The river yet gave one inftruction more ; *

And, from the rotting fish and unconcocted gore (Which was but water juft before),

A loathsome hoft was quickly made,

That scal'd the banks, and with loud noife did all the country' invade.

As Nilus when he quits his facred bed (But like a friend he visits all the land

With welcome prefents in his hand)

So did this Living Tide the fields o'erspread :"
In vain th' alarmed country tries

To kill their noifome enemies;

From th' unexhaufted fource ftill new recruits arise..
Nor does the earth these greedy troops fuffice,
The towns and houses they possess,

The temples and the palaces,

Nor Pharaoh, nor his gods, they fear;
Both their importune croakings hear.
Unfatiate yet, they mount up higher,
Where never fun-born Frog durft to aspire,
And in the filken beds their flimy members place;,
A luxury unknown before to all the watery race!

The water thus her wonders did produce ;

But both were to no use;

As yet the forcerers' mimic power ferv'd for excuse. "Try what the earth will do,” said God, and lo ! They ftrook the earth a fertile blow,

And

And all the duft did strait to ftir begin;

One would have thought fome fudden wind 't had been;
But lo! 'twas nimble life was got within!
And all the little springs did move,

And every duft did an arm'd vermin prove,

Of an unknown and new-created kind,

Such as the magic-gods could neither make nor find. The wretched fhameful Foe allow'd no reft

Either to man or beast.

Not Pharaoh from th' unquiet plague could be,
With all his change of raiments, free ;

The devils themselves confefs'd

This was God's hand; and 'twas but just,

To punish thus man's pride, to punish dust with dust.

Lo! the third element does his plagues prepare,

And fwarming clouds of infects fill the air;
With fullen noise they take their flight,

And march in bodies infinite;

In vain 'tis day above, 'tis still beneath them night.
Of harmful Flies the nations numberless
Compos'd this mighty army's fpacious boast;
Of different manners, different languages;
And different habits, too, they wore,

And different arms they bore;

And fome, like Scythians, liv'd on blood,

And fome on green, and some on flowery food;

And Accaron, the airy prince, led on this various hoft.

Houses fecure not men, the populous ill

Did all the houses fill:

Because we fight, and battles gain;

Some captives call, and fay "the rest are flain :"
Because we heap up yellow earth, and so

Rich, valiant, wife, and virtuous, feem to grow:
Because we draw a long nobility

From hieroglyphic proofs of heraldry,
And impudently talk of a pofterity,
And, like Egyptian chroniclers,
Who write of twenty thousand years,
With maravedies make th' account,
That single time might to a fum amount:
We grow at laft by custom to believe,
That really we Live:

Whilft all these Shadows, that for Things we take, Are but the empty dreams which in Death's fleep we make.

But thefe fantastic errors of our dream

We

Lead us to folid wrong;

pray God our friends' torments to prolong,
And with uncharitably for them.

To be as long a dying as Methufalem.
The ripen'd foul longs from his prise- -

But we would feal, and fow un

We feek to close and pla

The cracks and breac

And in tha.

Would ru The noble vi

But not of oxen, nor of rams,

Not of kids, nor of their dams,

Not of heifers, nor of lambs:

The altar all the land, and all men in 't the victims are.
Since, wicked men's more guilty blood to fpare,
The beasts so long have facrificed been ;

Since men their birth-right forfeit still by fin;

'Tis fit at last beasts their revenge fhould have,

And facrificed men their better brethren fave.

So will they fall, fo will they flee,*

Such will the creatures' wild distraction be, ́
When, at the final doom,

Nature and Time fhall both be slain,
Shall ftruggle with Death's pangs in vain,
And the whole world their funeral pile become.
The wide-ftretch'd scroll of heaven, which we,
Immortal as the Deity think,

With all the beauteous characters that in it

With fuch deep fenfe by God's own

n hand were writ

(Whofe eloquence, though we understand not, we adShall crackle, and the parts together shrink

Like parchment in a fire:

[mire)

Th' exhaufted fun to th' moon no more shall lend;

But truly then headlong into the fea defcend:

The glittering host, now in such fair array,
So proud, fo well-appointed, and fo gay,
Like fearful troops in fome strong ambush ta'en,
Shall fome fly routed, and some fall flain,

Thick as ripe fruit, or yellow leaves, in autumn fall,

With fuch a violent ftorm as blows down tree and all.

And