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12
THE TRIUMPHS


No jarring wishes fill'd the world with woes,
But youth was ecstacy, and age repose.
The Powers of Mischief met in dark divan,
To blast these mighty joys of envied Man:
The fiends, at their infernal leader's call,
Framed their base wiles in Demogorgon's hall,
In the deep centre of that dreadful dome,
A hellish cauldron boil'd with fiery foam:
In this wide urn the circling spirits threw
Ingredients harsh, and hideous to the view;
While the terrific master of the spell
With adjurations shook the depths of hell,
And in dark words, unmeet for mortal ear,
Bade the dire offspring of his art appear.
Forth from the vase, with sullen murmurs, broke
A towering mass of pestilential smoke:
Emerging from this fog of thickest night,
A phantom swells, by slow degrees, to sight;
But ere the view can seize the forming shape,
From the mock'd eye its lineaments escape: