Bursting it's dreadful crater, thunders forth

The fiery ebullition; pouring out,

Circumfluent, it's desolating stream;

Till the bright ruin rolls it's glowing mass,

A molten ocean of metallic fire.

Torn with convulsive throes, the riven earth

Betrays it's depth profound-a dread abyss
Portentous, awful, strange.-One moment yawns
A horrid sepulchre-one moment more,
One dreadful moment-and the yawning pit
Closes her rugged jaws.-But where is gone
Oh! where the goodly city, where her towers,
Her glittering spires, her ample domes, her halls,
Her palaces-her glorious monuments

Of science and of art?-Where, Oh! where
The busy throng that peopled her fair streets?
All-all engulph'd by one concussive shock,
Nor left one wreck to tell that once she was!

Loosed from the storehouse of Omnipotence,

The furious hurricane impatient bursts

The barriers of restraint; and out at once
Rush the conflicting elements, now leagued
In wild uproar, to waste and to devour.
Destruction sweeps their path, and in their rear
Stalk Plague and Famine, Misery and Death.

In fierce battalions these misfortunes come:

These are calamities that bear impress'd

The awful signet of Almighty Power:

The Hand of God is seen-His Presence felt,

When thus in dreadful Majesty aroused,

To shake so terribly the trembling earth!

But these appalling scenes suffice not man,

He lends his own exterminating aid

To make the little span of human life

More brief, more wretched still.-The deadly rage

Of elemental strife is not enough,

Man lifts his arm-his own unnatural arm,

Against his brother man; and earth must drink
From war's ensanguined field the kindred blood
That animates her slaughter-breathing sons.
Deep in the crimson stream may History dip
Her melancholy pen, and trace the crimes
That bade those currents flow on Gallia's plains,
Which threaten inundation o'er the world.
Eventful year! and big with future woe;
Within thy bounded space how strange, how great
Have been the fearful changes!-From their seats
How are the mighty fallen! the mean upraised!
The sword of war portentous now is drawn;
But where's the searching eye can pierce the veil
That hides the awful future? Who can tell

How many widows' sighs shall rise to Heaven,
How many orphans' tears bedew the earth,
How

many

childless mothers mourn their sons,

How many friends be sever'd, ere again

In welcome peace that fatal sword be sheath'd?

E'en in this favour'd land, on which kind Heaven

It's choicest blessings showers, domestic grief
Bows many a drooping head-in solitude
Retired from public gaze; but look abroad,

Where faction's rage and usurpation's power
Have spread their desolation, and despair;

Look on the expatriate Pole, whose mournful brow
Marks his dejected spirit.-Patriot grief

Sits heavy on his heart.-Not for himself

Breathes he the frequent sigh; his ample soul

Has feelings more enlarged: his Country's wrongs,..
His outraged, torn, dismember'd Country's wrongs,

His bursting bosom swell; for he survives,
Unhappy, to exclaim, "My Country was."

Behold the fugitives of madd'ning France,

Flee to our fostering Isle: their wealth usurp'd,

Their honours lost, their kindred massacred,

Their Monarch slain, their dwellings waste, their names

Extinct-themselves denounc'd.-Grief still on grief

Accumulate, these suffer and sustain :

Let me not murmur then, that in my cup

Some drops of bitterness should be commix'd.

Farewell departed year, thy solemn knell Tolls on the ear of contemplative night

A note of awful warning

So I hear

The monitory sound-unheeded oft
Amid the busy and continuous din
Of this tumultuous Babel-oft unheard,
When on the airy wing of new fledged hope,
And fluttering in life's morn, my ardent soul
Was spinning schemes of gossamer delight,
Soon to be blown by adverse winds away:
I hear it now announce the lapse of time,
Admonish'd of that consummating hour
Which shall have no successor: It will come,
That closing hour, ón all created things;
So the Seraphic Angel's threat announced