B92 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1805. 



The bells, whose knoll a holy calmness poured 



Into the good man's breast, — whose sound consoled 



The sick, the poor, the old — perversion dire — 



Pealing with sulphurous tongue, speak death -fraught-words: 



From morn to eve destruction revels frcpzied, 



Till at the hour when peaceful vesper-chimes 



Were wont to sooth the car, the trumpet sounds 



Pursuit and llight altcrn ; and for the song 



Of larks, descending to their grass-bowered homes, 



The croak of flesh-gorged ravens, as they slake 



Their thirst in hoof-prints filled with gore, disturbs 



The stupor of the dying man : while death 



Triumphantly sails down the ensanguined stream, 



On corses throned, and crowned witli shivered boughs, 



That erst hung imaged in the crystal tide.* 



And what the harvest of these bloody fields ? 

 A double weight of fetters to the slave, 

 And chains on arms that wielded freedom's sword. 

 Spirit of Tell ! and art shou doomed to see 

 Thy mountains, that confessed no other chaind 

 Than what the wintry elements had forged, — s 

 Thy vales, where freedom, and her stern compeer. 

 Proud virtuous poverty, their noble state 

 Maintained, amid surrounding threats of wealth, 

 Of superstition, and tyrannic sway — 

 Spirit of Tell ! and art thou doomed to sec 

 That land subdued by slavery's basest slaves ; 

 By men, whose lips pronounce the sacred nam« 

 Of Liberty, then kiss the despot's foot ? 

 Helvetia ! hadst thou to thyself been true, 

 Thy dying sons had triumphed as they fell : 

 But 'twas a glorious efl'ort, though in vain. 

 Aloft thy genius, 'mid the sweeping clouds. 

 The flag of freedom spread ; bright in the storm 

 The streaming meteor waved, and far it gleamed ; 

 But, ah ! 'twas transient as the Iris' arch, 

 Glanced from Leviathan's ascending shower. 

 When mid the mountain waves heaving his head 

 Already had the friendly-seeming foe 

 Possessed the snow- piled ramparts of the land; 

 Down like an avalanche they rolled, they crushed 

 The temple, palace, cottage, every work 

 Of art and nature, in one common ruin. 



The 



* After a heavy cannonade, the shivered branches of trees, and the corpses oi 

 the killed, are seen floating together down the riversi 



