And yawning forth a grave for those who lay
Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet—
Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet!
LXIV.
The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
Which bore them to Eternity—they saw
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,
In them suspended, recked not of the awe
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds
Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw[1]
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds
Stumble o'er heaving plains—and Man's dread hath no words.
- ↑
Fly to the clouds for refuge and withdraw
From their unsteady nests——.—[MS. M.]
is also silent; but Pliny (Hist. Nat., ii. 84) and Cœlius Antipater (ap. Cic, De Div., i. 35), who wrote his Annales about a century after the battle of Lake Thrasymenus (B.C. 217), synchronize the earthquake and the battle. Compare, too, Rogers's Italy., "The Pilgrim:" Poems, 1852, ii. 152—
"From the Thrasymene, that now
Slept in the sun, a lake of molten gold,
And from the shore that once, when armies met,
Rocked to and fro unfelt, so terrible
The rage, the slaughter, I had turned away."
Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet (No. xii.), "Near the Lake of Thrasymene" (Works, 1888, p. 756)—
"When here with Carthage Rome to conflict came,
An earthquake, mingling with the battle's shock,
Checked not its rage; unfelt the ground did rock,
Sword dropped not, javelin kept its deadly aim,—
Now all is sun-bright peace."]
