Page:Redemption, a Poem.djvu/298

 292 REDEMPTION.

Dost know thy Maker, and lest stern than man,

Would'st from the dread catastrophe recoil ?

Veil, veil thy face in blackest hues of night,

For earth, so deeply dyed in mortal sin,

Some spot must render to receive his blood ;

And what spot more such sacred washing needs,

Than that whereon such scele'rous rabble tread ?

Along the tortuous way towards the height,

Where boist'rous multitudes already wait,

To consummate the sacrifice begun,

Breathless and faint th' exhausted Victim toils.

"A darksome horror seized his anguish'd mind,

Bow'd him to earth, and shook his tott'ring frame ;

Sin's spectral shadow stalks before his view,

In horrid shapes, with lethal terrors crown'd ;

More terrible than mythagogue e'er feign'd,

Stheno, Buryale, Medusa dire,

With dragons' scaly hide, and snaky hair.

Sin mortal, venial, sin original,

With all their nameless train, and scorpion shapes,

Sin's hell begotten brood, roaming the earth,

Insatiate of prey, though from the first,

Glutted with feast perpetual of blood;

Wave after wave, voluminous it rolls,

As mountains huge, and o'erwhelms his soul,

Obscures the heav'ns, averted from his sight,

Or, only tow'rds him turn'd with threat'ning gloom ;

More pain'd its monst'rous weight of woe to feel,

Than all the pangs his murd'rous foes inflict ;

For, no more stripes alone, but sins he bears,

In his own body on th' accursed tree.

Panting for breath beneath th' oppressive load,

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