Rome loads herself with chains, seals fast her eyes, And tells the insulted nations when to rise; And rise they do, like sweeping tempests driven, Swarm following swarm, o'ershading earth and heaven, Roll back her outrage, and indignant shed The world's wide vengeance on her sevenfold head. Then dwindling back to littleness and shade Man soon forgets the gorgeous glare he made, Sinks to a savage serf or monkish drone, Roves in rude hordes or counts his beads alone, Wars with his arts, obliterates his lore, And burns the books that rear'd his race before. Shrouded in deeper darkness now he veers The vast gyration of a thousand years, Strikes out each lamp that would illume his way, Disputes his food with every beast of prey; Imbands his force to fence his trist abodes, A wretched robber with his feudal codes. At length, it seems, some parsimonious rays Collect from each far heaven a feeble blaze, Dance o'er his Europe, and again excite His numerous nations to receive the light. But faint and slow the niggard dawn expands, Diffused o'er various far dissunder'd lands, Dreading, as well it may, to prove once more The same sad chance so often proved before. And why not lapse again? Celestial Seer, Forgive my doubts, and ah remove my fear! Man is my brother; strong I feel the ties, From strong solicitude my doubts arise; My heart, while opening with the boundless scope That swells before him and expands his hope, Forebodes another fall; and tho at last Thy world is planted and with light o'ercast, Tho two broad continents their beams combine Round his whole globe to stream his day divine, Perchance some folly, yet uncured, may spread A storm proportion'd to the lights they shed, Veil both his continents, and leave again Between them stretch'd the impermeable main; All science buried, sails and cities lost, Their lands uncultured, as their seas uncrost. Till on thy coast, some thousand ages hence, New pilots rise, bold enterprise commence, Some new Columbus (happier let him be, More wise and great and virtuous far than me) Launch on the wave, and tow'rd the rising day Like a strong eaglet steer his untaught way, Gird half the globe, and to his age unfold A strange new world, the world we call the old. From Finland's glade to Calpe's storm-beat head He'll find some tribes of scattering wildmen spread; But one vast wilderness will shade the soil, No wreck of art, no sign of ancient toil Tell where a city stood; nor leave one trace Of all that honors now, and all that shames the race.