And turn heaven’s bounteous gifts to gall,
And nature’s smiles to blows.
Horne.
’Tis not in mockery of man that earth
Is strewed with splendid fragments, temple, tower;
That realms, where glory sprang full-arm’d to birth,
Are desolate, the snake and tiger’s bower:
They lie the monuments of misused power,
Not freaks of fate, but warnings against crime:
And ancient Babylon might, at this hour,