The Task and Other Poems [49]
various haunts 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 lurked within his heart, And no distrust of his intent in theirs. So Eden was a scene of harmless sport, Where kindness on his part who ruled the whole Begat a tranquil confidence in all, And fear as yet was not, nor cause for fear. But sin marred all; and the revolt of man, That source of evils not exhausted yet, Was punished with revolt of his from him. Garden of God, how terrible the change Thy groves and lawns then witnessed! 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 growled defiance in such angry sort, As taught him too to tremble in his turn. Thus harmony and family accord Were driven from Paradise; and in that hour The seeds of cruelty, that since have swelled 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, 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 burden 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 abhorred resort, Whom once as delegate of God on earth They feared, and as His perfect image loved. The wilderness is theirs with all its caves, Its hollow glens, its thickets, and its plains Unvisited by man. There they are free, And howl and roar as likes them, uncontrolled, Nor ask his leave to slumber or to play. Woe to the tyrant, if he dare intrude 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 constrained, they live Dependent upon man, those in his fields, 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 murderer on his back, and, pushed all day, With bleeding sides, and flanks that heave for life, To the far-distant goal, arrives and dies. 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) 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, deemed innocent on earth, Is registered in heaven, and these, no doubt, Have each their record, with a curse annexed. 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 conferred by which we hold The flesh of animals in fee, and claim,