Still they are frowning fignals, and bespeak
Displeasure in his breast who fmites the earth
Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice.

And 'tis but feemly, that where all deserve
And stand exposed by common peccancy

To what no few have felt, there should be peace,
And brethren in calamity should love.

Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scatter'd where the fhapely column ftood.
Her palaces are duft. In all her streets

The voice of finging and the sprightly chord
Are filent. Revelry and dance and show
Suffer a fyncope and folemn pause,

While God performs upon the trembling ftage
Of his own works, his dreadful part alone.

How does the earth receive him?-With what figns

Of gratulation and delight, her king?

Pours fhe not all her choiceft fruits abroad,

Her sweetest flow'rs, her aromatic gums,

Difclofing paradife where'er he treads?

She quakes at his approach. Her hollow womb Conceiving thunders, through a thousand deeps And fiery caverns roars beneath his foot.

The hills move lightly and the mountains smoke, For he has touch'd them. From th' extremeft point Of elevation down into th' abyfs,

His wrath is bufy and his frown is felt.

The rocks fall headlong and the vallies rife,

The rivers die into offenfive pools,

And charged with putrid verdure, breathe a grofs

And mortal nuifance into all the air.

What folid was, by transformation ftrange

Grows fluid, and the fixt and rooted earth
Tormented into billows heaves and fwells,
Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl
Sucks down its prey infatiable. Immenfe
The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs
And agonies of human and of brute
Multitudes, fugitive on ev'ry fide,

And

And fugitive in vain. The fylvan scene

Migrates uplifted, and with all its foil
Alighting in far diftant fields, finds out
A new poffeffor, and furvives the change.
Ocean has caught the frenzy, and upwrought.
To an enormous and o'erbearing height,
Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice
Which winds and waves obey, invades the fhore
Refiftless. Never fuch a fudden flood,

Upridged fo high, and fent on fuch a charge,
Poffefs'd an inland fcene. Where now the throng.
That prefs'd the beach and hafty to depart

Look'd to the fea for fafety? They are gone,
Gone with the refluent wave into the deep,
A prince with half his people. Ancient tow'rs,
And roofs embattled high, the gloomy scenes
Where beauty oft and letter'd worth confume
Life in the unproductive fhades of death,
Fall prone; the pale inhabitants come forth,
And happy in their unforeseen release

From all the rigors of restraint, enjoy
The terrors of the day that fets them free.
Who then that has thee, would not hold thee fast
Freedom! whom they that lose thee, so regret,

That ev'n a judgment making way for thee,
Seems in their eyes, a mercy, for thy fake.

Such evil fin hath wrought; and such a flame
Kindled in heaven, that it burns down to earth,
And in the furious inqueft that it makes

On God's behalf, lays wafte his faireft works.
The very elements, though each be meant
The minister of man, to serve his wants,
Conspire against him. With his breath, he draws
A plague into his blood. And cannot use
Life's neceffary means, but he must die.

Storms rife t'o'erwhelm him: or if stormy winds

Rife not, the waters of the deep shall rife,

And needing none affiftance of the storm,

Shall roll themselves afhore, and reach him there.

The earth fhall shake him out of all his holds,

Or make his house his grave. Nor fo content,
Shall counterfeit the motions of the flood,
And drown him in her dry and dufty gulphs.
What then-were they the wicked above all,
And we the righteous, whofe fast-anchor'd ifle
Moved not, while their's was rock'd like a light skiff,
The sport of ev'ry wave? No: none are clear,
And none than we more guilty. But where all
Stand chargeable with guilt, and to the fhafts
Of wrath obnoxious, God may chufe his mark,
May punish, if he please, the less, to warn
The more malignant. If he fpar'd not them,
Tremble and be amazed at thine escape
Far guiltier England, left he spare not thee.

Happy the man who fees a God employed
In all the good and ill that checquer life!
Refolving all events with their effects
And manifold results, into the will