Prodigies After the Death of Caesar. a. U. C. 710

Creation's frame seem'd passion'd by the event, Convuls'd and torn through every element. From Aetna's dread abyss, the affrighted world Saw rocks of fire with bellowing thunder hurl'd; Saw the vast concave, once benignly clear, Like Jove's whole armament of wrath appear. Then too, the tainting east, the churlish north, On wasteful errands sent their tempests forth; Nor Caurus then, nor Auster lagg'd behind; Fierce to destroy rode every willing wind: Rain, hail, and arrowy sleet, and lightnings blue, Athwart the expanse with sullen vengeance flew; Huge promontories bow'd; nor ceas'd to glare Streaming above, a comet's endless hair; Portentous, dismal blaze! through Alpine woods Bursting in tenfold storm, with ocean's floods, (Woe to each prostrate field, and peopled town,) Eridanus, the horny king, came down; Ausonia felt through every trembling shore His furious tide, and unrelenting roar. Ashes, no longer pent up in the urn, Resuming forms of life, to earth return; Ghastly, and grim, and terrible, they glare, The pallid murderer, as he stalks, to scare. Fat blood in drops from rubent clouds fell down, And shed their deep pollution on the town; While indistinctly dreadful, through the air, Battle's wild din bade Rome for war prepare. The sun himself, by lurid mists o'er-spread, In dim suffusion veil'd his mournful head; Through twelve revolving signs, a sickly gleam From his chill'd orb, with faint ungenial beam, Scarce warming earth's cold lap, dismay'd the swains, Who droop'd desponding, and forsook their plains. O fair Hesperia! O delightful land! Too oft, alas, by impious man profan'd! O'er thy smooth rivers, and thy murmuring rills, Thy fertile pastures, lawns, and pine-clad hills, No tutelary power maintain'd his charge, But giant devastation stalk'd at large.