Fragment

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!