82 REDEMPTION.
Adjure, if my Beloved ye do see, Ye tell him that I languish for his love. For him alone am I, and he for me ; Him only can I love; for him I sigh."
Her mystic words' import, the Devil knew, Knew more than she conceived, or fain could hope, And felt that all was lost; felt, but obdure, His enmity piacular pursues; Lets loose to whom it given was to slay With sword and famine, pestilence and war, With earthquake's shock, volcano's threat'ning storm. Thick, at his bidding, grew the dusky air, Obscured with clouds, muttering sullen wrath, And 'midst th' incessant flash of sulph'rous fires, Pour'd furiously in torrents floods of rain. The gath'ring waters sweep o'er all the plains, And leave no vestige of the sacred spot, Where stood the Eden of the Undefiled. Joachim and his spouse, bereft, had fled, And in the precincts of blest Sion's hill, Obscure abiding found, but not repose. To storms succeeded drought; gaunt famine, this; To famine, pestilence, which laid them low, A prey to Satan's fell, devouring wrath. But still th' unspotted Virgin calm reposed, And through the fearful ordeal pass'd untouch'd. So Job beheld the winds and fires of heav'n Destroy, and foes lay waste, his earthly hopes, And murmur'd not, but bow'd beneath the rod. Secure, within the temple's sacred courts, The consecrated Alma found a home, Until the budding rod of Joseph, clear
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