And by the voice of all its elements.
To preach the gen'ral doom*. When were the winds Let flip with fuch a warrant to deftroy;
When did the waves fo haughtily o'erleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?
Fires from beneath, and meteors † from above,
Portentous, unexampled, unexplained,
Have kindled beacons in the fkies, and th' old
And crazy earth has had her fhaking fits
More frequent, and forgone her usual rest.
Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet feem to fail,
And Nature with a dim and fickly eye
To wait the close of all? But grant her end
More diftant, and that prophecy demands
A longer refpite, unaccomplish'd yet;
Alluding to the calamities at Jamaica.
Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Afia during
the whole fummer of 1783.
Still they are frowning fignals, and bespeak
Displeasure in his breaft who fimites the earth
Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice.
And 'tis but feemly, that where all deferve
And ftand expofed by common peccancy
To what no few have felt, there fhould be peace,
And brethren in calamity should love.
Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scatter'd where the shapely column stood.
Her palaces are duft. In all her streets
The voice of finging and the sprightly chord
Are filent. Revelry and dance and show
Suffer a fyncope and folemn pause,
While God performs upon the trembling stage
Of his own works, his dreadful part alone.
How does the earth receive him?-With what figns Of gratulation and delight, her king?
Pours fhe not all her choiceft fruits abroad,
Her fweetest flowers, her aromatic gums,
Disclosing paradife where'er he treads?
She quakes at his approach. Her hollow womb
Conceiving thunders, through a thousand deeps
And fiery caverns roars beneath his foot.
The hills move lightly and the mountains smoke,
For he has touch'd them. From th' extremest point
Of elevation down into th' abyss,
His wrath is busy and his frown is felt.
The rocks fall headlong and the vallies rife,
The rivers die into offenfive pools,
And, charged with putrid verdure, breathe a grofs
And mortal nuifance into all the air.
What folid was, by transformation strange
Grows fluid, and the fixt and rooted earth
Tormented into billows heaves and fwells,
Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl
Sucks down its prey infatiable. Immense
The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs.
And agonies of human and of brute
Multitudes, fugitive on ev'ry fide,
And fugitive in vain. The fylvan scene
Migrates uplifted, and with all its foil
Alighting in far diftant fields, finds out
A new poffeffor, and furvives the change.
Ocean has caught the frenzy, and upwrought
To an enormous and o'erbearing height,
Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice
Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore
Refiftlefs. Never fuch a fudden flood,
Upridged so high, and sent on such a charge,
Poffefs'd an inland fcene. Where now the throng
That prefs'd the beach, and hafty to depart
Look'd to the fea for safety? They are gone,
Gone with the refluent wave into the deep,
A prince with half his people. Ancient tow'rs,
And roofs embattled high, the gloomy scenes
Where beauty oft and letter'd worth confume
Life in the unproductive shades of death,
Fall prone; the pale inhabitants come forth,
And, happy in their unforeseen release
From all the rigors of reftraint, enjoy
The terrors of the day that fets them free.
Who then that has thee, would not hold thee fast
Freedom! whom they that lofe thee, fo regret,
That ev'n a judgment making way for thee,
Seems in their eyes, a mercy, for thy fake.
Such evil fin hath wrought; and such a flame
Kindled in heaven, that it burns down to earth,
And in the furious inqueft that it makes
On God's behalf, lays waste his fairest works.
The very elements, though each be meant
The minister of man, to serve his wants,
Confpire against him. With his breath, he draws
A plague into his blood. And cannot use
Life's neceffary means, but he must die.
Storms rife t' o'erwhelm him: or if stormy winds
Rise not, the waters of the deep shall rise,
And needing none affiftance of the storm,
Shall roll themselves afhore, and reach him there.
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