Where Alps and Andes at their bases meet, In earth's mid caves to lock their granite feet, Heave their broad spines, expand each breathing lobe, And with their massy members rib the globe, Her cauldron'd floods of fire their blast prepare; Her wallowing womb of subterranean war Waits but the fissure that my wave shall find, To force the foldings of the rocky rind, Crash your curst continent, and whirl on high The vast avulsion vaulting thro the sky, Fling far the bursting fragments, scattering wide Rocks, mountains, nations o'er the swallowing tide. Plunging and surging with alternate sweep, They storm the day-vault and lay bare the deep, Toss, tumble, plough their place, then slow subside, And swell each ocean as their bulk they hide; Two oceans dasht in one! that climbs and roars, And seeks in vain the exterminated shores, The deep drencht hemisphere. Far sunk from day, It crumbles, rolls, it churns the settling sea, Turns up each prominence, heaves every side, To pierce once more the landless length of tide; Till some poized Pambamarca looms at last A dim lone island in the watery waste, Mourns all his minor mountains wreck'd and hurl'd, Stands the sad relic of a ruin'd world, Attests the wrath our mother kept in store, And rues her judgments on the race she bore. No saving Ark around him rides the main, Nor Dove weak-wing'd her footing finds again; His own bald Eagle skims alone the sky, Darts from all points of heaven her searching eye, Kens, thro the gloom, her ancient rock of rest, And finds her cavern'd crag, her solitary nest. Thus toned the Titan his tremendous knell, And lash'd his ocean to a loftier swell; Earth groans responsive, and with laboring woes Leans o'er the surge and stills the storm he throws. Fathers and friends, I know the boding fears Of angry genii and of rending spheres Assail not souls like yours; whom Science bright Thro shadowy nature leads with surer light; For whom she strips the heavens of love and hate, Strikes from Jove's hand the brandisht bolt of fate, Gives each effect its own indubious cause, Divides her moral from her physic laws, Shows where the virtues find their nurturing food, And men their motives to be just and good.