Page:The Pleasures of Imagination - Akenside (1744).djvu/55

Nor all thy lover's, all thy father's tears
Avail'd to snatch thee from the cruel grave;
Thy agonizing looks, thy last farewel200
Struck to the inmost feeling of my soul
As with the hand of death. At once the shade
More horrid nodded o'er me, and the winds
With hoarser murm'ring shook the branches. Dark
As midnight storms, the scene of human things,205
Appear'd before me; desarts, burning sands
Where the parch'd adder dies; the frozen south,
And desolation blasting all the west
With rapine and with murder: tyrant-pow'r
Here sits inthron'd in blood; the baleful charms 210
Of superstition there infect the skies,
And turn the sun to horror. Gracious heav'n!
What is the life of man? Or cannot these,
Not these portents thy awful will suffice?
That propagated thus beyond their scope, 215
They rise to act their cruelties anew
In my afflicted bosom, thus decreed
The universal sensitive of pain,
The wretched heir of evils not its own!

⁠Thus I, impatient; when at once effus'd,220
A flashing torrent of cœlestial day
Burst thro' the shadowy void. With slow descent
A purple cloud came floating thro' the sky,
And pois'd at length within the circling trees,