Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons, Demands his share of prey; demands themselves. The stormy fates descend: one death involves Tyrants and slaves; when strait, their mangled limbs Crashing at once, he dyes the purple seas With gore, and riots in the vengeful meal.
When o'er this world, by equinoctial rains
Flooded immense, looks out the joyless sun, And draws the copious steam: from swampy fens, Where putrefaction into life ferments,
And breathes destructive myriads; or from woods, 1030 Impenetrable shades, recesses foul,
In vapours rank and blue corruption wrapt, Whose gloomy horrors yet no desperate foot Has ever dared to pierce; then, wasteful, forth Walks the dire Power of pestilent disease. A thousand hideous fiends her course attend, Sick Nature blasting, and to heartless woe, And feeble' desolation, casting down The towering hopes and all the pride of Man. Such as, of late, at Carthagena quenched The British fire. You, gallant VERNON, Saw The miserable scene; you, pitying, saw To infant-weakness sunk the warrior's arm; Saw the deep-racking pang, the ghastly form, The lip pale-quivering, and the beamless eye No more with ardour bright: you heard the groans
Of agonizing ships, from shore to shore; Heard, nightly plunged amid the sullen waves, The frequent corse; while on each other fixed, In sad presage, the blank assistants seemed, Silent, to ask, whom Fate would next demand.
What need I mention those inclement skies,
Awful effects of the Plague.
Where, frequent o'er the sickening city, Plague, The fiercest child of Nemesis divine,
Descends? From Ethiopia's poisoned woods, From stifled Cairo's filth, and fetid fields With locust-armies putrefying heaped,
This great destroyer sprung.* Her awful rage The brutes escape: Man is her destined prey, Intemperate Man! and, o'er his guilty domes She draws a close incumbent cloud of death; Uninterrupted by the living winds,
Forbid to blow a wholesome breeze; and stained With many a mixture by the sun, suffused, Of angry aspect. Princely wisdom, then,
Dejects his watchful eye; and from the hand Of feeble justice, ineffectual, drop
The sword and balance: mute the voice of joy, And hushed the clamour of the busy world. Empty the streets, with uncouth verdure clad ;
Into the worst of deserts sudden turned
The cheerful haunt of Men: unless escaped
From the doomed house, where matchless horror reigns,
Shut up by barbarous fear, the smitten wretch,
With frenzy wild, breaks loose; and, loud to heaven
* These are the causes supposed to be the first origin of the Plague, in Dr. Mead's elegant book on that subject.
But vain their selfish care: the circling sky,
The wide enlivening air is full of fate; And, struck by turns, in solitary pangs They fall, unblest, untended, and unmourned. Thus o'er the prostrate city black Despair Extends her raven wing; while, to complete The scene of desolation, stretched around, The grim guards stand, denying all retreat, And gives the flying wretch a better death.
Much yet remains unsung: the rage intense
Of brazen-vaulted skies, of iron fields,
Where drought and famine starve the blasted year: Fired by the torch of noon to tenfold rage,
The infuriate hill that shoots the pillared flame; And, roused within the subterranean world, The expanding earthquake, that resistless shakes Aspiring cities from their solid base, And buries mountains in the flaming gulph. But 'tis enough; return my vagrant Muse : A nearer scene of horror calls thee home.
Behold, slow-settling o'er the lurid grove. Unusual darkness broods; and growing gains. The full possession of the sky, surcharged. With wrathful vapour, from the secret beds, Where sleep the mineral generations, drawn. Thence Nitre, Sulphur, and the fiery spume Of fat Bitumen, steaming on the day, With various-tinctured trains of latent flame, Pollute the sky, and in yon baleful cloud, A reddening gloom, a magazine of fate, Ferment; till, by the touch ethereal roused, The dash of clouds, or irritating war,
Of fighting winds, while all is calm below,
They furious spring. A boding silence reigns,
Dread through the dun expanse; save the dull sound That from the mountain, previous to the storm,
Rolls o'er the muttering earth, disturbs the flood, And shakes the forest leaf without a breath. Prone, to the lowest vale, the aërial tribes Descend the tempest-loving raven scarce Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze The cattle stand, and on the scowling heavens Cast a deploring eye; by Man forsook, Who to the crowded cottage hies him fast, Or seeks the shelter of the downward cave. 'Tis listening fear, and dumb amazement all : When to the startled eye the sudden glance Appears far south, eruptive through the cloud; And following slower, in explosion vast, The Thunder raises his tremendous voice. At first, heard solemn o'er the verge of heaven, The tempest growls; but as it nearer comes, And rolls its awful burden on the wind, The lightnings flash a larger curve, and more The noise astounds: till over head a sheet Of livid flame discloses wide; then shuts, And opens wider; shuts and opens still Expansive, wrapping ether in a blaze. Follows the loosened aggravated roar, Enlarging, deepening, mingling; peal on peal Crushed horrible, convulsing heaven and earth. Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail,
Or prone-descending rain. Wide-rent, the clouds 1145 Pour a whole flood; and yet, its flame unquenched,
The unconquerable lightning struggles through, Ragged and fierce, or in red whirling balls,
And fires the mountains with redoubled rage.
Black from the stroke, above, the mouldering pine 1150 Stands a sad shattered trunk; and, stretched below,
A lifeless group the blasted cattle lie :
Here the soft flocks, with that same harmless look They wore alive, and ruminating still
In fancy's eye; and there the frowning bull,
And ox half-raised. Struck on the castled cliff, The venerable tower and spiry fane
Resign their aged pride. The gloomy woods Start at the flash, and from their deep recess, Wide-flaming out, their trembling inmates shake. 1160 Amid Carnarvon's mountains rages loud
The repercussive roar with mighty crush, Into the flashing deep, from the rude rocks Of Penmanmaur heaped hideous to the sky, Tumble the smitten cliffs; and Snowden's peak, Dissolving, instant yields his wintry load. Far-seen, the heights of heathy Cheviot blaze, And Thulè bellows through her utmost isles.
Guilt hears appalled, with deeply troubled thought.
And yet not always on the guilty head
Descends the fated flash. Young CELADON
And his AMELIA were a matchless pair ; With equal virtue formed, and equal grace, The same, distinguished by their sex alone : Hers the mild lustre of the blooming morn,
And his the radiance of the risen day.
They loved but such their guileless passion was,
As in the dawn of time informed the heart
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