Long has the pall of midnight quench’d the scene,
And wrapt the hush’d horizon.—All around,
In scatter’d huts, Labour, in sleep profound,
Lies stretch’d, and rosy Innocence serene
Slumbers;—but creeps, with pale and starting mien,
Benighted Superstition.—Fancy-found,
The late self-slaughter’d man, in earth yet green
And festering, burst from his incumbent mound,
Roams!—and the slave of terror thinks he hears
A mutter’d groan!—sees the sunk eye, that glares
As shoots the meteor.—But no more forlorn
He strays;—the spectre sinks into his tomb!
For now the jocund herald of the morn
Claps his bold wings, and sounds along the gloom.