And why this universal gloom?
Sure Nature trembles o’er her tomb,
And bids her wilder’d children wail!
Do plagues infest, do wars alarm,
Has God in wrath made bare his arm,
To hurl his bolts of vengeance round?
Have towns been sack’d by hostile ire,
Have cities sunk in floods of fire,
While earthquakes shook the shuddering ground?
Ah! no, thy sons, Columbia, mourn