This poor terrestrial citadel of man.
Amazing period! when each mountain height
Out-burns Vesuvius! rocks eternal pour
Their melted mass, as rivers once they pour’d;
Stars rush, and final Ruin fiercely drives
Her plough-share o’er creation.——
Now to me, all this is a “pestilent congregation of vapour.”——The formidable sons of fire spewing out blazing magazines—and Ruin like a plough-man (or rather plough-woman) driving her plough-share—are mean, incoherent images. How much more sublimely Quarles expresses the same, and indeed some additional ones, in the last three lines?
In the print belonging to the emblem from which the following is taken, is a figure striking a globe with his knuckles.—The motto, Tinnit, inane est.
She’s empty—hark! she sounds—there’s nothing there
But noise to fill thy ear;