Iii monologue — Ismael; an oriental tale. With other poems

The frighten’d skies are red with bursting fire, Warriors on warriors, heaps on heaps expire; The cannon’s roar, the martial music’s sound; The conq’rers’ shouts, and conquer’d’s groans confound. The mighty hosts promiscuously engage, And war terrific, burns with tenfold rage. War! horrid war! whom Death to Pluto bore, ’Mids’t the dark caverns of th’ infernal shore; A dreadful monster, at whose baleful birth, Love, Peace, and Plenty, fled the groaning earth. 30 His form was horrid, ghastly, grim, and fell, No mortal man its terrors e’er can tell! A wreath of skulls his iron temples bound, Where’er he trod, red carnage dy’d the ground,-- All nature wither’d at his dire advance, And nations sunk beneath his lurid glance. Four raging tygers, with tremendous roar, His sweeping car (a thund’ring cannon) bore; Confusion, Flight, and Terror’s wild alarms, Shrieking pursue his all-destroying arms. 40 But to the view, the treach’rous demon show’d A form that bright with glorious beauty glow’d; And held, deceitful, in his bloody hand, Giv’n by Ambition, an enchanted wand-- And this he wav’d! and, to the wond’ring eyes, Sceptres, and crowns, and laurell’d wreaths would rise:-- But now he gloried o’er the Gallic plain, To feast in triumph on the mighty slain.