The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS.

Till round the world triumphant discord flies,
Still angry kings to bloody contest rise;
Hosts bright with steel in dreadful order plac'd.
And ships contending on the wat'ry wastes
Distracting demons every breast engage,
Unwearied nations glow with mutual rage,
Still to the charge the routed Briton turns,
The war still rages and the battle burns;
See man with man in deadly combat join,
See, the black navy from the flaming line;
Death smiles alike at battles lost or won--
Art does for him what nature would have done.
Can scenes like thee delight the human breast?--
Who sees with joy humanity distress'd?
Such tragic scenes fierce passions may prolong.
But sited reason says, they must be wrong.
Curs'd be the day how bright soe'er it shin'd
That first made kings the masters of mankind;
And curs'd the wretch who first with regal pride
Their equal rights to equal men deny'd;
But curs'd o'er all, who first to slavery broke
Submissive bow'd and mov'd a monarch's yoke,
Their servile souls his arrogance ador'd
And basely own'd a brother for a lord;
Hence wrath and blood, and feuds and wars began,
And man turn'd monster to his fellow man.
Not of that age of innocence and ease
When men yet social, knew no ill, like thee;
Then dormant yet, ambition (half unknown)
No rival murder'd to possess a throne;
No seas to guard, no empires to defend--
Of some small tribe the father and the friend,
The hoary age beneath his sylvan shade,
Impos'd no laws but those which reason made
On peace not war, on good not ill intent,
He judg'd his brethren by their own consent;
Untaught to spurn those brethren to the dust;
In virtue firm, and obstinately just,
For him no natives rov'd from shore to shore,
No slaves were doom'd to dig the glittering ore:
Remote from all the vain parade of state,
No slaves in diamonds saunter'd at his gate.
Nor did his breast the guilty passions tear,
He knew no murder and he felt no fear,
Was this the patriarch age? Then turn thine eyes,
And view the contrast that our age supplies;
Touch'd from the life, I trace no ages fled;
I draw no curtain that conceals the dead;
To distant Britain let the view be cast,
And say the present far exceeds the past;
Of all the plagues that e'er the world have curs'd,
Name George the tyrant and you name the worst.
What demon hostile to the human kind,
Planted these fierce disorders in the mind?
All urg'd alike one phantom we pursue?
But what has war with happiness to do?
In death's black brood this gem can ne'er be found;
Who deals it out that the life destroying wound,
Or pines with grief to see a brother live,
Thus life dissolving which he cannot give?
'Tis thine, Ambition--These the horrors suit:
Look to the human, She assumes the brute;
She cowardly vein or insolently bold
Her heart revenge, her eye intent on gold.
Curs'd be the madness of the present hour
Men kill for happiness, return to power;
That shining bauble which dropt in follies way
Tempts the goat blind, and leads the bear astray.
Thus havocking I still ought but never found,
Was, in a circle chase thy shadow round.
Blessed are a kind is different forms to bein
Wealth to: paL fing, we po more pele z-
Thus far remov'd and painted on the view
Saidoth fervent plains leero blended with the sky
Perchance they both in fosted combat join
Lecain wg argne the visionary lioe;
Being an sunshone tbe ompy chcle flien,
Fgerre orw mvun'adne or now oceane rise.