Stanzas Written at the Island of Madeira

The rude attack, if none will tell,
On Bacchus, in his favorite isle;
If none in verse describe it well,
If none assume a poet's style
These devastations to display;—
Attend me, and perhaps I may.

To those who own the feeling heart
This tragic scene I would present,
No fiction, or the work of art,
Nor merely for the fancy meant:
Twas all a shade, a darken'd scene,
Old Noah's deluge come again!

From hills beyond the clouds that soar,
The vaults of heaven, the torrents run,
And rushing with resistless power,
Assail'd the island of the sun:
Fond nature saw the blasted vine,
And seem'd to sicken and repine.

As skyward stream'd the electric fire
The heavens emblazed, or wrapt in gloom;
The clouds appear, the clouds retire
And terror said, "the time is come
When all the groves, and hill, and plain
Will sink to ocean's bed again."

...

The whistling winds had ceased to blow;
Not one, of all the aerial train—
No gale to aid that night of woe
Disturb'd the slumbers of the main;
In distant woods they silent slept;
Or, in the clouds, the tempest kept.

The bursting rains in seas descend,
Machico* heard the distant roar,
And lightnings, while the heavens they rend,
Show'd ruin marching to the shore:
Egyptian darkness brought her gloom
And fear foreboded nature's doom.

The heavens on fire, an ocean's force
Seized forests, vineyards, herds, and men,
And swelling streams from every source
Bade ancient chaos come again:
Through Fonchal's road their courses held
and ocean saw his waves repell'd.

Ill fated town!—what works of pride
In one short hour were swept away!
Huge piles that time had long defy'd,
In ruthless ruin scatter'd lay:
Some buried in the opening deep—
With crowds dismiss'd to endless sleep,

…

From heights immense, with force unknown,
Enormous rocks and mangled trees
Were headlong hurl'd and hurrying down,
Fix'd their foundation in the seas! O
r, rushing with a mountain's weight,
Hurl'd to the deeps their domes of state.

…

But Santa Clara's lofty walls,
Where pines through life the pious nun,
Whose prison to the mind recalls
What superstition's power has done:
No conquest there the floods essay'd,
Religion guarded man and maid.

What seem'd beyond the cannon's power,
The walls of rock, were torn away;
To ruin sunk the church and tower,
And no respect the flood would pay
To silver saints, or saints of wood,
The bishop's cap, the friar's hood.

(Extracts)