“Escape ye, for your lives

Look not behind you! neither tarry ye

In all the verdant plain:—Escape, escape

Safe to the mountain, lest ye be consumed:”

The level sunbeams slant athwart the plain

Through the long shadows of the flying group—

Yet the destruction lingered; yet the sky

Gave forth no presage of the coming wrath.

The sward, dew-beaded, yielded to their tread

Never more softly, and the bannered palms