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THE CURSE OF MINERVA.
His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name;
The slaughtered peasant and the ravished dame,300
The rifled mansion and the foe-reaped field,
Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield.
Say with what eye along the distant down
Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?
How view the column of ascending flames
Shake his red shadow o'er the startled Thames?
Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was thine
That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine:
Now should they burst on thy devoted coast,
Go, ask thy bosom who deserves them most?310
The law of Heaven and Earth is life for life,
And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife."
