154
POEMS, SACRED AND MORAL.
Contiguous foes in close array
Our sympathetic eyes survey;
Our sympathetic ears abhor
The mournful sound of nearer war.
Encamp'd on yonder southern hill
That sloping fronts the Forest-Mill;
To pity deaf, in martial train,
Their arms far gleaming on the plain,
At day-break issues forth the host:
Aloft in air the steel is tost:
Man urges Man; stroke cries to stroke:
Loud-crashing falls th' astonish'd oak.
Wide and more wide the slaughter spreads:
Successive woodlands bow their heads.
The birds their ruin'd haunts forsake:
The squirrel flies the echoing brake:
And glancing trouts their terrors hide
Beneath the brook's impending side.
Stretch'd on the desolated steep,
And drench'd in more than wintry sleep,
The mighty victims lie; nor dream
Of lightning braved, of freshening stream,
Our sympathetic eyes survey;
Our sympathetic ears abhor
The mournful sound of nearer war.
Encamp'd on yonder southern hill
That sloping fronts the Forest-Mill;
To pity deaf, in martial train,
Their arms far gleaming on the plain,
At day-break issues forth the host:
Aloft in air the steel is tost:
Man urges Man; stroke cries to stroke:
Loud-crashing falls th' astonish'd oak.
Wide and more wide the slaughter spreads:
Successive woodlands bow their heads.
The birds their ruin'd haunts forsake:
The squirrel flies the echoing brake:
And glancing trouts their terrors hide
Beneath the brook's impending side.
Stretch'd on the desolated steep,
And drench'd in more than wintry sleep,
The mighty victims lie; nor dream
Of lightning braved, of freshening stream,
