“What now, ah, what! empioy’d my troubled mind, But only hopes my subjects’ fate to find? What place soe’er my weeping eyes survey, There in lamented heaps the vulgar lay; As acorns scatter when the winds prevail, Or mellow fruit from shaken branches fall.

“You see that dome which rears its front so high. ’Tis sacred to the monarch of the sky: How many there, with unregarded tears, And fruitless vows, sent up successless prayers! There fathers for expiring sons implored, And there the wife bewail’d her gasping lord: With pious offerings they appease the skies, But they, ere yet the atoning vapours rise, Before the altars fall, themselves a sacrifice; They fall while yet their hands the gums contain, Their gums surviving, but their offerer’s slain.