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 destroy;
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 skies, and th' old
And crazy earth has had her shaking 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 clofe 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 Asia during the whole fummer of 1783.
Still they are frowning fignals, and bespeak
Displeasure in his breaft who fmites 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 fhould love.
Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scatter'd where the fhapely column ftood.
Her palaces are duft. In all her streets
The voice of finging and the fprightly 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
How does the earth receive him?-With what figns
Of gratulation and delight, her king?
Pours fhe not all her choiceft fruits abroad,
Her sweetest 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' extremeft point
Of elevation down into th' abyfs,
His wrath is bufy and his frown is felt.
The rocks fall headlong and the vallies rise,
The rivers die into offenfive pools,
And, charged with putrid verdure, breathe a gross
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. Immenfe
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 fcene
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 fhore
Refistlefs. Never such a sudden flood,
Upridged fo 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 fafety? 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 fcenes
Where beauty oft and letter'd worth confume
Life in the unproductive shades of death,
prone; the pale inhabitants come forth, And, happy in their unforeseen release
From all the rigors of restraint, 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 fuch 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 ftormy winds
Rife not, the waters of the deep fhall rise,
And needing none affiftance of the storm,
Shall roil themselves afhore, and reach him there.
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