Which will be strangled by the ocean! by The deep which will lay open all her fountains!

The heaven which will convert her clouds to seas,

And the Omnipotent who makes and crushes!

Thou unknown, terrible, and indistinct,
Yet awful Thing of Shadows, speak to me !
Why dost thou laugh that horrid laugh?
Spirit.
Why weep'st thou ? 330
Japh. For earth and all her children.
Spirit. Ha ha ha! [Spirit vanishes.
Japh. How the fiend mocks the tortures
of a world,

The coming desolation of an orb,

On which the sun shall rise and warm no

440

In caves, in dens, in clefts of mountains, where The deep shall follow to their latest lair; Where even the brutes, in their despair,

Shall cease to prey on man and on each other,

And the striped tiger shall lie down to die Beside the lamb, as though he were his brother;

Till all things shall be as they were, Silent and uncreated, save the sky: While a brief truce

Is made with Death, who shall forbear The little remnant of the past creation, 450 To generate new nations for his use: This remnant, floating o'er the undulation

Of the subsiding deluge, from its slime, When the hot sun hath baked the reeking soil

Into a world, shall give again to Time
New beings-years · diseases -sor-

row- crime

With all companionship of hate and toil, Until

Japh. (interrupting them). The eternal will

Shall deign to expound this dream 460
Of good and evil; and redeem

Unto himself all times, all things;
And, gather'd under his almighty
wings,
Abolish hell!

And to the expiated Earth
Restore the beauty of her birth,

Her Eden in an endless paradise,

Thy death is nearer than thy recent birth: