LITMIR.BIZ

      And the wild fury of voluptuous sense,

      There lost. The very brute creation there

      This rage partakes, and burns with horrid fire.

      Lo! the green serpent, from his dark abode,

      Which even imagination fears to tread,

      At noon forth-issuing, gathers up his train

      In orbs immense, then, darting out anew,

      Seeks the refreshing fount, by which diffus'd

      He throws his folds; and while, with threatening tongue

      And dreadful jaws erect, the monster curls

      His flaming crest, all other thirst appall'd,

      Or shivering flies, or check'd at distance stands,

      Nor dares approach. But still more direful he,

      The small close-lurking minister of fate,

      Whose high concocted venom through the veins

      A rapid lightning darts, arresting swift

      The vital current. Form'd to humble man,

      This child of vengeful Nature! There, sublim'd

      To fearless lust of blood, the savage race

      Roam, licens'd by the shading hour of guilt,

      And foul misdeed, when the pure day has shut

      His sacred eye. The tiger, darting fierce,

      Impetuous on the prey his glance has doom'd;

      The lively-shining leopard, speckled o'er

      With many a spot, the beauty of the waste;

      And, scorning all the taming arts of man,

      The keen hyena, fellest of the fell:

      These, rushing from the inhospitable woods

      Of Mauritania, or the tufted isles

      That verdant rise amid the Libyan wild,

      Innumerous glare around their shaggy king,

      Majestic, stalking o'er the printed sand;

      And, with imperious and repeated roars,

      Demand their fated food. The fearful flocks

      Crowd near the guardian swain; the nobler herds,

      Where round their lordly bull, in rural ease,

      They ruminating lie, with horror hear

      The coming rage. The awaken'd village starts;

      And to her fluttering breast the mother strains

      Her thoughtless infant. From the pirate's den,

      Or stern Morocco's tyrant fang, escap'd,

      The wretch half-wishes for his bonds again;

      While, uproar all, the wilderness resounds,

      From Atlas eastward to the frighted Nile.

      Unhappy he! who from the first of joys,

      Society, cut off, is left alone

      Amid this world of death. Day after day,

      Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,

      And views the main that ever toils below;

      Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,

      Where the round ether mixes with the wave,

      Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds.

      At evening, to the setting sun he turns

      A mournful eye, and down his dying heart

      Sinks helpless; while the wonted roar is up,

      And hiss continual through the tedious night.

      Yet here, even here, into these black abodes

      Of monsters, unappall'd, from stooping Rome,

      And guilty Cæsar, Liberty retired,

      Her Cato following through Numidian wilds;

      Disdainful of Campania's gentle plains

      And all the green delights Ausonia pours —

      When for them she must bend the servile knee,

      And fawning take the splendid robber's boon.

      Nor stop the terrors of these regions here.

      Commission'd demons oft, angels of wrath,

      Let loose the raging elements. Breath'd hot

      From all the boundless furnace of the sky,

      And the wide glittering waste of burning sand,

      A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites

      With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,

      Son of the desert! even the camel feels,

      Shot through his wither'd heart, the fiery blast.

      Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,

      Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,

      Commov'd around, in gathering eddies play;

      Nearer and nearer still they darkening come,

      Till, with the general all-involving storm

      Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;

      And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,

      Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,

      Beneath descending hills, the caravan

      Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets

      The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,

      And Mecca saddens at the long delay.

      But chief at sea, whose every flexile wave

      Obeys the blast, the aerial tumult swells.

      In the dread ocean, undulating wide,

      Beneath the radiant line that girts the globe,

      The circling Typhon, whirl'd from point to point,

      Exhausting all the rage of all the sky,

      And dire Ecnephia reign. Amid the heavens,

      Falsely serene, deep in a cloudy speck

      Compress'd, the mighty tempest brooding dwells

      Of no regard save to the skillful eye,

      Fiery and foul, the small prognostic hangs

      Aloft, or on the promontory's brow

      Musters its force. A faint deceitful calm,

      A fluttering gale, the demon sends before,

      To tempt the spreading sail. Then down at once,

      Precipitant, descends a mingled mass

      Of

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