From pine-plough'd Baltic, to that ice-bound coast,

Where Desolation lives, and life is lost,

Bid all thy Centaur-Sons around thee close,

Suckled in storms, and cradled on the snows,

Hard as that sea of stone, that belts their strand
With marble wave, more solid than the land;
Men fiercer than their skies, inured to toil,

And as the grave tenacious of the spoil,---
Throng'd as the locust, as the lion brave,
Fleet as the pard that hies her young to save;
Tell them their King, their father takes the field,
A host his presence---and his cause a shield!
Nor strike the blow, till all thy northern hive

Concentering thick for death or glory strive;

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Then round th' Invader swarm, his death-fraught cloud,

While the white desert girds him like a shrowd,--

Full on his front and rear the battle-tide

With arm of lightning, hoof of thunder guide;

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Soon shall the Gaul his transient triumph rue,

Fierce burns the victim, and the altar too.

Now sinks the blood-red sun, eclips'd by light,

And yields his throne to far more brilliant night.
Rous'd by the flames, the blast, with rushing sound,
Both fed and fann'd the ruin that it found.

Long stood each stately tower, and column high,
And saw the molten gulph beneath them lie,
Long rear'd their heads th' aspiring flames above,
As stood the giants when they warr❜d with Jóve,---

Conquer'd at length, with hideous crash they fall,
And one o'erwhelming havoc covers all.
Nor Ætna, nor Vesuvius, though combin'd

In horrid league, and chaf'd by every wind

That from the hoarse Æolian cave is driven,

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Could with such wreck astound both earth and heaven. Rage Elements! wreck, ravage all ye can,

Ye are not half so fierce as man to man!

Wide and more wide, self-warn'd, without command, Gaul's awe-struck files their circling wings expand; 100

Through many a stage of horrors had they past,

The climax this, the direst and the last;

Albeit unused o'er others griefs to moan,

Soon shall they purchase feeling from their own.

From flank to centre, and from rear to van,

The billowing crackling conflagration ran,

Wraps earth in sulphurous wave, and now the skies

With tall colossal magnitude defies,--

Extends her base, while sword and spear retire,

Weak as the bulrush to the lava's ire.

Long had that circle, belted wide and far

By burnished helm, and bristling steel of war,

Presented hideous to the Gallic host

One blazing sea, one adamantine coast!

High o'er their head the bickering radiance towers,

Or falls from clouds of smoke in scorching showers:

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Beneath their crimson concave long they stood

Like bordering pines, when lightning fires the wood,

And as they hemm'd that grim horizon in,

Each read in each the terrors of the scene.

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Some fear'd--accusing conscience waked the fear,---
The DAY of wrath and retribution near,

Deem'd that they heard that thundrous Voice proclaim, "Thou Moon to blood be turn'd, thou Earth to flame!"

Red-rob'd Destruction far and wide extends

Her thousand arms, and summons all her Fiends
To glut their fill, a gaunt and ghastly brood!
Their food is carnage, and their drink is blood,
Their music, woe; nor did that feast of hell
Fit concert want,--the conquerors' savage yell,-
Their

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groans and shrieks whom sickness, age, or wound,

Or changeless fearless love in fatal durance bound.

While Valour sternly sighs, while Beauty weeps,

And Vengeance, soon to wake like Sampson, sleeps,
Shrouded in flame, th' Imperial City low

Like Dagon's temple falls !--but falls to crush the Foe.

Tyrant! think not SHE unaveng'd shall burn;

Thou too hast much to suffer, much to learn:

That thirst of power the Danube but inflamed,
By Neva's cooler current may be tamed.

Triumph a little space by craft and crime,

Two foes thou canst not conquer,—Truth, and Time;

Resistless pair! they doom thy power to fade,

Lost in the ruins that itself hath made;

Or, damn'd to fame, like Babylon to scowl

O'er wastes where serpents hiss, hyænas howl.

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Forge then the links of martial law, that bind, Enslave, imbrute, and mechanise the mind;