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20 An error fatal not to him alone, But to his future sons, his fortune's heirs, Inglorious bondage!—Human nature groans Beneath a vassalage so vile and cruel, And its vast body bleeds through every vein.

What havock hast thou made, foul monster, sin! Greatest and first of ills.—The fruitful parent Of woes of all dimensions!—But for thee Sorrow had never been.—All noxious thing, Of vilest nature!—Other sorts of evils Are kindly circumscribed, and have their bounds. The fierce Vulcano, from his burning entrails That belches molten stone and globes of fire, Involv'd in pitchy clouds of smoke and stench, Mars the adjacent fields, for some leagues round, And there it stops.—The big-swoln inundation, Of mischief more dissusive, raving loud, Buries whole tracks of country, threat'ning more; But that too has its shore it cannot pass. More dreadful far than these! sin has laid waste; Not here and there a country, but a world: Dispatching at a wide extended blow Entire mankind; and for their sakes defacing A whole creation's beauty with rude hands; Blasting the foodful grain, the loaded branches, And making all along its way with ruin. Accursed thing!—Oh! where shall fancy find A proper name to call thee by, expressive Of all thy horrors?—Pregnant womb of ills! Of temper so transcendantly malign, That toads and serpents of most deadly kind, Compar'd to thee, are harmless.—Sicknesses Of ev'ry size and symptom, racking pains, And blust plagues, are thine.—See how the fiend Profusely scatters the contagion round! Whilst deep mouth'd Slaughter, bellowing at her heels,