By thee inspired, on India's sands, To quench her fever in the stream, Smit by the scorchings of the noontide beam. Mark who mounts the sacred pyre,* Blooming in her bridal vest: She hurls the torch! she fans the fire! To die is to be blest: * She clasps her lord to part no more, And, wrapt in clouds, in tempests tost, Weave the airy web of Fate; While the lone shepherd, near the shipless main, Sees o'er her hills advance the long-drawn funeral train. *The funeral rite of the Hindoos. + The Fates of the Northern Mythology. See MALLETT's Antiquities. An allusion to the Second Sight. II. 1. Thou spak'st, and lo! a new creation glowed. Each unhewn mass of living stone Was clad in horrors not its own, And at its base the trembling nations bowed. Grasped the globe with iron hand. Circled with seats of bliss, the Lord of Light Springs from its parent earth, and shakes the spheres; And braves the efforts of a host of years. Sweet Music breathes her soul into the wind; And bright-eyed Painting stamps the image of the mind. II. 2. Round the rude ark old Egypt's sorcerers rise! A timbrelled anthem swells the gale, And bids the God of Thunders hail ;† With lowings loud the captive God replies. Scaly monarch of the Nile !+ * En. II. 172, &c. The bull, Apis. The crocodile. But ah! what myriads claim the bended knee?* What eye those long, long labyrinths dare explore,‡ Charmed with perennial sweets, and smiling at decay? II. 3. On yon hoar summit, mildly bright§ With purple ether's liquid light, High o'er the world, the white-robed Magi gaze On dazzling bursts of heavenly fire; The temple rocks, the laurel waves! "The God! the God!" the Sibyl cries.|| * According to an ancient proverb, it was less difficult in Egypt to find a god than a man. The Hieroglyphics. The Catacombs. { "The Persians," says Herodotus, "have no temples, altars, or statues. They sacrifice on the tops of the highest mountains." I. 131. || En. VI. 46, &c. Her figure swells! she foams, she raves! Her figure swells to more than mortal size! Streams of rapture roll along, Silver notes ascend the skies: Wake, Echo, wake and catch the song, The Sibyl speaks, the dream is o'er, In vain she checks the God's control; And moulds the features of her soul, The cavern frowns; its hundred mouths unclose! And, in the thunder's voice, the fate of empire flows! III. 1. Mona, thy Druid-rites awake the dead! Rites thy brown oaks would never dare Even whisper to the idle air; Rites that have chained old Ocean on his bed. Shivered by thy piercing glance, Pointless falls the hero's lance. Thy magic bids the imperial eagle fly,* And blasts the laureate wreath of victory. * See Tacitus, 1. xiv. c. 29. 24 Hark, the bard's soul inspires the vocal string! At every pause dread Silence hovers o'er: While murky Night sails round on raven wing, Deepening the tempest's howl, the torrent's roar; Chased by the Morn from Snowdon's awful brow, Where late she sate and scowled on the black wave below. III. 2. Lo, steel-clad War his gorgeous standard rears! The red-cross squadrons madly rage, And mow thro' infancy and age; * Then kiss the sacred dust and melt in tears. Veiling from the eye of day, Penance dreams her life away; In cloistered solitude she sits and sighs, Beyond this nether sphere, on Rapture's wing of fire. * This remarkable event happened at the siege and sack of Jerusalem in the last year of the eleventh century. Matth. Paris, IV. 2. |