Wild ruin scours the works of men;
Their motly fragments strew the plain. 
E’en in the desert’s pathless waste,
Uncouth destruction marks the blast: 
And hollow caves whose secret pride,
Grotesque and grand, was never ey’d
By mortal man, abide its drift,
Of many a goodly pillar reft. 
Fierce whirling mounts the desert sand,
And threats aloft the peopl’d land. 
The great expanded ocean, heaving wide,
Rolls to the farthest bound its lashing tide;
Whilst in the middle deep afar are seen,
All stately from the sunken gulfs between,
The tow’ring waves, which bend with hoary brow,
Then dash impetuous to the deep below. 
With broader sweepy base, in gather’d might
Majestic, swelling to stupendous height,
The mountain billow lifts its awful head,
And, curving, breaks aloft with roarings dread. 
Sublimer still the mighty waters rise,
And mingle in the strife of nether skies. 
All wildness and uproar, above, beneath,
A world immense of danger, dread, and death.

In dumb despair the sailor stands,
The frantic merchant wrings his hands,
Advent’rous hope clings to the yard,
And sinking wretches shriek unheard: 
Whilst on the land, the matron ill at rest,
Thinks of the distant main, and heaves her heavy breast. 
The peasants leave their ruin’d home,
And o’er the fields distracted roam: 
Insensible the ’numbed infant sleeps,
And helpless bending age, weak and unshelter’d weeps. 
Low shrinking fear, in place of state,
Skulks in the dwellings of the great. 
The rich man marks with careful eye,
Each wasteful gust that whistles by;
And ill men fear’d with fancied screams
Sit list’ning to the creaking beams. 
At break of ev’ry rising squall
On storm-beat’ roof, or ancient wall,
Full many a glance of fearful eye
Is upward cast, till from on high,
From cracking joist, and gaping rent,
And falling fragments warning sent,
Loud wakes around the wild affray,
’Tis all confusion and dismay.

Now powerful but inconstant in its course,
The tempest varies with uncertain force. 
Like doleful wailings on the lonely waste,
Solemn and dreary sounds the weaning blast. 
Exhausted gusts recoiling growl away,
And, wak’d anew, return with feebler sway;
Save where between the ridgy mountains pent,
The fierce imprison’d current strives for vent,
With hollow howl, and lamentation deep,
Then rushes o’er the plain with partial sweep. 
A parting gust o’erscours the weary land,
And lowly growls along the distant strand: 
Light thro’ the wood the shiv’ring branches play,
And on the ocean far it slowly dies away.

AN ADDRESS TO THE NIGHT.

A fearful mind.

Uncertain, awful as the gloom of death,
The Night’s grim shadows cover all beneath. 
Shapeless and black is ev’ry object round,
And lost in thicker gloom the distant bound. 
Each swelling height is clad with dimmer shades,
And deeper darkness marks the hollow glades. 
The moon in heavy clouds her glory veils,
And slow along their passing darkness sails;
While lesser clouds in parted fragments roam,
And red stars glimmer thro’ the river’s gloom.