Of simultaneous, energetic will;

Yet still behind the narrow borderland

Where in security he seems to stand,

His apprehensive life is compassed round

By baffling mysteries he cannot sound,

Where, big with terrors and calamities,

The future like a foe in ambush lies:

A muffled foe, that seems to watch and wait

With the Medusa eyes of stony fate.—

Great floods o'erwhelm and ruin his ripening grain,

His boat is shattered by the hurricane,

[20]

From the rent cloud the tameless lightning springs—

Heaven's flame-mouthed dragon with a roar of wings—

And fires his hut and simple household things;

Until before his horror-stricken eyes

The stored-up produce of long labour lies,

A heap of ashes smoking 'neath the skies.—

Or now the pastures where his flocks did graze,

Parched, withered, shrivelled by the imminent blaze

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