Now (scourges having long their fury spent) Gloomy and sad, beneath oppression bent, Round her gall'd neck the festering iron winds, And to the gloomy mast oppressive binds. Sad strains of feeble melancholy flow; Half-meaning fragments of recorded woe, In wild succession break the pensive lay, Through the drear night and lamentable day. Her sad associates list the melting tones, And join each cadence with according groans. But sick'ning nature with the burden reels; O'er her wan face the deadly jaundice steals; The spirits die, the nerveless limbs unstrung, With mortal gripe the wounded heart-strings wrung, Fix'd her sunk eye—her love-lorn ditty fails, Life beats tumultuous 'gainst the feeble pales— Convulsive throbs expel the final breath, And o'er the fatal close sits ghastly Death. Hark! from yon lodge in many a wounding groan A labouring victim raise the feeble moan! Swift to the darksome cell the females fly, To still the tumult of the conscious cry: Join the deep woe with sad combin'd exclaim; As pangs maternal shake her drooping frame. Heav'ns! what a mansion for the tender woes, The painful travail partial nature throws Upon the gentler sex—when lenient art And soothing care should cheer the fainting heart. Here, with dejected wretchedness enclos'd, To brutal hands and impious eyes expos'd, Her sacred sorrows the sad crisis press,— Occurrent horrors, premature distress, Spread with foul clouds the inauspicious ray, That opes the new-born victim's doleful day! Behold her bending o'er her infant charge, Hear the laments her copious grief enlarge. “ Ill-fated innocent,” (she wailing cries) “ Thou joy and anguish of these aching eyes, “ Of parent misery the hapless heir, “ Thy mother gives the welcome of despair; “ Greets thy unconscious smile with throbbing fears; “ Repays thy fondness with presageful tears. “ Where now the joys should light the holy bow'r? “ Where the sweet hopes that wing the natal hour? “ Nor hope's blest dawn shall e'er thy fancy warm; “ Nor joy's sweet smile illume thy abject form. “ No grateful sire hails thee with conscious pride; “ Thy future worth no flattering friends decide: “ A wretched mother press'd by tyrant fate, “ Can yield no succour to thy helpless state: “ The spoiler's chains, that load her languid frame, “ By spoiler's right thy fetter'd service claim. “ Has o'er this pallid race a mother's love “ E'er bent in fondness?—Could they ever prove “ A wife's soft transport, as she gently prest “ The smiling stranger to a father's breast? “ Ah, sure the soft remembrance would have pow'r “ T' attone the sex, and sooth this mournful hour!”