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On Hearing that Constantinople Was Swallowed Up by an Earthquake

[A Report, though false, at that time generally believed.]Fallen are thy towers,

Byzantium! towers that

Before the Turk's dread fury, when he came,

The crescent sparkling amidst Christian blood,

And to the reeking den of Moloch

Sophia's holy fane!

Where, where are now,

Imperial city, the late proud

Of thy brave founder's greatness, when he

In worldly grandeur pure Religion's form;

Then placed beside him, placed upon a throne,

The lowly Nazarene's meek simple child!….

He, wandering then upon a Christian land,

Stranger at home had been, nor known

His artless rites, his followers, in the

Filled with the sparkling shrine, the rich-robed priests,

And pomp of earthly greatness……..

But not

Lived there his name….

Science and art, farewell!

The foe of light and love,

Mohammed, comes,

And Constantine's proud race exists no more.

But, sons of Mahomet, the towers he built,

Though by your anger spared, have fallen now,

And crushed your bloody race!

A mightier

Than his who raised, or spared, yon domes came forth;

From the hot sable rolling cloud it came,

And crumbled them to dust!….

The wind, the air,

Seem in strict silence bound, but smiling

Appears the face of day; assassin-like,

Smiling, though conscious of intended death.

But Nature trembles at her own repose;

The brute creation dread forebodings shake;

While man alone is bold…..

But see where

The labouring ocean, in fantastic

And sudden swells, her heaving bosom rears;

Like the mad Pythia, when the Delphian

Spoke by her fraudful lips….

But here, alas!

A real God that world of waters

To do his dreadful bidding!….

Hark! he comes!

The thunder's roar, the rush of winds

The Mighty One is near….

But oh! when

His power, and those he spared raised up their heads,

Where was the eye could bear upon the

To gaze, and mark the ruin stretching wide!

Oh! ye were blest, ye victims, ye who

Deep in the yawning chasm!…."Where are now,"The sad survivor cries, "my peaceful home,

The sacred mosque I loved, the child, the wifeI clasped but now; the city towering high,

Proud in its strength?….

Disperse, thou gloomy cloud,

And let me gaze on them!" The cloud's dispersed;

But he beholds no city, he can

No vestige of his home: a putrid

Or barren ground replace them, and proclaim,

Devouring earthquake, thy resistless power.

England! blest country, from such woes as these Thy temperate clime preserves thee; lightly felt,

If ever, by thy comfort-breathing shores,

The earthquake desolating distant lands:

And….thou hast cause to lift thy voice most high,

In the great choir of nations hymning praise.

But ye, who wander from your native shores,

While haply such calamity draws

As sunk Byzantium; ye, whose eager

Anticipate a glad return to

Ye shall behold no more, for ever

From off the earth, unconscious heirs of woe;

For you I mourn!….

Methinks I see the

Flushed with delight, chastized perhaps by fear,

When your own land approaches….

See the

Misty with tears ope wide its eager

To catch the well-known objects!

Horrid change!

Fear pales that glowing cheek, and dries that eye,"It is our native shore,….but where are

The fanes, the spires, erewhile our city's pride?"I hear you cry. "The pilot is deceived,

And hope deceived us too….'Tis not our land!"But soon the mournful certainty ye guess,

And leap to shore; and there ye call in

On all ye loved….

Throughout the silent

That yet remain, perhaps some meagre

May trembling steal along, and tell the tale;

While on the ruins some lone maniac sits,

And, as he points to where the chasm yawned,

Boasts of the treasures earth preserves for him;

Or, while a sudden beam of reason darts,

Screams his discordant anguish, and

Earth to give back his children!….

Angel of woe, that from the eternal

Receivest thy dread commission, going

To flap thy sable pinions o'er the world,

And shed unnumbered evils, which

To piety's uplifted eye as

Concealed in evil's garb;….angel of woe,

Upon thy awful power I've pondered oft,

In all its dark varieties,

I've

The horrid path where Madness stalks

In fancied majesty, or from his

Sends the loud shriek, or more afflicting laugh;

And, as I hurried from the o'erwhelming scene,

Have shuddering owned thy awful presence there ,….

I've seen thee by the death-bed sit, and

The silent corse to speak again, and

The eyes for ever closed to ope once

And beam as they were wont:….and I have

In slow procession to the opening grave,

And seen thee triumph when the earth

The form beloved, and the deep bursting

Bespoke affliction's forced composure o'er,

And agony victorious!

I have

Upon the guilty wretch, when, doomed to die,

Terror has vanquished him, and his pale

Has proved the falsehood of his vaunting tongue,

While, to his startled fancy, in the

Of Death came judgement, and the world to

Unfolded all its horrors!

There,

O there,

Thee I beheld, and fled from!….and I've

How on the sultry suffocating

Of livid pestilence, thou, floating wide,

Hast done thy master's bidding!

Vain were

The ties of nature! from the parent's

The child has forced its once sustaining hand,

And, horror-struck, has from contagion fled!

While the fond parent, from his dying

Vainly his aid imploring, terror-winged,

Has urged his selfish flight* !

And there thou wert….

But when the earthquake's varied horrors come,

All, all thy ministers are waiting round,

Fear,

Madness,

Pestilence,

Pain,

Famine,

Death,

And all the

ES

ED are there!

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Amelia Opie

Amelia Opie, née Alderson (12 November 1769 – 2 December 1853), was an English author who published numerous novels in the Romantic period up to…

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