Page:The Pleasures of Imagination - Akenside (1744).djvu/55

Book II. Nor all thy lover's, all thy father's tears Avail'd to snatch thee from the cruel grave; Thy agonizing looks, thy last farewel Struck to the inmost feeling of my soul As with the hand of death. At once the shade More horrid nodded o'er me, and the winds With hoarser murm'ring shook the branches. Dark As midnight storms, the scene of human things, Appear'd before me; desarts, burning sands Where the parch'd adder dies; the frozen south, And desolation blasting all the west With rapine and with murder: tyrant-pow'r Here sits inthron'd in blood; the baleful charms Of superstition there infect the skies, And turn the sun to horror. Gracious heav'n! What is the life of man? Or cannot these, Not these portents thy awful will suffice? That propagated thus beyond their scope, They rise to act their cruelties anew In my afflicted bosom, thus decreed The universal sensitive of pain, The wretched heir of evils not its own!

Thus I, impatient; when at once effus'd, A flashing torrent of cœlestial day Burst thro' the shadowy void. With slow descent A purple cloud came floating thro' the sky, And pois'd at length within the circling trees, Rh