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Along the pathway of the sun

Sailed vapory mountains, wild and dun.
"Yet there is time," the prophet said:
He raised his staff, the storm was stayed:
"King! be the word of freedom given:
What art thou, man, to war with Heaven?"

VI.

There came no word. The thunder broke!
Like a huge city's final smoke,
Thick, lurid, stifling, mixed with flame,
Through court and hall the vapors came.
Loose as the stubble in the field,

Wide flew the men of spear and shield;
Scattered like foam along the wave,
Flew the proud pageant, prince and slave;
Or in the chains of terror bound,

Lay, corpse-like, on the smouldering ground. "Speak, king! the wrath is but begun!Still dumb? ― then, Heaven, thy will be done!"

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VII.

Echoed from earth a hollow roar

Like ocean on the midnight shore !
A sheet of lightning o'er them wheeled,
The solid ground beneath them reeled;
In dust sank roof and battlement;
Like webs the giant walls were rent;
Red, broad, before his startled gaze
The monarch saw his Egypt blaze.

Still swelled the plague, the flame grew pale,

Burst from the clouds the charge of hail :

With arrowy keenness, iron weight,

Down poured the ministers of fate:

Till man and cattle, crushed, congealed,
Covered with death the boundless field.

VIII.

Still swelled the plague,

uprose

the blast,

The avenger, fit to be the last :
On ocean, river, forest, vale,
Thundered at once the mighty gale.
Before the whirlwind flew the tree,
Beneath the whirlwind roared the sea;
A thousand ships were on the wave
Where are they? ask that foaming grave!
Down go the hope, the pride of years,
Down go the myriad mariners;
The riches of earth's richest zone,
Gone! like a flash of lightning, gone!

IX.

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And, lo! that first fierce triumph o'er,
Swells ocean on the shrinking shore;
Still onward, onward, dark and wide,
Engulfs the land the furious tide. —
Then bowed thy spirit, stubborn king,
Thou serpent, reft of fang and sting;
Humbled before the prophet's knee,
He groaned, "Be injured Israël free!"

X.

To heaven the sage upraised his hand;
Back rolled the deluge from the land;
Back to its caverns sank the gale;
Fled from the noon the vapors pale;
Broad burned again the joyous sun:

The hour of wrath and death was done. *

* The account of the seventh plague of Egypt, which the poet has paraphrased in these lines, may be found in the ninth chapter of Exodus, between the thirteenth and thirty-third verses.

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Pronounce BUTT'N, DOZ'N, ENLIV'N, EV'N, HARD'N, § 10; cow, DOWN, § 27; KIND, § 21; ROOM, § 9; wreaths, § 19.

See in Index, COMELY, HOstler, lowerING, MANUFACTURER, MINE, OBLIGE, PURLIEU, QUARRELING or QUARRELLING, TORTOISE, TRAVELER or TRAVELLER, UPPER BENJAMIN, YCLEPED, IRVING.

Delivery. The style of this extract is a lively narrative, approaching the colloquial in parts. It requires the middle pitch, a pure quality of voice, time between moderate and rapid, and generally a delivery level and unemotional, though suggestive of an appreciation of the truthful and playful points in the picture. The scene lies in England.

1. Ir was a rainy Sunday in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained, in the course of a journey, by a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering, but was still feverish, and obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn! Whoever has had the luck to experience one can alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements; the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound.

2. I went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye; but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bedroom looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable-yard on a rainy day.

3. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travelers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant pool of water, surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable, crest-fallen rooster, drenched out of all life and spirit, his drooping feathers matted, as it were, into

a single plume, along which the water trickled from his back.

4. Near the cart was a half-dozing cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapor rising from her reeking hide. A walleyed horse, tired of the loneliness of his stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves. An unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered something, every now and then, between a bark and a yelp.

5. An uncomely servant-girl tramped backward and forward through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself. Everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hardened ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

room.

6. I was lonely and listless, and wanted amusement. My room soon became insupportable. I abandoned it, and sought what is technically called the travelers'This is a public room set apart at mōst inns for the accommodation of a class of wayfarers called travelers, or riders; a kind of commercial knights-ĕrrant, who are incessantly scouring the kingdom in gigs, on horseback, or by coach. They are the only successors that I know of at the present day to the knights-errant of yore.

7. They lead the same kind of roving, adventurous life, only changing the lance for a driving-whip, the buckler for a pattern-card, and the coat of mail for an upper Benjamin. Instead of vindicating the charms of peerless beauty, they rove about, spreading the fame and standing of some substantial tradesman, or manufactu rer, and are ready at any time to bargain in his name; it being the fashion now-a-days to trade, instead of fight, with one another.

8. I was in hopes of finding some of these worthies to talk with, but was disappointed. One was just fin

ishing his breakfast, quarreling with his bread and butter, and huffing the waiter; another buttoned on a pair of gaiters, with many execrations at Boots for not having cleaned his shoes well; a third sat drumming on the table with his fingers, and looking at the rain as it streamed down the window-glass: they all appeared infected by the weather, and disappeared, one after the other, without exchanging a word.

9. I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people, picking their way to church, with dripping umbrellas. The bell ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite; who, being confined to the house for fear of wetting their Sunday finery, played off their charms at the front windows, to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further from without to

amuse me.

10. What was I to do to pass away the long-lived day? I was sadly nervous and lonely; and everything about an inn seems calculated to make a dull day ten times duller: old newspapers, smelling of beer and tobacco-smoke, and which I had already read half a dozen times; good-for-nothing books that were worse than rainy weather. I bored myself with an old volume of the Lady's Magazine. I read all the commonplace names scrawled on the panes of glass; and I deciphered several scraps of fatiguing in-window poetry which I have met with in all parts of the world.

11. The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no variety even in the rain: it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter patter-patter, excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella.

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