Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

Can never mifs'

Their way to everlasting bliss :

But from a world of misery and care
To mansions of eternal ease repair;

Where joy in full perfection flows,
And in an endless circle moves,
Through the vaft round of beatific love,
Which no ceffation knows.

ΟΝ ΤΗ Ε

GENERAL CONFLAGRATION,

AND ENSUING JUDGEMENT.

A PINDARIC ESSAY.

"Effe quoque in fatis, reminifcitur, affore tempus "Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regia cæli "Ardeat, & mundi moles operofa laborat." OVID. Met.

N

O W the black days of universal doom,

Which wondrous prophecies foretold, are come : What ftrong convulfions, what ftupendous woe,

Muft finking nature undergo;

Amidst the dreadful wreck, and final overthrow!
Methinks I hear her, conscious of her fate,

With fearful groans, and hideous cries,
Fill the prefaging skies;

[blocks in formation]

Unable to fupport the weight

Or of the prefent, or approaching miferies.
Methinks I hear her fummon all

Her guilty offspring raving with despair,
And trembling, cry aloud, Prepare,
Ye fublunary powers, t' attend my funeral!
See, fee the tragical portents,

Those dismal harbingers of dire events! Loud thunders roar, and darting lightnings fly Through the dark concave of the troubled sky ; The fiery ravage is begun, the end is nigh. See how the glaring meteors blaze! Like baleful torches, O they come, To light diffolving Nature to her tomb! And, scattering round their peftilential rays, Strike the affrighted nations with a wild amaze. Vaft fleets of flame, and globes of fire,

By an impetuous wind are driven

Through all the regions of the inferior heaven; Till, hid in fulphurous fmoke, they feemingly expire.

Sad and amazing 'tis to fee, What mad confufion rages over all

This fcorching ball.!

No country is exempt, no nation free, But each partakes the epidemic mifery. What difmal havoc of mankind is made By wars, and peftilence, and dearth,

Through the whole mournful earth? Which with a murdering fury they invade, Forfook by Providence, and all propitious aid!

Whilft fiends, let loofe, their utmost rage employ,
To ruin all things here below;
Their malice and revenge no limits know,
But, in the universal tumult, all destroy.

Distracted mortals from their cities fly,
For fafety to their champain ground.
But there no fafety can be found;
The vengeance of an angry Deity,
With unrelenting fury, does inclose them round:
And whilft for mercy fome aloud implore
The God they ridicul'd before;

And others, raving with their woe,

(For hunger, thirst, despair, they undergo)

Blafpheme and curfe the Power they should adore:
The earth, parch'd up with drought, her jaws extends.
And opening wide a dreadful tomb,
The howling multitude at once defcends
Together all into her burning womb.

The trembling Alps abfcond their aged heads
In mighty pillars of infernal smoke,

Which from their bellowing caverns broke,
And fuffocates whole nations where it spreads.
Sometimes the fire within divides

The mafly rivers of those secret chains,
Which hold together their prodigious fides,
And hurls the shatter'd rocks o'er all the plains:
While towns and cities, every thing below,

Is overwhelm'd with the fame burft of woe.

No

No fhowers defcend from the malignant sky,
To cool the burning of the thirsty field;
The trees no leaves, no grafs the meadows, yield,
But all is barren, all is dry.

The little rivulets no more

To larger ftreams their tribute pay,
Nor to the ebbing ocean they;

Which, with a strange unusual roar,

Forfakes those ancient bounds it would have pass'd before :

And to the monftrous deep in vain retire:
For ev'n the deep itself is not secure,

But belching fubterraneous fires,
Increases still the fcalding calenture,
Which neither earth, nor air, nor water, can endure.

The fun, by sympathy, concern'd
At thofe convulfions, pangs, and agonies,
Which on the whole creation seize,
Is to fubftantial darkness turn'd.
The neighbouring moon, as if a purple flood
O'erflow'd her tottering orb, appears

Like a huge mass of black corrupted blood;
For the herself a diffolution fears.

The larger planets, which once shone so bright,
With the reflected rays of borrow'd light,
Shook from their centre, without motion lie,
Unwieldy globes of folid night,

And ruinous lumber of the sky.

Amidft

Amidft this dreadful hurricane of woes,

(For fire, confusion, horror, and despair,
Fill every region of the tortur'd earth and air)
The great archangel his loud trumpet blows;
At whofe amazing found fresh agonies

Upon expiring nature seize :

For now the 'll in few minutes know
The ultimate event and fate of all below.
Awake, ye dead, awake, he cries;
(For all must come)

All that had human breath, arise,

To hear your laft, unalterable doom.

At this the ghaftly tyrant, who had sway'd
So many thousand ages uncontroll'd,

No longer could his sceptre hold;

But gave up all, and was himself a captive made.
The scatter'd particles of human clay,
Which in the filent grave's dark chambers lay,
Refume their pristine forms again,

And now from mortal, grow immortal men.
Stupendous energy of facred Power,

Which can collect wherever cast

The smallest atoms, and that shape restore
Which they had worn fo many years before,

That through ftrange accidents and numerous changes paft!

See how the joyful angels fly
From every quarter of the sky,

То

« ПредишнаНапред »