The smiling offspring from her womb remove, And with her entrails glad the realms above.
O Youth, reserv'd by more auspicious fate, With fam'd improvements to oblige the state! By wars impoverish'd, Albion mourns no more, Thy well-wrought mines forbid her to be poor The earth, thy great exchequer, ready lies, Which all defect of failing funds supplies; Thou shalt a nation's pressing wants relieve, Not war can lavish more than thou canst give, a
This, Mackworth, fixes thy immortal name, The muse's darling, and the boast of fame; No greater virtues on record shall stand,
Than thus with arts to grace, with wealth enrich the land.
AT THEIR RETURN FROM VIEWING THE MINES NEAR
WELCOME to light, advent'rous Pair! Thrice welcome to the balmy air From sulph'rous damps in caverns deep,] Where subterranean thunders sleep, Or, wak'd with dire Aetnean sound Bellow the trembling mountain round, Till to the frighted realms of day
Thro' flaming mouths they force their way; From bursting streams, and burning rocks, From nature's fierce intestine shocks;___ / From the dark mansions of despair, Welcome once more to light and air!
But why explore that world of night Conceal'd till then from female sight? Such grace and beauty why confine One moment to a dreary mine?
Was it because your curious eye The secrets of the earth would spy,
How intervein'd rich minerals glow, How bubbling fountains learn to flow? _20
Or rather that the sons of day Already own'd your rightful sway, And therefore, like young Ammon, You Another world would fain subdue ?
What tho' sage Prospero attend, While You the cavern'd hill descend, Tho', warn'd by him, with bended head You shun the shelving roof, and tread With cautious foot the rugged way, While tapers strive to mimic day? Tho' he with hundred gates and chains The Daemons of the mine restrains, To whom their parent, jealous Earth, To guard her hidden stores gave birth, At which, while kindred Furies sung, With hideous joy pale Orcus rung;] Tho' boiling with vain rage they sit Fix'd to the bottom of the pit, While at his beck the Spirits of air
With breath of heaven their taints repair ;40
Or if they seek superior skies,
Thro' ways assign'd by him they rise,
Troop after troop at day expire
In torments of perpetual fire;
Tho' he with fury-quelling charms The whole Infernal Host disarms, And summons to your guarded sides A squadron of Aetherial Guides, You still, when we together view The dreadful enterprize and You, The public care and wonder go Of all above and all below.
For at your presence toil is o'er, The restless miner works no more. Nor strikes the flint, nor whirls the steel Of that strange spark-emitting wheel, Which, form'd by Prospero's magic care, Plays harmless in the sulphurous air, Without a flame diffuses light,
And makes the grisly cavern bright, be His task secure the miner plies,
Nor hears Tartarian tempests rise ;
and hastes away
To this great Stygian holiday.
Lot With pity when th❜ Orphean lyre Did every iron heart inspire,
Sooth'd tortur'd ghosts with heavenly strains, And respited eternal pains.
But on You move thro' ways less steep
To loftier chambers of the deep,
Whose jetty pillars seem to groan
Beneath a ponderous roof of stone._84
Then with increasing wonder gaze, The dark inextricable maze,
Where cavern crossing cavern meets,
(City of subterraneous streets!)
Where in a triple story end
Mines that o'er mines by flights ascend,
But who in order can relate
What terror still your steps await? How issuing from the sulphurous coal Thick Acherontic rivers roll?
How in close center of these mines,
Where orient morning never shines, Nor the wing'd Zephyrs e'er resort, Infernal darkness holds her court? How, breathless, with faint pace, and slow, Thro' her grim sultry realm You go,
Till purer rising gales dispense
Their cordials to the sickening sense?
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