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Because we fight, and battles gain;

Some captives call, and fay " the reft are flain :”

Because we heap up yellow earth, and fo

Rich, valiant, wife, and virtuous, seem to grow:
Because we draw a long nobility

From hieroglyphic proofs of heraldry,
And impudently talk of a posterity,
And, like Egyptian chroniclers,
Who write of twenty thousand years,
With maravedies make th' account,
That fingle time might to a fum amount:
at last by custom to believe,

We

grow

That really we Live :

Whilft all these Shadows, that for Things we take,

Are but the empty dreams which in Death's fleep we make.

But these fantastic errors of our dream

Lead us to folid wrong;

We pray God our friends' torments to prolong,

And wish uncharitably for them

To be as long a dying as Methusalem.

The ripen'd foul longs from his prifon to come;
But we would feal, and fow up, if we could, the womb:

We feek to close and plaifter up by art

The cracks and breaches of th' extended fhell,

And in that narrow cell

Would rudely force to dwell

The noble vigorous bird already wing'd to part.

THE

THE XXXIVth CHAPTER OF THE

PROPHET ISAIAH.

Awake, and with attention hear,

Thou drowsy World! for it concerns thee near;
Awake, I say, and listen well,

To what from God, I, his loud prophet, tell.
Bid both the poles fupprefs their stormy noise,
And bid the roaring fea contain its voice.
Be ftill, thou fea; be ftill, thou air and earth,
Still as old Chaos, before Motion's birth:
A dreadful hoft of judgments is gone out,
In ftrength and number more

Then e'er was rais'd by God before,

To fcourge the rebel world, and march it round about.

I fee the fword of God brandish'd above,

And from it ftreams a difmal ray;

I see the scabbard caft away;

How red anon with flaughter will it prove !

How will it fweat and reek in blood!

How will the fcarlet-glutton be o'ergorged with his

And devour all the mighty feast !

[food,

Nothing foon but bones will reft.. God does a folemn facrifice prepare ;

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But not of oxen, nor of rams,

Not of kids, nor of their dams,

Not of heifers, nor of lambs:

The altar all the land, and all men in 't the victims are.
Since, wicked men's more guilty blood to fpare,
The beafts fo long have facrificed been ;

Since men their birth-right forfeit still by sin ;
'Tis fit at last beafts their revenge should have,
And facrificed men their better brethren fave.

So will they fall, fo will they flee,
Such will the creatures' wild diftraction be,
When, at the final doom,

Nature and Time shall both be flain,
Shall ftruggle with Death's pangs in vain,
And the whole world their funeral pile become.
The wide-ftretch'd fcroll of heaven, which we
Immortal as the Deity think,

With all the beauteous characters that in it

With fuch deep fenfe by God's own hand were writ (Whofe eloquence, though we understand not, we adShall crackle, and the parts together shrink

Like parchment in a fire:

[mire)

Th' exhaufted fun to th' moon no more fhall lend;

But truly then headlong into the fea defcend:

The glittering hoft, now in fuch fair array,
So proud, fo well-appointed, and fo gay,
Like fearful troops in fome ftrong ambush ta'en,
Shall fome fly routed, and fome fall flain,

Thick as ripe fruit, or yellow leaves, in autumn fall, With fuch a violent storm as blows down tree and all.

And

And thou, O curfed land!

Which wilt not fee the precipice where thou doft stand (Though thou ftand'st just upon the brink)

Thou of this poifon'd bowl the bitter dregs fhalt drink. Thy rivers and thy lakes fhall fo

With human blood o'erflow,

That they shall fetch the flaughter'd corpse away,
Which in the fields around unburied lay,

And rob the beafts and birds to give the fifh their prey:

The rotting corpfe fhall fo infect the air,

Beget fuch plagues and putrid venoms there,

That by thine own dead shall be slain
All thy few living that remain.

As one who buys, furveys, a ground,
So the deftroying-angel measures it around;
So careful and fo ftrict he is,

Left any nook or corner he should mifs :

He walks about the perifhing nation,
Ruin behind him stalks and empty Desolation.
Then fhall the market and the pleading-place
Be choak'd with brambles and o'ergrown with grafs;
The ferpents through thy ftreets fhall roll,

And in thy lower rooms the wolves shall howl,
And thy gilt chambers lodge the raven and the owl,

And all the wing'd ill-omens of the air,

Though no new ills can be foreboded there :
The lion then fhall to the leopard say,

"Brother leopard, come away;

"Behold a land which God has given us in prey!

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"Behold a land from whence we fee

"Mankind expuls'd, his and our common enemy !" The brother leopard shakes himself, and does not stay, The glutted vultures fhall expect in vain

New armies to be flain;

Shall find at laft the business done,
Leave their confumed quarters, and be gone ;
Th' unburied ghosts shall fadly moan,
The fatyrs laugh to hear them groan :
The evil spirits, that delight

To dance and revel in the mask of night,

The moon and ftars, their sole spectators, shall affright : And, if of loft mankind

Aught happen to be left behind;

If any relics but remain ;

They in the dens shall lurk, beasts in the palaces fhall reign.

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THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.

S this thy bravery, Man, is this thy pride?

Rebel to God, and flave to all befide!

Captiv'd by every thing! and only free
To fly from thine own liberty!

All creatures, the Creator faid, were thine;

No creature but might fince fay, "Man is mine."

In black Egyptian slavery we lie;

And sweat and toil in the vile drudgery

of

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