Page:Poems Mitford.djvu/146



Prophecy of the destruction of Bath, or Good Friday last, which afforded so memorable an instance of the credulity of the nineteenth century, cannot yet be forgotten. With the usual fate of reports, which "gather as they roll," the terrific denunciation had, when it reached Reading, been extended to Bristol and London; one of which was to be overwhelmed by the tide, and the other destroyed by fire, at the same moment that Bath was to be swallowed up by an earthquake. Under these impressions, the following poem was written; and the result of the former part of the prophecy happily precludes the necessity of apologizing to this modern Cassandra for having added fresh horrors to her dreadful prediction.