And indignation rival bursts I pour'd; Half execration mingled with my prayer; Kindled at man, while I his God adored; 185 Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust; Stamp'd the cursed soil; and with humanity (Denied Narcissa) wish'd them all a grave. Glows my resentment into guilt? What guilt Can equal violations of the dead? The dead how sacred! Sacred is the dust Of this heaven-labour'd form, erect, divine! 192 This heaven-assumed majestic robe of earth, He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expanse With azure bright, and clothed the sun in gold. When every passion sleeps that can offend; When strikes us every motive that can melt; When man can wreak his rancour uncontroll'd, That strongest curb on insult and ill-will; Then, spleen to dust? the dust of innocence? 200 An angel's dust?--This Lucifer transcends; When he contended for the patriarch's bones, 'Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride; The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall. Far less than this is shocking in a race Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love; And uncreated, but for love divine; And, but for love divine, this moment, lost, By fate resorb'd, and sunk in endless night. Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things 210 Most horrid! 'mid stupendous, highly strange! Yet oft his courtesies are smoother wrongs; Pride brandishes the favours He confers, And contumelious his humanity: What then his vengeance? Hear it not, ye stars! And thou, pale moon! turn paler at the sound; Man is to man the sorest, surest ill. A previous blast foretells the rising storm; O'erwhelming turrets threaten ere they fall; 219 Volcanos bellow ere they disembogue; Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour; And smoke betrays the wide-consuming fire: Ruin from man is most conceal'd when near, And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow. Is this the flight of fancy? Would it were! Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings, but himself, That hideous sight, a naked human heart. Fired is the Muse? And let the Muse be fired: Who not inflamed, when what he speaks, he feels, And in the nerve most tender, in his friends? 230 Shame to mankind! Philander had his foes; He felt the truths I sing, and I in him. But he, nor I, feel more: past ills, Narcissa! Are sunk in thee, thou recent wound of heart! Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs; Pangs numerous, as the numerous ills that swarm'd O'er thy distinguish'd fate, and, clustering there Thick as the locusts on the land of Nile, Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave. Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale) 240 How was each circumstance with aspics arm'd? An aspic, each! and all, a hydra woe: What strong Herculean virtue could suffice?--