean solitudes, But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek, The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm, Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds 395 Of kindliest human impulses respond:      Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem, With lightsome clouds and shining seas between, And fertile valleys resonant with bliss, Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, 400 Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore, To meet the kisses of the flowerets there. Man chief perceives the change, his being notes The gradual renovation, and defines Each movement of its progress on his mind. 405 Man, where the gloom of the long polar night Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil, Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow, Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night; 410 Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed Unnatural vegetation, where the land 415 Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease, Was man a nobler being; slavery Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust. Even where the milder zone afforded man A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, 420 Blighting his being with unnumbered ills, Spread 

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