THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.

I.

Is this thy bravery, Man! is this thy pride!
Rebel to God, and slave to all beside!
Captived by everything! and only free
To fly from thine own liberty!

All creatures, the Creator said, were thine;
No creature but might since say, Man is mine!
In black Egyptian slavery we lie,

And sweat and toil in the vain dru

Of tyrant Sin,

To which we trophies raise, and wear out all our breath

In building up the monuments of death.

We, the choice race, to God and angels kin!
In vain the prophets and apostles come

To call us home,

Home to the promised Canaan above,

Which does with nourishing milk and pleasant honey flow,

And even i' th' way to which we should be fed With angels' tasteful bread:

But we, alas! the flesh-pots love;

We love the very leeks and sordid roots below.

II.

In vain we judgments feel, and wonders see;
In vain did God to descend hither deign,
He was his own Ambassador in vain,
Our Moses and our guide himself to be.
We will not let ourselves to go,

And with worse hardened hearts, do our own

VOL. II.

Pharaohs grow;

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Ah! lest at last we perish so,

Think, stubborn Man! think of the Egyptian prince,
(Hard of belief and will, but not so hard as thou,)
Think with what dreadful proofs God did convince
The feeble arguments that human power could show;
Think what plagues attend on thee,

Who Moses' God dost now refuse more oft than Moses he.

III.

'If from some God you come,' said the proud king, With half a smile and half a frown,

'But what God can to Egypt be unknown?

What sign, what powers, what credence do you bring?' 'Behold his seal! behold his hand!'

Cries Moses, and casts down the almighty wand:
The almighty wand scarce touched the earth,
When, with an undiscerned birth,

The almighty wand a serpent grew,

And his long half in painted folds behind him drew:
Upwards his threatening tail he threw,

Upwards he cast his threatening head,

He gaped and hissed aloud,

With flaming eyes surveyed the trembling crowd,

And, like a basilisk, almost looked the assembly dead: Swift fled the amazed king, the guards before him fled.

IV.

Jannes and Jambres stopped their flight,

And with proud words allayed the affright.

The God of slaves!' said they, 'how can he be

More powerful than their master's deity?'

And down they cast their rods,

And muttered secret sounds that charm the servile gods. The evil spirits their charms obey,

And in a subtle cloud they snatch the rods away,
And serpents in their place the airy jugglers lay:
Serpents in Egypt's monstrous land

Were ready still at hand,

And all at the Old Serpent's first command:
And they, too, gaped, and they, too, hissed,
And they their threatening tails did twist;
But straight on both the Hebrew serpent flew,
Broke both their active backs, and both it slew,
And both almost at once devoured;

So much was overpowered

By God's miraculous creation

His servant Nature's slightly wrought and feeble genera

tion.

V.

On the famed bank the prophets stood,

Touched with their rod, and wounded all the flood;
Flood now no more, but a long vein of putrid blood;
The helpless fish were found

In their strange current drowned;

The herbs and trees washed by the mortal tide
About it blushed and died:

The amazed crocodiles made haste to ground;

From their vast trunks the dropping gore they spied, Thought it their own, and dreadfully aloud they cried: Nor all thy priests, nor thou,

O King! couldst ever show

From whence thy wandering Nile begins his course;
Of this new Nile thou seest the sacred source,

And as thy land that does o'erflow,

Take heed lest this do so.

What plague more just could on thy waters fall?
The Hebrew infants' murder stains them all.

The kind, instructing punishment enjoy;

Whom the red river cannot mend, the Red Sea shall destroy.

VI.

The river yet gave one instruction more,

And from the rotting fish and unconcocted gore,

Which was but water just before,

A loathsome host was quickly made,

That scaled the banks, and with loud noise did all the

country invade;

As Nilus when he quits his sacred bed,

(But like a friend he visits all the land
With welcome presents in his hand,)
So did this living tide the fields o'erspread.
In vain the alarmed country tries

To kill their noisome enemies,

From the unexhausted source still new recruits arise:

Nor does the earth these greedy troops suffice;

The towns and houses they possess,

The temples and the palaces,

Nor Pharaoh nor his gods they fear,
Both their importune croakings hear:
Unsatiate yet they mount up higher,

Where never sun-born frog durst to aspire,

And in the silken beds their slimy members place,
A luxury unknown before to all the watery race.

VII.

The water thus her wonders did produce,

But both were to no use:

As yet the sorcerer's mimic power served for excuse.

Try what the earth will do, said God, and lo!

They struck the earth a fertile blow,

And all the dust did straight to stir begin,

One would have thought some sudden wind had been,
But, lo! 'twas nimble life was got within!
And all the little springs did move,

And every dust did an armed vermin prove,

Of an unknown and new-created kind,

Such as the magic gods could neither make or find.
The wretched shameful foe allowed no rest

Either to man or beast;

Not Pharaoh from the unquiet plague could be,
With all his change of raiments, free;

The devils themselves confessed

This was God's hand; and 'twas but just

To punish thus man's pride, to punish dust with dust.

VIII.

Lo! the third element does his plagues prepare,
And swarming clouds of insects fill the air;
With sullen noise they take their flight,

And march in bodies infinite;

In vain 'tis day above, 'tis still beneath them night;

Of harmful flies the nations numberless

Composed this mighty army's spacious boast;

Of different manners, different languages,

And different habits, too, they wore,

And different arms they bore:

And some, like Scythians, lived on blood,

And some on green, and some on flowery food,

And Accaron, the airy prince, led on this various host. Houses secure not men; the populous ill

Did all the houses fill:

The country all around,

Did with the cries of tortured cattle sound;