reign
  Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train:  320
  Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square,
  The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. 
  Sure scenes like these no troubles e’er annoy! 
  Sure these denote one universal joy! 
  Are these thy serious thoughts?—­Ah, turn thine eyes 325
  Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. 
  She once, perhaps, in village plenty blessed,
  Has wept at tales of innocence distressed;
  Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,
  Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn:  330
  Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled,
  Near her betrayer’s door she lays her head,
  And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower,
  With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,
  When idly first, ambitious of the town, 335
  She left her wheel and robes of country brown.

  Do thine, sweet Auburn,—­thine, the loveliest train,—­
  Do thy fair tribes participate[24] her pain? 
  Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,
  At proud men’s doors they ask a little bread! 340

  Ah, no!  To distant climes, a dreary scene,
  Where half the convex world intrudes between,
  Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,
  Where wild Altama[25] murmurs to their woe. 
  Far different there from all that charmed before 345
  The various terrors of that horrid shore;
  Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
  And fiercely shed intolerable day;
  Those matted woods, where birds forget to sing,
  But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling; 350
  Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned,
  Where the dark scorpion gathers death around;
  Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
  The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;
  Where crouching tigers[26] wait their hapless prey, 355
  And savage men more murderous still than they;
  While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
  Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies. 
  Far different these from every former scene,
  The cooling brook, the grassy vested green, 360
  The breezy covert of the warbling grove,
  That only sheltered thefts of harmless love.

  Good Heaven! what sorrows gloomed that parting day,
  That called them from their native walks away;
  When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 365
  Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last,
  And took a long farewell, and wished in vain
  For seats like these beyond the western main,
  And shuddering still to face the distant deep,
  Returned and wept, and still returned to weep. 370
  The good old sire the first prepared to go
  To new found worlds, and wept for others’ woe;
  But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,
  He only wished for worlds beyond the grave.