JERUSALEM! no more above thy plains Shall feather’d warblers echo forth their strains, No more around thy lordly turrets fly, E’en now they haste, and skin the lowering sky: For now, like clouds, the armies shine afar, And speak the horrors of approaching war; In phalanx strong they move in firm array, And burn with ardor for the coming fray; With double speed towards the town they haste, Resolv’d to die, or yon proud city waste. Before the army, stately Titus speeds, Surrounded by a thousand ambling steeds, Moves like a god, and high above the rest Superior exalts his golden crest; His noble courser, of unequall’d height, Rears his broad front, and glories in the weight. Then come twelve thousand of great Rome’s allies, Who view with joy th’ already conquer’d prize; Without one fear of death, they hail the town, And see before them plunder and renown; Their lofty forms, encas’d in shining mail, Their native standards swelling in the gale. Next, forty thousand pikemen march’d along, Behind—their horse, eleven thousand strong. Destructive engines then came rattling slow, To hurl the stone, or bend the fatal bow. And see (as if aspiring to the sky) The Roman eagles mounted ride on high; Their golden wings, resplendent in the sun, Seem but to boast the murders they have done; (So the great master bird, whose form they bear, Unconquer’d flies, and all devoid of fear, With iron pinions pounces on his prey, And bears it bleeding on his homeward way; Where in full shares he tears the murder’d food, And proudly spreads it to his eager brood; Then claps his wings, and vaunting of his force, Full at the sun he drives his headstrong course.) Then came of trumpeters a spreading row, Their lofty strains bid ev’ry bosom glow; While e’en the coursers feel the welcome sound, And dance aloft, or paw the dusty ground. Next Roman squadrons, press’d by squadrons still, O’erspread the vale, and stretch the distant hill; Battalion to battalion still succeeds, Yet others rise, and steeds still follow steeds; Till, like the corn on which they heedless tread, In countless numbers o’er the plains they spread. Grand was the view, but to the trembling foe It shew’d but conquest, slavery, and woe. Jerusalem! thy fatal hour is near, In vain alike your courage and your fear, These are the armies long foreseen of old, And this the end thy prophets e’er foretold.