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 | The Works of Thomas Love Peacock |  |
STROPHE III.
Yet wisdom in my wasting courseMay still the trace of bounty find.
Even in my most destructive force,
I ever loved and blessed mankind.
Yon harbinger of fate, that flies
Portentous through the midnight skies,
Bears life and splendor to the orb of heaven,
From whose pure fount to man are given
254
What though, when impious nations scorn my sway,
From cliff to cliff I raise
The beacon's dreadful blaze,
And through their conflagrated dwellings rave;
Yet from my parent urn
The springs of glory burn,
That guide the wise, and animate the brave.
Thence glows the vestal-torch, whose power refined
Awakes, expands, illumes the mind:
Thence the soft rays, through pity's tears that stream;
And friendship's guardian light, and love's ethereal beam.
ANTISTROPHE III.
Though in the dread volcanic tideThe floods of devastation roll,
Yet thence to mortals are supplied
New gifts of my benign control.
While with incumbent ocean's rage
Fierce strife my fountain-torrents wage,
Rocks piled on rocks amid the conflict rise.
The wondering mariner descries
Their fire-scorched summits frowning o'er the wave,
And hears with awe the unwonted breakers rave.
255
My plastic influence dwells,
Till rivers burst, and forests clothe the isle;
And, where the stormy breeze
Late howled o'er shoreless seas,
Man rears his home, and friendly harbours smile.
My bounty dies, when man my fane forsakes.
Alone my brooding vengeance wakes.
Deep in my subterranean domes enfurled,
I gather up my force to overwhelm the world.
EPODE III.
Tremble, sons of future ages!Tremble at the emblemed doom,
When the red volcano rages,
When the meteor fires the gloom,
When the thunder-brand of heaven
On the mountain-tower is driven.
In these let earth my sleepless might behold:
In these the signals of my wrath be given.
In final hour shall my vast waves be rolled
Round this revolving planetary frame;
And, while terrestrial nature shrinks and dies,
The mighty torrent of eternal flame,
In one wide ruin sounding through the skies,
Shall bid o'er all the world my lonely altar rise.
| The Works of Thomas Love Peacock | |