Descriptive of the miseries of War; from a Poemcalled "The Emigrants," printed in 1793.
TO a wild mountain, whose bare summit
Its broken eminence in clouds; whose steeps Are dark with woods: where the receding
Are worn with torrents of dissolving snow;
A wretched woman, pale and breathless, flies,
And, gazing round her, listens to the
Of hostile footsteps:--No! they die away--Nor noise remains, but of the cataract,
Or surly breeze of night, that mutters
Among the thickets, where she trembling seeksA temporary shelter--Clasping
To her quick throbbing heart her sleeping child,
All she could rescue of the innocent
That yesterday surrounded
Almost by miracle!--Fear, frantic Fear,
Wing'd her weak feet; yet, half repenting
Her headlong haste, she wishes she had
To die with those affrighted Fancy
The lawless soldiers' victims--Hark!
The driving tempest bears the cry of Death;
And with deep, sudden thunder, the dread
Of cannon vibrates on the tremulous earth;
While, bursting in the air, the murderous
Glares o'er her mansion--Where the splinters
Like scatter'd comets, its destructive
Is mark'd by wreaths of flame!--Then,
Beneath accumulated horror,
The desolate mourner!
The feudal chief, whose gothic
Frown on the plain beneath, returning
From distant lands, alone, and in disguise,
Gains at the fall of night his castle walls,
But, at the silent gate no porter
To wait his lord's admittance!--In the
All is drear stillness!--Guessing but too
The fatal truth, he shudders as he
Through the mute hall; where, by the blunted
That the dim moon through painted casement lends,
He sees that devastation has been there;
Then, while each hideous image to his
Rises terrific, o'er a bleeding
Stumbling he falls; another intercepts His staggering feet--All, all who used
With joy to meet him, all his
Lie murder'd in his way!--And the day
On a wild raving maniac, whom a
So sudden and calamitous has
Of reason; and who round his vacant
Screams unregarded, and reproaches Heaven!
