Not here and there a country, but a world:

Dispatching at a wide-extended blow

Entire mankind; and for their sakes defacing

A whole creation's beauty with rude hands;

Blasting the foodful grain, the loaded branches,
And marking all along its way with ruin.
Accursed thing!-Oh! where shall fancy find
A proper name to call thee by, expressive

Of all thy horrors?-Pregnant womb of ills!
Of temper so transcendantly malign,

That toads and serpents of most deadly kind
Compar'd to thee are harmless.-Sicknesses

VARIATIONS.

At once dispatching wholesale at a blow.

Of thy intrinsic filth! Big-bellied ill!

Of every size and symptom, racking pains,

And bluest plagues, are thine.—See! how the fiend

Profusely scatters the contagion round!

Whilst deep-mouth'd slaughter, bellowing at her heels,
Wades deep in blood new-spilt; yet for tomorrow

Shapes out new work of great uncommon daring,
And inly pines till the dread blow is struck.

But hold! I've gone too far; too much discover'd

My father's nakedness, and nature's shame.
Here let me pause, and drop an honest tear,
One burst of filial duty, and condolence,

O'er all those ample deserts death hath spread,
This chaos of mankind.-O great man-eater!
Whose ev'ry day is carnival, not sated yet!
Unheard-of epicure! without a fellow!

The veriest gluttons do not always cram ;

Some intervals of abstinence are sought

To edge the appetite: Thou seekest none.
Methinks the countless swarms thou hast devour'd,
And thousands that each hour thou gobblest up,
This, less than this, might gorge thee to the full!
But ah! rapacious still, thou gap'st for more:
Like one, whole days defrauded of his meals,
On whom lank hunger lays her skinny hand,
And whets to keenest eagerness his cravings.

As if diseases, massacres, and poison,

Famine, and war, were not thy caterers.

VARIATIONS.

But ah! 'tis otherwise, thou gap'st for more,

Like one that is defrauded of his meals.

And gives the keenest edge unto his cravings.

But know, that thou must render up thy dead,

And with high int'rest too. They are not thine;

But only in thy keeping for a season,

Till the great promis'd day of restitution;

When loud diffusive sound from brazen trump

Of strong-lung'd cherub, shall alarm thy captives, And rouse the long, long sleepers into life,

Day-light, and liberty.

Then must thy gates fly open, and reveal

The mines that lay long forming under ground,

In their dark cells immur'd; but now full ripe,

And pure as silver from the crucible,

That twice has stood the torture of the fire

And inquisition of the forge.-We know,

Th' illustrious deliverer of mankind,

The Son of God, thee foil'd.-Him in thy power

Thou could'st not hold:-self-vigorous he rose,

And, shaking off thy fetters, soon retook

Those spoils, his voluntary yielding lent:

(Sure pledge of our releasement from thy thrall!) Twice twenty days he sojourn'd here on earth,

And shew'd himself alive to chosen witnesses,

By proofs so strong, that the most slow-assenting

Had not a scruple left.-This having done,

He mounted up, to heav'n.Methinks! I see him

Climb the aerial heights, and glide along

Athwart the severing clouds: but the faint

eye,

VARIATIONS.

Those spoils that were but thine by his tame yielding.

and with great steps

Stride o'er the pillar'd clouds. But, &c.