The world was filled with violence; and Heaven
Has wisely kept its history from our view.
Vainly had Adam, Seth, and Enoch striven
To wake repentance in the sinful crew;
Repentance knew them not, and ages flew,
Till righteous Noah forewarned them of their doom;
In vain he told their fate, while onward drew
The days of retribution and of gloom,
In which the impious race should find an ocean-tomb.
• Unheeded as the voiceless foot of Time,
The terrors of their destinies drew nigh;
The Earth, unconscious, smiled as in its prime,
And the glad sun illumed the cloudless sky;
The gentlest gales o'er new-born flowers passed by,
And choral birds were shouting forth their lays;
The eagle left his cliff and soared on high;
The forest beasts pursued their trackless maze,
Nor pointed out to man that eve of dreadful days.
In human haunts that day like others past;
No fear of judgment checked their vicious schemes;
Mirth danced along, nor thought that dance his last;
No dark forebodings broke the conqueror's dreams:
The earth was stained with blood's accustomed streams,
Till jaded carnage panted on the plain;
And, in sequestered shades, while evening beams
Led wantonness to riot with her train,
Their harp of lawless joys sent forth its dying strain.
The sun was setting: from the east arose
Black threatening clouds in terrible array;
The face of heaven was blotted, save where flows
The fading crimson of expiring day:
On came the tempest with impetuous sway;
A pitchy mantle o'er the earth was hurled;
And that bright space where sank the western ray,
In awful contrast marked how first unfurled
The winding-sheet of clouds, which wrapped a guilty world.
The night began with earthquakes and with storms ;
The winds went raging in their dreadful sweep;
The playful shafts of lightning shewed the forms
Of direful objects, leading not to sleep;
Beasts howled within their dens, and from the steep
Of craggy rocks, the birds with screaming cries,
Sent their complainings to the ocean deep:
While guilty Man, o'ercome in wild surmise,
Clung to the rocking earth, and trembled at the skies.
At length, in terrors, came the doubtful morn!
Then, in its strength, the incroaching flood began ;
And the sealed fountains of the deeps were torn,
While, from the rending clouds, the torrents ran :
Awe seized the boldest, for the homes of man,
Regal, or mean, to rushing streams gave way;
And on the uplands, in a narrower span,
Tribe, following Tribe, beneath the tempest's sway,
Joined with the thunder's voice their wailing of dismay.
'What congregated multitudes were there!-
Men of five centuries, still fierce in crime;
Those giants of their race, unused to fear,
With looks majestical, but not sublime :
There matrons old, in nothing grave but time;
And warriors, ardent in the bloom of years;
And virgin beauty, fading in its prime;
And youthful brides, sad wasting in their tears;
And wild despair, and madness, scowling towards the spheres.
'And there came on, in restless love of life,
Domestic flocks and herds, with hurrying pace;
And beasts of prey, not yet subdued from strife ;
The antelope, and roebuck of the chase,
Bounding to 'scape from death: and in that space,
The reptiles crept along the slippery ground;
Or clung to man, with horrible embrace:
The vulture, over-head, in wheeling round,
Screamed; or alighting fierce, his dying victim found.
Not yet was nature vanquished: hunger, still,
Impelled the lion to devour his prey;
The tiger sprang the wild roe's blood to spill,
Or, midst the flocks, pursued his desperate way;
Or seized the helpless infant, where it lay
Cradled, unconscious, in its mother's arms;
Man too was hunger-stung: a wild display
Of dire confusion vext the mingled swarms
Of beast and human kind-familiar in alarms.
'Night came-not sleep-unspeakable in woes;
No light appeared, save that which lightnings gave
At whose keen fires the wolf's hoarse howling rose,
While thunder-peals made cowards of the brave.
No rest was there for monarch, or for slave,
For all were slaves to one tremendous doom:
No power the hand of friendship had to save;
The waves rolled on, relentless, to consume
The fondest kindred ties-the flush of beauty's bloom.
The morning dawned-more awful than the night-The ruthless clouds let fall their whelming store: A few, sad groupes remained, and there the might Of the wild forest beasts was felt no more, O'ercome with restless watching ;-on the shore, The wrecks of buildings floated to their view; And there the struggling swimmer came, and bore The infant of his love; brief hope he knew, For then the billows rose, his efforts to subdue.
A few terrific days and nights were past;
And the vast waters rose on every side;
And still the sheet-like rains were falling fast,
While, from the mountains, rushed the eddying tide:
And yet they sought those mountains-far, and wide.
Death had reduced the multitude to few ;-
Famine had wrought his deeds, in scorn of pride,
And the devouring flood still onward drew;
While, to the shelving rocks, the trembling remnant flew.
Then came the extreme of horrors-hope, in vain,
Looked out, bewildered, o'er the vast profound;
The famished mother, reckless of her pain,
Hung o'er her dying babes, and clasped them round;
The fainting father, stretched upon the ground,
Shared with the serpent and the wolf his bed;
There, tame with dread, the lion ceased to bound;
And, couchant, sought a pillow for his head,
And trembled with affright, and rested on the dead.
Still swelled the mighty waters-and they swept
A portion of the lingering band away;
Some towards the topmost mountain-summits crept,
Where flocks of birds were screaming in dismay;
Those summits mocked their efforts, and they lay
Where the forced torrent, foaming, sunk below;
The sun, through broken clouds, sent forth a ray,
Which led their sight to lengthening scenes of woe,
And tipt with light the waves, and marked their overthrow.
‹ Then o'er them closed the congregated seas;
And the Ark rode in safety on their breast;
For Deity was moving on the breeze,
And spake the raging of the storm to rest:
Lost were all traces of a world unblest,
In the rotundity of shoreless deeps;
Which, in fulfilment of high Heaven's behest,
Rose o'er the utmost of the mountain-steeps;
Till backward rolled by Him whose hand their boundary keeps.
O thou! astonishing, unresting main!
Whence are the fountains of thy stores supplied?
Chief of created elements ! in vain
We trace the ceaseless motions of thy tide ;
Philosophy, arrested in her pride,
Darts fruitless glances to thy desert caves;
Whose deep recesses human search deride.
Call now to man! and bid him count thy waves;
Or gauge thy rampant billows, when the tempest raves.
Thou art not of the things that feel decay!
We look upon thee, in our youthful morn,
When the glad hours flee joyfully away;
And buoyant smiles our careless brows adorn:
Again we mark thee, when old age forlorn
Bears deep-trenched wrinkles, and the frost of time;
When life hath shed its fruit, but kept the thorn;
And thou art rolling on thy course sublime;
Unshrinking in thy strength, and bounding in thy prime !'
Egyptian Thebes, Sparta, Athens, are made to appear before us, in this cosmoramic view of the destinies of man. We must give a stanza or two from the second canto.
The overflowing Nile is rolling still;-
The crocodile is there, but not adored ;-
There other tribes obey a tyrant's will,
Though gone the wealth with which that land was stored.
Sunk is the nurse of science! for the sword
Has chased her arts and sciences away;
Yet, in despite of each succeeding horde
That bore destruction in its fierce array,
Wrecks of gigantic skill still wrestle with decay.
Spectre of ancient Thebes! whose temples vast
Clasp with colossal strides the banks of Nile;
Whose ruins strike the pilgrim's heart aghast,
As wandering he beholds each massy pile.
City of unknown times! what dark defile
Enfolds the wondrous details of thy fate?
Are yonder tombs their shrine? alas! meanwhile,
Perhaps some jackall, in the vault of state,
Sleeps o'er thy history, laws, catastrophe, and date.
Here are the priesthood! who misled mankind;
Embalmed and coffined, with superior skill;
Those men of knowledge, who kept others blind,
Shackling, with mystery, the human will,
Which bowed their monstrous doctrines to fulfil.-
Death trampled on their doctrines ;-his command
Went forth in truth- and falsehood's tongue was still!
Not one comes forth of all the learned band,
To charm the ear with words, or wave the graceful hand.
'Dare we the sacred chambers to explore?
These vaults of majesty! these tombs of kings!
There, where the artist wasted all his store,
With loathsome clasp, the bat tenacious clings.
Lo! where the taper, its faint glimmering flings
To yon sarcophagus, of plan sublime;
Framed by a mind of rare imaginings ;-
Was there Sesostris laid? when mightier time
Relaxed the warrior's arm-whose valour led to crime!
The air is stagnant-let us quit the tombs.Oh! what a field the studious mind has here! Where are thy streets, O Thebes? yon mighty domes Seem reared, by magic, to make man despair! Yet thou wast once a city great, and fair; Thronged with the bustle, and the cares of life; Here mustering armies issued forth, and there Unthinking multitudes have joined in strife, To aid contending chiefs, when tyranny was rife.
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