On either wing their fiery coursers check
The parch'd and sinewy sons of Amalek:

While close behind, inured to feast on blood,

Deck'd in Behemoth's spoils, the tall Shangalla strode. 'Mid blazing helms and bucklers rough with gold Saw ye how swift the scythed chariots roll'd?

Lo, these are they whom, lords of Afric's fates,

Old Thebes hath pour'd through all her hundred gates
Mother of armies!-How the emeralds glow'd,

Where, flush'd with power and vengeance, Pharaoh rode!
And stoled in white, those brazen wheels before,
Osiris' ark his swarthy wizards bore;

And still responsive to the trumpet's cry

The priestly sistrum murmur'd-Victory!—

Why swell these shouts that rend the desert's gloom?
Whom come ye forth to combat?-warriors, whom?-
These flocks and herds--this faint and weary train-
Red from the scourge and recent from the chain?-
God of the poor, the poor and friendless save!
Giver and Lord of freedom, help the slave !--
North, south, and west, the sandy whirlwinds fly,
The circling horns of Egypt's chivalry.

On earth's last margin throng the weeping train:

Their cloudy guide moves on:--" And must we swim the

main?"

'Mid the light spray their snorting camels stood,

Nor bathed a fetlock in the nauseous flood-

He comes-their leader comes !-the man of God
O'er the wide waters lifts his mighty rod,
And onward treads-The circling waves retreat,
In hoarse deep murmurs, from his holy feet;

And the chased surges, inly roaring, show
The hard wet sand, and coral hills below.

With limbs that falter, and with hearts that swell,
Down, down they pass-a steep and slippery dell—
Around them rise, in pristine chaos hurl'd,

The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world;
And flowers that blush beneath the ocean green,
And caves, the sea-calves' low-roof'd haunt are seen.
Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread;
The beetling waters storm above their head:
While far behind retires the sinking day,
And fades on Edom's hills its latest ray.

Yet not from Israel fled the friendly light,

Or dark to them, or cheerless came the night.
Still in their van, along that dreadful road,

Blazed broad and fierce the brandish'd torch of God.

Its meteor glare a tenfold lustre gave

On the long mirror of the rosy wave:

While its blest beams a sunlike heat supply,
Warm every cheek, and dance in every eye-
To them alone--for Misraim's wizard train
Invoke for light their monster-gods in vain:
Clouds heap'd on clouds their struggling sight confine,
And tenfold darkness broods above their line.
Yet on they fare by reckless vengeance led,
And range unconscious through the ocean's bed:

Till midway now-that strange and fiery form
Show'd his dread visage lightening through the storm;

With withering splendour blasted all their might,

And brake their chariot-wheels, and marr'd their coursers'

flight.