Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/133

 Sick Nature blasting, and to heartless woe, And feeble desolation, casting down The towering hopes and all the pride of Man. Such as, of late, at Carthagena quench'd The fire. You, gallant, saw The miserable scene; you, pitying, saw To infant weakness sunk the warrior's arm; Saw the deep-racking pang, the ghastly form, The lip pale-quivering, and the beamless eye No more with ardour bright: you heard the groans Of agonizing ships, from shore to shore; Heard, nigthly plung'd amid the sullen waves, The frequent corse; while on each other fix'd; In sad presage, the blank assistants seem'd, Silent, to ask, whom Fate would next demand.

need I mention those inclement skies, Where, frequent o'er the sickening city, Plague, The fiercest child of divine, Descends? From Ethiopia's poisoned woods, From stifled Cairo's filth, and fetid fields With locust-armies putrefying heap'd, This great destroyer sprung. Her awful rage The brutes escape: Man is her destin'd prey, Intemperate Man! and, o'er his guilty domes, She draws a close incumbent cloud of death; Uninterrupted by the living winds, Forbid to blow a wholesome breeze; and stain'd With many a mixture by the sun, suffus'd, Of angry aspect. Princely wisdom, then, Dejects his watchful eye; and from the hand Of feeble justice, ineffectual, drop The sword and balance: mute the voice of joy, And