Humanity's mild voice, still raised for THEE,
Abates the rigour of her stern decree.

Lo! in redundant current, Commerce pours
Obedient to thy call, her Eastern stores:

And still, though Plague and Rapine range the land,
Her spicy bale perfumes thy chosen strand.
And ah! had years matured that fair design
Of which thy genius traced the wond'rous line-
Had GENERAL CONCORD from her finished fame
Shed her pure light, and breathed her strains humane,
Man's varied race, from far-dissevered lands

Had thronged her courts, and pledged discoloured bands ;
Her shrines had witnessed tongues discordant blend
The vow, and in the stranger hail the friend.
Stern Scythia's clans had cast their rage aside;
Unsocial Greece renounced her scornful pride;
Secure beneath thy star's protecting ray
Had bloomed the regions of the rising day;
With keen awakened sense the listening child
Still on his mother's fearless bosom smiled,
As deep-concealed o'erarching shades among
Content had carolled his unlaboured song-
Still from afar, the swarm of plunderers loured
Eyed the fair fruits, and but in thought devoured.

But Earth's fond hope how blasted in its bloom!
How feels a world convulsed thy early doom!
What mingling sounds of woe and outrage rise :
How wild the eddying dust of ruin flies!

As frantic Chiefs* the Master's pile deface,
Rend his strong walls and shake the deep-laid base.

Mourn, India, mourn-The womb of future time
Teems with the fruit of each portentous crime.
The Crescent onwards guides consuming hosts,
And Carnage dogs the Cross along thy coasts;
From Christian strands, the rage accursed of gain
Wafts all the Furies in its baleful train,
Their eye-ball strained, impatient of the way,
They snuff, with nostril broad, the distant prey.
-And now the Rout pollutes the hallowed shore
That nursed young Art and infant Science bore;

* Immediately on Alexander's death, society was thrown into the most dreadful convulsions; the most bloody dissentions broke out among his generals. Hence the Macedonians have been compared to those migrating rats, the pest of the North, that after ravaging whole countries, at last, for want of subsistence, fall upon and devour one another.

Fierce in the van, her fire-brand Warfare waves; Dire at her heels the cry of hell-hounds raves : Roused by the yell, the Greedy and the Bold Start to the savage chace of blood and gold.

In vain steep Gwalior rears his towers on high,
In vain, thy walls dread Nature touch the sky--
O'er towers and mountains slaughter's torrent rolls;
No mound resists it, and no power controuls.
On the meek race each plague of guilt is poured,
And Famine*" gleans the relics of the sword."

"When the effects of the scarcity became more and "more visible, the natives complained to the Nabob that "the English had engrossed all the rice. This complaint " was laid before the president and council by the Nabob's "minister, who resides at Calcutta. But the interest of "the gentleman concerned, was too powerful at the board, cc so that the complaint was only laughed at and thrown "out." By the time the famine had been a fortnight over "the land, we were greatly affected at Calcutta ; many "thousands falling daily in the streets and fields whose "bodies, mangled by jackalls, dogs and vultures, in that "hot season, when at best the air is very infectious, made "us dread the consequences of a plague.-We had an hun"dred people, employed upon the Cutchevry list, on the "company's account, with doolys, sledges and bearers, to

For food their fruitless cries thy infants raise
The gasping parents choak thy spacious ways.
Wan, shrivell'd shapes, in life's last languor laid,
Nor Morn's mild ray they bless, nor Evening's shade.
Where the mute heaps abide their lingering fate,
As Pride disgusted spurns them from her gate,
"Oh father, grant," the unmurmuring victims cry,
""Tis all we ask-this little space to die."
Meanwhile the buryer, with unheeding tread,
Crushes the dying, as he drags the dead.

E'en now, inflamed with ravenous thirst of spoil Wide-wasting legions scour thy beauteous soil..

carry the dead and throw them into the Ganges. I have "counted, from my bed-chamber-window in the morning. "when I have got up, forty dead bodies lying within twenty "yards of the wall, besides many hundreds lying in the "agonies of death for want, bending double, with their "stomachs, quite close contracted to their back bones. I "have sent my servant to desire those who had strength to "remove farther off, whilst the poor creatures, looking up "with arms extended, have cried out Baba, baba, my "father, my father, this affli&tian comes from the hand of your countrymen, and I am come here to die, if it please God, in your presence, I cannot move. Do what you will with me." Annual Reg. 1771, p. 205.

hear, I hear the ravaged nations' groan,
he sigh unpitied and despairing moan.
see the sufferers ope their failing eyes
'o seek avenging BRAMA in the skies.

n quivering gore, his beak the Vulture dips,
The glutted Panther licks his blood-stained lips.
Wide through thy realms, funereal horror reigns,
And bones unburied whiten o'er thy plains.

From the tall deck, at length, the Chief descends,
To Persia's plains his course triumphant bends,
And oft with smile-illumined mien surveys
Their fair extent; and oft the march delays.
And dreadless now of force or ambushed wile,
Relaxing files the weary way beguile.

Sweet breathes the Dorian mood, and Grecian songs
Rehearse the heartfelt tale of Grecia's wrongs :

At Eve's calm hour" they tell " how savage yells Burst o'er her hallowed groves and peaceful dells, With ruffian gripe how Asian rovers tore The struggling virgin from her natal shore : "In spires ascending through the void of night From shrieking hamlets reared the ghastly light; Strew'd o'er the thymy turf her bleeding flocks, Stripped its rich mantle from her sunny rocks;