Lord of each pang the nerves can feel, Hence, with the rack and reeking wheel. Faith lifts the soul above this little ball! While gleams of glory open round, And circling choirs of angels call, Can’st thou, with all thy terrors crown’d, Hope to obscure that latent spark, Destin’d to shine when suns are dark? Thy triumphs cease! thro’ every land, Hark! Truth proclaims, thy triumphs cease: Her heavenly form, with glowing hand, Benignly points to piety and peace. Flush’d with youth her looks impart Each fine feeling as it flows; Her voice the echo of her heart, Pure as the mountain-snows: Celestial transports round her play, And softly, sweetly die away. She smiles! and where is now the cloud That blacken’d o’er thy baleful reign? Grim darkness furls his leaden shroud, Shrinking from her glance in vain. Her touch unlocks the day-spring from above, And lo! it visits man with beams of light and love. [1] Written in the year 1784. [2] An allusion to the sacrifice of Iphigenia. [3] Lucretius, I. 63. [4] When we were ready to set out, our host muttered some words in the ears of our cattle. See a Voyage to the North of Europe in 1653. [5] The Bramins expose their bodies to the intense heat of the sun. [6] Ridens moriar. The conclusion of an old Runic ode. [7] In the Bedas, or sacred writings of the Hindoos, it is written: “She, who dies with her husband, shall live for ever with him in heaven.” [8] The Fates of the Northern Mythology. See MALLET’S Antiquities. [9] An allusion to the Second Sight. [10] See that fine description of the sudden animation of the Palladium in the second book of the Æneid. [11] The bull, Apis. [12] The Crocodile. [13] So numerous were the Deities of Egypt, that, according to an antient proverb, it was in that country less difficult to find a god than a man. [14] The Hieroglyphics. [15] The Catacombs, in which the bodies of the earliest generations yet remain without corruption, by virtue of the gums that embalmed them. [16] “The Persians,” says Herodotus, “reject the use of temples, altars, and statues. The tops of the highest mountains are the places chosen for sacrifices.” I. 131. The elements, and more particularly Fire, were the objects of their religious reverence. [17] An imitation of some wonderful lines in the sixth Æneid. [18] See Tacitus, 1. xiv. c. 29. [19] This remarkable event happened at the siege and sack of Jerusalem, in the last year of the eleventh century. Hume, I.221. VERSES WRITTEN TO BE SPOKEN BY MRS. SIDDONS.[1]