PICTURE IV.

Prince and the pride of Spain! while meaner crowns,

Pleas'd with the shadow of monarchial sway,

Exact obedience from some paltry tract

Scarce worth the pain and toil of governing,

Be thine the generous care to send thy fame

Beyond the knowledge, or the guess of man.

This gulphy deep ( that bounds our western reign

So long by civil feuds and wars disgrac'd )

Must be the passage to some other shore

Where nations dwell, children of early time,

Basking in the warm sunshine of the south,

Who some false deity, no doubt, adore,

Owning no virtue in the potent cross:

What honour, sire, to plant your standards there,

And souls recover to our holy faith

That now in paths of dark perdition stray

Warp'd to his worship by the evil one!

Think not that Europe and the Asian waste,

Or Africa, where barren sands abound,

Are the sole gems in Neptune's bosom laid:

Think not the world a vast extended plain:

See yond’ bright orbs, that through the ether move,

All globular; this earth a globe like them

Walks her own rounds, attended by the moon,

Bright comrade, but with borrowed lustre bright.

If all the surface of this mighty round

Be one wide ocean of unfathom'd depth

Bounding the little space already known,

Nature must have forgot her wonted wit

And made a monstrous havock of proportion.

If her proud depths were not restrain'd by lands,

And broke by continents of vast extent

Existing somewhere under western skies,

Far other waves would roll before the storms

Than ever yet have burst on Europe's shores,

Driving before them deluge and confusion.

But Nature will preserve what she has plann'd:

And the whole suffrage of antiquity,

Platonic dreams, and reason's plainer page

All point at something that we ought to see

Buried behind the waters of the west,

Clouded with shadows of uncertainty.

The time is come for some sublime event

Of mighty fame:— mankind are children yet,

And hardly dream what treasures they possess

In the dark bosom of the fertile main,

Unfathom'd, unattempted, unexplor'd.

These, mighty prince, I offer to reveal,

And by the magnet's aid, if you supply

Ships and some gallant hearts, will hope to bring

From distant climes, news worthy of a king.