Page:The Lusiad (Camões, tr. Mickle, 1791), Volume 2.djvu/111

What stings, what plagues, what secret scourges curst,
Torment those bosoms where thy pride is nurst!
What dangers threaten, and what deaths destroy
The hapless youth, whom thy vain gleams decoy!
By thee, dire tyrant of the noble mind,
What dreadful woes are pour'd on human kind;
Kingdoms and Empires in confusion hurl'd,
What streams of gore have drench'd the hapless world!
Thou dazzling meteor, vain as fleeting air,
What new-dread horror dost thou now prepare!
High sounds thy voice of India's pearly shore,
Of endless triumphs and of countless store:
Of other worlds so tower'd thy swelling boast,
Thy golden dreams, when paradise was lost,
When thy big promise steep'd the world in gore,
And simple innocence was known no more.
And say, has fame so dear, so dazzling charms?
Must brutal fierceness and the trade of arms,
Conquest, and laurels dipt in blood, be prized,
While life is scorn'd, and all its joys despised!
And say, does zeal for holy faith inspire
To spread its mandates, thy avow'd desire?
Behold the Hagarene in armour stands,
Treads on thy borders, and the foe demands:
A thousand cities own his lordly sway,
A thousand various shores his nod obey.
Through all these regions, all these cities, scorn'd
Is thy religion, and thine altars spurn'd:

A foe