Yet think in tribes so vast, my gentle fair, What millions merit our instructive care; How age to age leads on their joyless gloom, Habitual slaughter their poor piteous doom; No social ties their wayward passions prove, Nor peace nor pleasure treads the howling grove; Mid thousand heroes and a thousand fair No fond Oella meets her Capac there. Yet, taught by thee domestic joys to prize, With softer charms the virgin race shall rise, Awake new virtues, every grace improve, And form their minds for happiness and love. Ah think, as future years thro time descend, What wide creations on thy voice depend; And, like the Sun, whose all-delighting ray To those mild regions gives his purest day, Diffuse thy bounties, let me instant fly; In three short moons the generous task I'll try; Then swift returning, I'll conduct my fair Where realms submissive wait her fostering care. And will my prince, my Capac, borne away, Thro those dark wilds in quest of empire stray, Where tigers fierce command the shuddering wood, And men like tigers thirst for human blood? Think'st thou no dangerous deed the course attends, Alone, unaided by thy sire and friends? Even chains and death may meet my hero there, Nor his last groan could reach Oella's ear. But no! nor death nor chains shall Capac prove Unknown to her, while she has power to rove. Close by thy side, where'er thy wanderings stray, My equal steps shall measure all the way; With borrow'd soul each chance of fate I'll dare, Thy toils to lessen and thy dangers share. Quick shall my ready hand two garments weave, Whose sunny whiteness shall the tribes deceive; Thus clad, their homage shall secure our sway. And hail us children of the God of day. The lovely counsel pleased. The smiling chief Approved her courage and dispell'd her grief; Then to their homely bower in haste they move. Begin their labors and prepare to rove. Soon grow the robes beneath her forming care, And the fond parents wed the wondrous pair; But whelm'd in grief beheld the following dawn, Their joys all vanish'd and their children gone. Nine days they march'd; the tenth effulgent morn Saw their white forms that sacred isle adorn. The work begins; they preach to every band The well-form'd fiction, and their faith demand; With various miracles their powers display, To prove their lineage and confirm their sway. They form to different arts the hand of toil, To whirl the spindle and to spade the soil, The Sun's bright march with pious finger trace, And his pale sister with her changing face; Show how their bounties clothe the labor'd plain, The green maize shooting from its golden grain, How the white cotton tree's expanding lobes File into threads, and swell to fleecy robes; While the tamed Llama aids the wondrous plan, And lends his garment to the loins of man.