LITMIR.BIZ

       CANTO IV.

       OF GOOD AND EVIL.

      I. "How few," the Muse in plaintive accents cries,

       And mingles with her words pathetic sighs.—

       "How few, alas! in Nature's wide domains

       The sacred charm of Sympathy restrains!

       Uncheck'd desires from appetite commence,

       And pure reflection yields to selfish sense!

      —Blest is the Sage, who learn'd in Nature's laws With nice distinction marks effect and cause; Who views the insatiate Grave with eye sedate, Nor fears thy voice, inexorable Fate! 10

"When War, the Demon, lifts his banner high, And loud artillery rends the affrighted sky; Swords clash with swords, on horses horses rush, Man tramples man, and nations nations crush; Death his vast sithe with sweep enormous wields, And shuddering Pity quits the sanguine fields.

"The wolf, escorted by his milk-drawn dam, Unknown to mercy, tears the guiltless lamb; The towering eagle, darting from above, Unfeeling rends the inoffensive dove; 20 The lamb and dove on living nature feed, Crop the young herb, or crush the embryon seed. Nor spares the loud owl in her dusky flight, Smit with sweet notes, the minstrel of the night; Nor spares, enamour'd of his radiant form, The hungry nightingale the glowing worm; Who with bright lamp alarms the midnight hour, Climbs the green stem, and slays the sleeping flower.

"Fell Oestrus buries in her rapid course Her countless brood in stag, or bull, or horse; 30 Whose hungry larva eats its living way, Hatch'd by the warmth, and issues into day. The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng. The cruel larva mines its silky course, And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse. While fierce Libellula with jaws of steel Ingulfs an insect-province at a meal; Contending bee-swarms rise on rustling wings, And slay their thousands with envenom'd stings. 40

"Yes! smiling Flora drives her armed car Through the thick ranks of vegetable war; Herb, shrub, and tree, with strong emotions rise For light and air, and battle in the skies; Whose roots diverging with opposing toil Contend below for moisture and for soil; Round the tall Elm the flattering Ivies bend, And strangle, as they clasp, their struggling friend; Envenom'd dews from Mancinella flow, And scald with caustic touch the tribes below; 50 Dense shadowy leaves on stems aspiring borne With blight and mildew thin the realms of corn; And insect hordes with restless tooth devour The unfolded bud, and pierce the ravell'd flower.

"In ocean's pearly haunts, the waves beneath Sits the grim monarch of insatiate Death; The shark rapacious with descending blow Darts on the scaly brood, that swims below; The crawling crocodiles, beneath that move, Arrest with rising jaw the tribes above; 60 With monstrous gape sepulchral whales devour Shoals at a gulp, a million in an hour. —Air, earth, and ocean, to astonish'd day One scene of blood, one mighty tomb display! From Hunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd, And one great Slaughter-house the warring world!

       "The brow of Man erect, with thought elate,

       Ducks to the mandate of resistless fate;

       Nor Love retains him, nor can Virtue save

       Her sages, saints, or heroes from the grave. 70

While cold and hunger by defect oppress, Repletion, heat, and labour by excess, The whip, the sting, the spur, the fiery brand, And, cursed Slavery! thy iron hand; And led by Luxury Disease's trains, Load human life with unextinguish'd pains.

"Here laughs Ebriety more fell than arms, And thins the nations with her fatal charms, With Gout, and Hydrops groaning in her train, And cold Debility, and grinning Pain, 80 With harlot's smiles deluded man salutes, Revenging all his cruelties to brutes! There the curst spells of Superstition blind, And fix her fetters on the tortured mind; She bids in dreams tormenting shapes appear, With shrieks that shock Imagination's ear, E'en o'er the grave a deeper shadow flings, And maddening Conscience darts a thousand stings.

"There writhing Mania sits on Reason's throne, Or Melancholy marks it for her own, 90 Sheds o'er the scene a voluntary gloom, Requests oblivion, and demands the tomb. And last Association's trains suggest Ideal ills, that harrow up the breast, Call for the dead from Time's o'erwhelming main, And bid departed Sorrow live again.

"Here ragged Avarice guards with bolted door His useless treasures from the starving poor; Loads the lorn hours with misery and care, And lives a beggar to enrich his heir. 100 Unthinking crowds thy forms, Imposture, gull, A Saint in sackcloth, or a Wolf in wool. While mad with foolish fame, or drunk with power, Ambition slays his thousands in an hour; Demoniac Envy scowls with haggard mien, And blights the bloom of other's joys, unseen; Or wrathful Jealousy invades the grove, And turns to night meridian beams of Love!

"Here wide o'er earth impetuous waters sweep, And fields and forests rush into the deep; 110 Or dread Volcano with explosion dire Involves the mountains in a flood of fire; Or yawning Earth with closing jaws inhumes Unwarned nations, living in their tombs; Or Famine seizes with her tiger-paw, And swallows millions with unsated maw.

"There livid Pestilence in league with Dearth Walks forth malignant o'er the shuddering earth, Her rapid shafts with airs volcanic wings, Or steeps in putrid vaults her venom'd stings. 120 Arrests the young in Beauty's vernal bloom, And bears the innocuous strangers to the tomb!—

"And now, e'en I, whose verse reluctant sings The changeful state of sublunary things, Bend o'er Mortality with silent sighs, And wipe the secret tear-drops from my eyes, Hear through the night one universal groan, And mourn unseen for evils not my own, With restless limbs and throbbing heart complain, Stretch'd on the rack of sentimental

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