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• Or sends forth thick, blue, suffocating steams;
• Or shoots to temporary flame. A din,
• Wild, thro’ the mountain’s quivering rocky caves, [395]
• Like the dread crash of tumbling planets, roars.
• When tremble thus the pillars of the globe,
• Like the tall coco¹ by the fierce North blown;
• Can the poor, brittle, tenements of man
• Withstand the dread convulsion? Their dear homes, [400]
• (Which shaking, tottering, crashing, bursting, fall,)
• The boldest fly; and, on the open plain
• Appal’d, in agony the moment wait,
• When, with disrupture vast, the waving earth

• Shall whelm them in her sea-disgorging womb.² [405]

• NOR less affrighted are the bestial kind.
• The bold steed quivers in each panting vein,
• And staggers, bath’d in deluges of sweat:
• Thy lowing herds forsake their grassy food,
• And send forth frighted, woful, hollow sounds: [410]
• The dog, thy trusty centinel of night,
• Deserts his post assign’d; and, piteous, howls.——
• Wide ocean feels:——
• The mountain-waves, passing their custom’d bounds,

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