Of purest crystal, nor the lucid air,
Though one transparent vacancy it seems,
Void of their unseen people. These conceal'd
By the kind art of forming Heaven, escape
The grosser eye of man: for, if the worlds
In worlds enclosed should on his senses burst,
From cates ambroisal, and the nectar'd bowl,
He would abhorrent turn; and in dead night,
When silence sleeps o'er all, be stunn'd with noise.
Let no presuming impious railer tax
Creative Wisdom, as if aught was form'd
In vain, or not for admirable ends.
Shall little haughty Ignorance pronounce
His works unwise, of which the smallest part
Exceeds the narrow vision of her mind?
As if upon a full-proportion'd dome,

On swelling columns heaved, the pride of art,
A critic-fly, whose feeble ray scarce spreads
An inch around, with blind presumption bold.
Should dare to tax the structure of the whole.
And lives the man, whose universal eye
Has swept at once th' unbounded scheme of things;
Mark'd their dependance so, and firm accord,
As with unfaltering accent to conclude
That this availeth nought? Has any seen
The mighty chain of beings, lessening down
From infinite perfection to the brink
Of dreary nothing, desolate abyss !
From which astonish'd thought, recoiling, turns ?
Till then, alone let zealous praise ascend,
And hymns of holy wonder, to that Power,
Whose wisdom shines as lovely on our minds,
As on our smiling eyes his servant-sun.

Thick in yon stream of light, a thousand ways,
Upward, and downward, thwarting, and convolved,
The quivering nations sport; till, tempest-wing'd,"
Fierce Winter sweeps them from the face of day.
Even so luxurious men unheeding pass,
An idle summer-life in fortune's shine,
A season's glitter! Thus they flutter on
From toy to toy, from vanity to vice;
Till, blown away by death, oblivion comes
Behind, and strikes them from the book of life.

Now swarms the village o'er the jovial mead: The rustic youth, brown with meridian toil, Healthful and strong; full as the summer-rose, Blown by prevailing suns, the ruddy maid, Half-naked, swelling on the sight, and all Her kindled graces burning o'er her cheek. Even stooping age is here; and infant hands Trail the long rake, or with the fragrant load O'ercharged, amid the kind oppression roll. Wide flies the tedded grain; all in a row Advancing broad, or wheeling round the field, They spread their breathing harvest to the sun, That throws refreshful round a rural smell: Or, as they rake the green-appearing ground, And drive the dusky wave along the mead, The russet haycock rises thick behind, In order gay. While heard from dale to dale, Waking the breeze, resounds the blended voice Of happy labour, love, and social glee.

Or rushing thence, in one diffusive band, They drive the troubled flocks, by many a dog Compell'd, to where the mazy-running brook Forms the deep pool; this bank abrupt and high, And that fair spreading in a pebbled shore. Urged to the giddy brink, much is the toil, The clamour much, of men, and boys, and dogs, Ere the soft fearful people to the flood Commit their woolly sides. And oft the swain, On some impatient seizing, hurls them in: Embolden'd then, nor hesitating more, Fast, fast, they plunge amid the flashing wave, And, panting, labour to the farthest shore: Repeated this, till deep the well-wash'd fleece Has drunk the flood, and from his lively haunt The trout is banish'd by the sordid stream; Heavy, and dripping, to the breezy brow Slow move the harmless race; where, as they spread Their swelling treasures to the sunny ray, Inly disturb'd, and wondering what this wild Outrageous tumult means, their loud complaints The country fill: and, toss'd from rock to rock, Incessant bleatings run around the hills. At last, of snowy white, the gather'd flocks Are in the wattled pen innumerous press'd, Head above head: and ranged in lusty rows, The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears. The housewife waits to roll her fleecy stores, With all her gay-dress'd maids attending round. One, chief in gracious dignity enthroned,

Shines o'er the rest,, the pastoral queen, and rays
Her smiles, sweet-beaming, on her shepherd king;
While the glad circle round them yield their souls
To festive mirth, and wit that knows no gall.
Meantime their joyous task goes on apace.
Some, mingling, stir the melted tar, and some,
Deep on the new-shorn vagrant's heaving side,
To stamp his master's cipher ready stand:
Others th' unwilling wether drag along;
And, glorying in his might, the sturdy boy
Holds by the twisted horns th' indignant ram.
Behold, where bound, and of its robe bereft
By needy man, that all-depending lord,
How meek, how patient the mild creature lies!
What softness in its melancholy face,
What dumb-complaining innocence appears!
Fear not, ye gentle tribes, 'tis not the knife
Of horrid slaughter that is o'er you waved;
No, 'tis the tender swain's well-guided shears,
Who having now, to pay his annual care,
Borrow'd your fleece, to you a cumberous load,
Will send you bounding to your hills again.

A simple scene! Yet hence Britannia sees
Her salid grandeur rise: hence she commands
Th' exalted stores of every brighter clime:
The treasures of the sun, without his rage:
Hence fervent all with culture, toil and arts,
Wide glows her land: her dreadful thunder hence
Rides o'er the waves sublime, and now, even now,
Impending hangs o'er Gallia's humbled coast:
Hence rules the circling deep, and awes the world.
'Tis raging noon; and, vertical, the sun
Darts on the head direct his forceful rays.
O'er heaven and earth, far as the ranging eye
Can sweep, a dazzling deluge reigns; and all
From pole to pole is undistinguish'd blaze.
In vain the sight, dejected to the ground,
Stoops for relief: thence hot-ascending streams
And keen reflection pain. Deep to the root
Of vegetation parch'd, the cleaving fields
And slippery fawn an arid hue disclose,
Blast fancy's bloom, and wither even the soul.
Echo no more returns the cheerful sound
Of sharpening sithe; the mower, sinking, heaps
O'er him the humid hay, with flowers perfumed:
And scarce a chirping grasshopper is heard
Through the dumb mead. Distressful Nature pants.
The very streams look languid from afar;
Or, through th' unshelter'd glade, impatient seem
To hurl into the covert of the grove.

All-conquering Heat, oh intermit thy wrath!
And on my throbbing temples potent thus
Beam not so fierce! Incessant still you flow,
And still another fervent flood succeeds,
Pour'd on the head profuse. In vain I sigh,
And restless turn, and look around for night
Night is far off; and hotter hours approach.
Thrice happy he! who on the sunless side
Of a romantic mountain, forest-crown'd,
Beneath the whole collected shade reclines:
Or in the gelid caverns, woodbine-wrought,
And fresh bedew'd with ever-spouting streams,
Sits coolly calm: while all the world without,
Unsatisfied, and sick, tosses in noon.
Emblem instructive of the virtuous man,
Who keeps his temper'd mind serene, and pure,
And every passion aptly harmonized,
Amid a jarring world with vice inflamed.

Welcome, ye shades! Ye bowery thickets, hail
Ye lofty pines! ye venerable oaks!
Ye ashes wild, resounding o'er the steep!
Delicious is your shelter to the soul,
As to the hunted hart the sallying spring,
Or stream full-flowing, that his swelling sides
Laves, as he floats along the herbaged brink.
Cool thro' the nerves your pleasing comfort glides;
The heart beats glad; the fresh-expanded eye
And ear resume their watch; the sinews knit,
And life shoots swift through all the lighten'd limbs.
Around th' adjoining brook, that purls along
The vocal grove, now fretting o'er a rock,
Now scarcely moving through a reedy pool,
Now starting to a sudden stream, and now
Gently diffused into a limpid plain;

A various group the herds and flocks compose;
Rural confusion! On the grassy bank
Some ruminating lie; while others stand
Half in the flood, and often bending sip
The circling surface. In the middle droops
The strong laborions ox, with honest front,
Which incomposed he shakes; and from his sides
The troublous insects lashes with his tail,

Returning still. Amid his subjects safe,
Slumbers the monarch swain; his careless arm,
Thrown round his head, on downy moss sustain'd:
Here laid his scrip, with wholesome viands fill'd;
There, listening every noise, his watchful dog.

Light fly his slumbers, if perchance a flight
Of angry gadflies fasten on the herd;
That startling scatters from the shallow brook
In search of lavish stream. Tossing the foam,
They scorn the keeper's voice, and scour the plain,
Through all the bright severity of noon;
While, from their labouring breasts, a hollow moan
Proceeding, runs low-bellowing round the hills.

Oft in this season too the horse, provoked, While his big sinews full of spirit swell, Trembling with vigour, in the heat of blood, Springs the high fence; and, o'er the field effused, Darts on the gloomy flood with steadfast eye, And heart estranged to fear: his nervous chest, Luxuriant, and erect, the seat of strength, [thirst: Bears down th' opposing stream: quenchless his He takes the rivers at redoubled draughts; And, with wide nostrils, snorting, skims the wave. Still let me pierce into the midnight depth Of yonder grove, of wildest, largest growth; That, forming high in air a woodland quire, Nods o'er the mount beneath. At every step, Solemn and slow, the shadows blacker fall, And all is awful listening gloom around.

These are the haunts of meditation, these
The scenes, where ancient bards th' inspiring breath
Ecstatic, felt; and, from this world retired,
Conversed with angels, and immortal forms,
On gracious errands bent: to save the fall
Of virtue struggling on the brink of vice;
In waking whispers, and repeated dreams,

To hint pure thought, and warn the favour'd soul
For future trials fated to prepare;
To prompt the poet, who devoted gives
His Muse to better themes; to sooth the pangs
dying worth, and from the patriot's breast
Backward to mingle in detested war,

But foremost when engaged) to turn the death;
And numberless such offices of love,
Daily, and nightly, zealous to perform.

Shook sudden from the bosom of the sky,
A thousand shapes or glide athwart the dusk,
Or stalk majestic on. Deep-roused I feel
A sacred terror, a severe delight,

Creep thro' my mortal frame; and thus, methinks,
A voice, than human more, th' abstracted ear
Of fancy strikes: Be not of us afraid,
Poor kindred man! thy fellow-creatures we
From the same Parent-Power our beings drew,
The same our Lord, and laws, and great pursuit.
Once some of us, like thee, through stormy life
Toil'd, tempest-beaten, ere we could attain
This holy calm, this harmony of mind,
Where purity and peace immingle charms.
Then fear not us; but, with responsive song
Amid these dim recesses, undisturb'd
By noisy folly, and discordant vice,
Of Nature sing with us, and Nature's God.
Here, frequent, at the visionary hour,
When musing midnight reigns, or silent noon,
Angelic harps are in full concert heard,

And voices chanting from the wood-crown'd hill,
The deepening dale, or inmost sylvan glade :
A privilege bestow'd by us, alone,
On contemplation, or the hallow'd ear
Of poet, swelling to seraphic strain.'

And art thou, Stanley, of that sacred band?
Alas! for us too soon! Though raised above
The reach of hunan pain, above the flight
Of human joy; yet with a mingled ray
Of sadly-pleased remembrance, must thou feel
A mother's love, a mother's tender wo:
Who seeks thee still, in many a former scene;
Seeks thy fair form, thy lovely-beaming eyes,
Thy pleasing converse, by gay lively sense
Inspired, where moral wisdom mildly shone,
Without the toil of art, and virtue glow'd
In all her smiles, without forbidding pride.
But, O thou best of parents; wipe thy tears;
Or rather to parental nature pay
The tears of grateful joy, who for a while
Lent thee this younger self, this opening bloom
Of thy enlighten'd mind and gentle worth.

A young lady, well known to the Author, who died at the age of eighteen, in the year 1738.

Believe the Muse: the wintry blast of death
Kills not the buds of virtue; no, they spread,
Beneath the heavenly beam of brighter suns,
Through endless ages, into higher powers.

Thus up they mount, in airy vision wrapp'd,
I stray, regardless whither; till the sound
Of a near fall of water every sense
[back,
Wakes from the charm of thought: swift shrinking
I check my steps, and view the broken scene.
Smooth to the shelving brink a copious flood
Rolls fair and placid; where collected all
In one impetuous torrent, down the steep
It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round.
At first an azure sheet, it rushes broad;
Then whitening by degrees, as prone it falls,
And from the loud-resounding rocks below
Dash'd in a cloud of foam, it sends aloft
A hoary mist, and forms a ceaseless shower.
Nor can the tortured wave here find repose:
But, raging still amid the shaggy rocks,
Now flashes o'er the scatter'd fragments, now
Aslant the hollow'd channel rapid darts;
And falling fast from gradual slope to slope,
With wild infracted course, and lessen'd roar,
It gains a safer bed, and steals, at last,
Along the mazes of the quiet vale.

Invited from the cliff, to whose dark brow
He clings, the steep ascending eagle soars,
With upward pinions, through the flood of day,
And, giving full his bosom to the blaze,
Gains on the sun; while all the tuneful race,
Smit by afflictive noon, disorder'd droop,
Deep in the thicket; or, from bower to bower
Responsive, force an interrupted strain.
The stock-dove only through the forest cooes,
Mournfully hoarse; oft ceasing from his plaint,
Short interval of weary wo! Again
The sad idea of his murder'd mate,
Struck from his side by savage fowler's guile,
Across his fancy comes; and then resounds
A louder song of sorrow through the grove.
Beside the dewy border let me sit,

All in the freshness of the humid air:
There in that hollow'd rock, grotesque and wild,
And ample chair moss-lined, and over-head
By flowering umbrage shaded; where the bee
Strays diligent, and with th' extracted balm
Of fragrant woodbine loads his little thigh.

Now, while I taste the sweetness of the shade, While Nature lies around deep-lull'd in noon, Now come, bold Fancy, spread a daring flight And view the wonders of the torrid zone: Climes unrelenting! with whose rage compared, Yon blaze is feeble, and yon skies are cool.

See, how at once the bright effulgent sun,
Rising direct, swift chases from the sky
The short-lived twilight; and with ardent blaze
Looks gaily fierce through all the dazzling air;
He mounts his throne: but kind before him sends,
Issuing from out the portals of the morn,
The general breeze, to mitigate his fire,
And breathe refreshment on a fainting world.
Great are the scenes, with dreadful beauty crown'd
And barbarous wealth, that see, each circling year,
Returning suns and double seasonst pass:
Rocks rich in gems, and mountains big with mines,
That on the high equator ridgy rise

Whence many a bursting stream auriferous plays:
Majestic woods of every vigorous green,
Stage above stage, high waving o'er the hills*
Or to the far horizon wide diffused,

A boundless deep immensity of shade.
Here lofty trees to ancient song unknown,
The noble sons of potent heat and floods
Prone-rushing from the clouds, rear high to heaven
Their thorny stems, and broad around them throw
Meridian gloom. Here, in eternal prime,
Unnumber'd fruits, of keen delicious taste
And vital spirit, drink amid the cliffs,
And burning sands that bank the shrubby vales,
Redoubled day; yet in their rugged coats
A friendly juice to cool its rage contain.

* Which blows constantly between the tropics from the east, or the collateral points, the north-east and south-east: caused by the pressure of the rarefied air on that before it, according to the diurnal motion of the sun from east to west.

In all climates between the tropics, the sun, as he passes and repasses in his annual motion, is twice a year vertical, which produces this effect.

Bear me, Pomona! to thy citron groves;
To where the lemon, and the piercing lime,
With the deep orange, glowing through the green,
Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined
Beneath the spreading tamarind, that shakes,
Fann'd by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit.
Deep in the night the massy locust sheds, [maze,
Quench my hot limbs; or lead me through the
Embowering endless, of the Indian fig;
Or thrown at gayer ease, on some fair brow,
Let me behold, by breezy murmurs cool'd,
Broad o'er my head the verdant cedar wave,
And high palmettos lift their graceful shade.
Or stretch'd amid these orchards of the sun,
Give me to drain the cocoa's milky bowl,
And from the palm to draw its freshening wine,
More bounteous far than all the frantic juice
Which Bacchus pours. Nor, on its slender twigs
Low bending, be the full pomegranate scorn'd;
Nor creeping through the woods, the gelid race
Of berries. Oft in humble station dwells
Unboastful worth, above fastidious pomp:
Witness, thou best anana! thou the pride
Of vegetable life, beyond whate'er
The poets imaged in the golden age:
Quick let me strip thee of thy tufty coat,
Spread thy ambrosial stores, and feast with Jove!
From these the prospect varies. Plains immense
Lie stretch'd below, interminable meads,
And vast savannas, where the wandering eye,
Unfix'd, is in a verdant ocean lost.
Another Flora there, of bolder hues,

And richer sweets, beyond our garden's pride,
Plays o'er the fields, and showers with sudden hand
Exuberant Spring: for oft these valleys shift
Their green embroider'd robe to fiery brown,
And swift to green again, as scorching suns,
Or streaming dews and torrent rains, prevail.
Along these lonely regions, where retir'd
From little scenes of art, great Nature dwells
In awful solitude, and nought is seen
But the wild herds that own no master's stall,
Prodigious rivers roll their fattening seas
On whose luxuriant herbage, half conceal'd,
Like a fallen cedar, far diffused his train,
Cased in green scales, the crocodile extends.
The flood disparts: behold! in plaited mail,
Behemoth rears his head. Glanced from his side,
The darted steel in idle shivers flies :

He fearless walks the plain, or seeks the hills;
Where, as he crops his varied fare, the herds,
In widening circle round, forget their food,
And at the harmless stranger wondering gaze.

Peaceful beneath primeval trees, that cast
Their ample shade o'er Niger's yellow stream,
And where the Ganges rolls his sacred wave;
Or 'mid the central depth of blackening woods,
High raised in solemn theatre around,"
Leans the huge elephant: wisest of brutes!
O truly wise! with gentle might endow'd:
Though powerful, not destructive! Here he sees
Revolving ages sweep the changeful earth,
And empires rise and fall; regardless he
Of what the never-resting race of men
Project: thrice happy could he 'scape their guile,
Who mine, from cruel avarice, his steps;
Or with his towery grandeur swell their state,
The pride of kings! or else his strength pervert,
And bid him rage amid the mortal fray,
Astonish'd at the madness of mankind.

Wide o'er the winding umbrage of the floods,
Like vivid blossoms glowing from afar,
Thick swarm the brighter birds. For Nature's hand,
That with a sportive vanity has deck'd
The plumy nations, there her gayest hues
Profusely pours. But if she bids them shine,
Array'd in all the beauteous beams of day,
Yet, frugal still, she humbles them in song. †
Nor envy we the gaudy robes they lent
Proud Montezuma's realm, whose legions cast
A boundless radiance waving on the sun,
While Philomel is ours; while in our shades,
Through the soft silence of the listening night,
The sober-suited songstress trills her lay.

But come, my Muse, the desert-barrier burst, A wild expanse of lifeless sand and sky:

The hippopotamus, or river-horse. In all the regions of the torrid zone, the birds, though more beautiful in their plumage, are ob served to be less melodious than ours.

And, swifter than the toiling caravan,
Shoot o'er the vale of Sennar; ardent climb
The Nubian mountains, and the secret bounds
Of jealous Abyssinia boldly pierce.

Thou art no ruffian, who beneath the mask Of social commerce com'st to rob their wealth; No holy fury thou, blaspheming Heaven, With consecrated steel to stab their peace, And through the land, yet red from civil wounds, To spread the purple tyranny of Rome. Thou, like the harmless bee, may'st freely range, From mead to mead, bright with exalted flowers, From jasmine grove to grove may'st wander gay, Through palmy shades and aromatic woods, That grace the plains, invest the peopled hills, And up the more than Alpine mountains wave. There on the breezy summit, spreading fair, Form many a league; or on stupendous rocks, That from the sun-redoubling valley lift, Cool to the middle air, their lawny tops; Where palaces, and fanes, and villas rise; And gardens smile around, and cultured fields: And fountains gush; and careless herds and flocks Securely stray: a world within itself, Disdaining all assault: there let me draw Ethereal soul, there drink reviving gales, Profusely breathing from the spicy groves, And vales of fragrance; there at distance hear The roaring floods, and cataracts, that sweep From disembowel'd earth the virgin gold, And o'er the varied landscape, restless, rove, Fervent with life of every fairer kind; A land of wonders! which the sun still eyes With ray direct, as of the lovely realm Enamour'd, and delighting there to dwell.

How changed the scene! In blazing height of noon
The sun, oppress'd, is plunged in thickest gloom.
Still horror reigns, a dreary twilight round,
Of struggling night and day malignant mix'd.
For to the hot equator crowding fast,
Where, highly rarefied, the yielding air
Admits their stream, incessant vapours roll,
Amazing clouds on clouds continual heap'd;
Or whirl'd tempestuous by the gusty wind,
Or silent borne along, heavy and slow,
With the big stores of steaming oceans charged.
Meantime, amid these upper seas condensed
Around the cold aerial mountain's brow,
And by conflicting winds together dash'd,
The thunder holds his black tremendous throne:
From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage;
Till, in the furious elemental war

Dissolved, the whole precipitated mass
Unbroken floods and solid torrents pours.

The treasures these, hid from the bounded search
Of ancient knowledge: whence with annual pomp,
Rich king of floods! o'erflows the swelling Nile.
From his two springs in Gojam's sunny realm,
Pure-welling out, he through the lucid lake
Of fair Dambea rolls his infant stream.
There, by the naiads nursed, he sports away
His playful youth, amid the fragrant isles,
That with unfading verdure smile around.
Ambitious, thence the manly river breaks;
And, gathering many a flood, and copious fed
With all the mellow'd treasures of the sky,
Winds in progressive majesty along:

Through splendid kingdoms now devolves his maze,
Now wanders wild o'er solitary tracts
Of life-deserted sand; till, glad to quit

The joyless desert, down the Nubian rocks
From thundering steep to steep, he pours his urn,
And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave.

His brother Niger too, and all the floods
In which the full-form'd maids of Afric lave
Their jetty limbs; and all that from the tract
Of woody mountains stretch'd through gorgeous Ind
Fall on Cormandel's coast, or Malabar;
From Menam's orient stream, that nightly shines
With insect lamps, to where Aurora sheds
On Indus' smiling banks the rosy shower:
All, at this bounteous season ope their urns,
And pour untoiling harvest o'er the land.

Nor less thy world, Columbus, drinks, refresh'd, The lavish moisture of the melting year. Wide o'er his isles, the branching Oronoque Rolls a brown deluge; and the native drives

The river that runs through Siam; on whose banks a vast multitude of those insects called fireflies make a beautiful appearance in the night.

Of gold. For then from ancient gloom emerged
The rising world of trade: the genius, then,
Of navigation, that, in hopeless sloth,
Had slumber'd on the vast Atlantic deep
For idle ages, starting, heard at last

The Lusitanian prince; who, heaven inspired
To love of useful glory roused mankind,
And in unbounded commerce mix'd the world.
Increasing still the terrors of these storms,
His jaws horrific arm'd with threefold fate,
Here dwells the direful shark. Lured by the scent
Of steaming crowds of rank disease, and death,
Behold! he rushing cuts the briny flood,
Swift as the gale can bear the ship along;
And from the partners of that cruel trade
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 straight their mangled
Crashing at once, he dyes the purple seas
With gore, and riots in the vengeful meal.

[limbs

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,
Impenetrable shade, recesses foul,

In vapours rank and blue corruption wrapp'd,
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 wo,
And feeble desolation casting down
The towering hopes and all the pride of man.
Such, as of late, at Carthagena quench'd
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 fix'd
In sad presage, the black assistants seem'd
Silent, to ask, whom fate would next demand.

What need I mention these inclement skies,
Where, frequent o'er the sickening city, Plague,
The fiercest child of Nemesis divine,
Descends? From Ethiopia's poison'd woods,
From stifled Cairo's filth, and fetid fields
With locust armies putrefying t heap'd,
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 stain'd
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 hush'd the clamour of the busy world.
Empty the streets, with uncouth verdure clad;
Into the worst of deserts sudden turn'd
The cheerful haunt of men: unless escaped [reigns,
From the doom'd house, where matchless horror
Shut up by barbarous fear, the smitten wretch
With frenzy wild, breaks loose; and loud to
Screaming, the dreadful policy arraigns, [heaven
Inhuman, and unwise. The sullen door,
Yet uninfected, on its cautious hinge
Fearing to turn, abhors society:
Dependants, friends, relations, love himself,
Savaged by wo, forget the tender tie,
The sweet engagement of the feeling heart.
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, unbless'd, untended, and unmourn'd.

Don Henry, third son to John the First, king of Portugal. His strong genius to the discovery of new countries was the chief source of all the modern improvements in navigation.

These are the causes supposed to be the first origin of the plague, in Dr. Mead's elegant book on that subject.

Thus o'er the prostrate city black Despair Extends her raven wing: while, to complete The scene of desolation, stretch'd around, The grim guards stand, denying all retreat, And give 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 pillar'd 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 gult
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 aeriel 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 loosen'd aggravated roar,.
Enlarging, deepening, mingling; peal on peal
Crush'd horrible, convulsing heaven and earth.
Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail,

Or prone-descending rain. Wide rent, the clouds
Pour a whole flood; and yet, its flame un

quench'd,

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 smould'ring pine
Stands a sad shatter'd trunk; and, stretch'd 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 fame
Resign their aged pride. The gloomy woods
Start at the flash, and from their deep recess,
Wide-flaming out, their trembling inmates shake.
Amid Carnarvon's mountains rages loud
The repercussive roar: with mighty crush,
Into the flashing deep from the rude rocks
Of Penmanmaur, heap'd 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 Thule bellows through her utmost isles.
Guilt hears appall'd, 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 form'd and equal grace,
The same, distinguished by their sex alone: