And by the voice of all its elements
To preach the gen'ral doom*. When were the winds
Let flip with such a warrant to destroy?
When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry? Fires from beneath, and meteors † from above, Portentous, unexampled, unexplain'd, Have kindled beacons in the skies; and th' old And crazy earth has had her shaking fits More frequent, and forgone her usual reft. Is it a time to wrangle, when the props And pillars of our planet seem to fail, And Nature with a dim and sickly eye To wait the close of all? But grant her end More distant, and that prophecy demands A longer refpite, unaccomplish'd yet;
Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak Difpleasure in his breast who smites the earth Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice. And 'tis but seemly, that, where all deferve And stand expos'd by common peccancy
To what no few have felt, there should 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 dust. In all her streets The voice of finging and the sprightly chord Are filent. Revelry, and dance, and show Suffer a syncope 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 signs Of gratulation and delight, her king?
Pours she not all her choicest fruits abroad,
Her sweetest flow'rs, her aromatic gums,
Disclofing 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' abyfs
His wrath is bufy, and his frown is felt.
The rocks fall headlong, and the vallies rife,
The rivers die into offenfive pools,
And, charg'd with putrid verdure, breathe a gross And mortal nuisance into all the air. What folid was, by transformation strange, Grows fluid; and the fixt and rooted earth, Tormented into billows, heaves and swells, Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl Sueks down its prey insatiable. Immense The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs And agonies of human and of brute Multitudes, fugitive on ev'ry side,
And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene Migrates uplifted; and, with all its foil Alighting in far distant fields, finds out A new poffeffor, and survives 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 Resistless. Never fuch a fudden flood, Upridg'd so high, and fent on such a charge, Possess'd an inland scene. Where now the throng That press'd the beach, and, hasty 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 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 rigours 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 lose thee so 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 inquest that it makes On God's behalf, lays waste his fairest works. The very elements, though each be meant The minifter of man, to ferve his wants, Conspire against him. With his breath he draws A plague into his blood; and cannot use Life's neceffary means, but he must die. Storms rise t' o'erwhelm him: or, if stormy winds Rise not, the waters of the deep shall rife,
And, needing none assistance of the storm,
Shall roll themselves afhore, and reach him there.
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