Hark! how wide nature joins her groans below

Rise, God of nature, rise! Ah, why those bolts unhurl'd?"

EPODE II

The voice had ceas'd, the phantoms fled,
Yet still I gasp'd and reel'd with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the vision to my sight,

Cold sweat-damps gather on my limbs;
My ears throb hot; my eye-balls start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
Wild is the tempest of my heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death!

No stranger agony confounds

The soldier on the war-field spread,
When all foredone with toil and wounds,
Death like he dozes among heaps of
dead!

(The strife is o'er, the day-light fled,
And the night-wind clamours hoarse;
See! the startful wretch's head
Lies pillow'd on a brother's corse!)

*The Poem concludes with prophecying in anguish of spirit the downfall of this country.

O doom'd to fall, enslav'd and vile,
O Albion! O my mother Isle !
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks;

(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells,
Proudly ramparted with rocks).
And Ocean 'mid his uproar wild
Speaks safety to his island child.
Hence for many a fearless age
Has social quiet lov'd thy shore;
Nor ever sworded warrior's rage

Or sack'd thy towers, or stain'd thy fields with gore.

O abandon'd of Heaven!* mad Avarice thy guide At cowardly distance, yet kindling with pride

*"O abandoned of Heaven!"-The poet, from having considered the peculiar advantages which this country has enjoyed, passes in rapid transition to the uses which we have made of these advantages. We have been preserved by our insular situation from suffering the actual horrors of war ourselves, and we have shown our gratitude to Providence for this immunity by our eagerness to spread those horrors over nations less happily situated. In the midst of plenty and safety, we have raised or joined the yell for famine and blood. Of the one hundred and seven last years, fifty have been years of war.-Such wickedness can

'Mid thy corn-fields and herds thou in plenty hast stood,

And join'd the loud yellings of famine and blood.

The nations curse thee: and with eager wond'ring

Shall hear Destruction, like a vulture, scream!

not pass unpunished. We have been proud and confident in our alliances and our fleets; but God has prepared the canker-worm, and will smite the gourds of our pride. "Art thou better than populous No, that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea? Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite: Put and Lubim were her helpers. Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains. Thou also shalt be drunken: all thy strong holds shall be like fig-trees with the firstripe figs if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater. Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day; but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are. There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the report of thee shall clap the hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?"-NAHUM, chap. iii.

Strange-eyed Destruction, who, with many a

dream

Of central fires thro' nether seas upthund'ring,
Soothes her fierce solitude; yet, as she lies
By livid fount, or red volcanic stream,
If ever to her lidless dragon eyes
Visions of thy predestin'd ruins rise,

The fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap, Mutt'ring distemper'd triumph in her charmed sleep.

Away, my soul, away!

In vain, in vain, the birds of warning sing-
And hark! I hear the famish'd brood of prey
Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind
Away, my soul, away!
I, unpartaking of the evil thing,
With daily prayer, and daily toil,
Soliciting for food my scanty soil,

Have wail'd my country with a loud lament.
Now I recentre my immortal mind

In the blest sabbath of high self-content; Cleans'd from bedimming fear, and anguish weak and blind.

G

SONNET.

COMPOSED WHILE CLIMBING THE LEFT ASCENT OF BROCKLEY-COOMB, IN THE COUNTY OF SOMERSET, MAY, 1795.

WITH many a pause and oft reverted eye
I climb the Coomb's ascent: sweet songsters near
Warble in shade their wild-wood melody:
Far off th' unvarying cuckoo soothes my ear.
Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock,
That on green plots o'er precipices browze :
From the forc'd fissures of the naked rock
The yew trees burst. Beneath its dark green

boughs

(Mid which the May-thorn blends its blossoms

white)

Where broad smooth stones jut out in mossy seats, I rest. And now have gain'd the topmost site. Ah, what a luxury of landscape meets

My gaze! Proud tow'rs, and cots more dear to me; Elm-shadow'd fields and prospect-bounding sea; Deep sighs my lonely heart: I drop the tear: Enchanting spot! O were my Sara here!