Classic Poem

The ev'ning star now lifts, as daylight fades,
His golden circlet in the deep'ning shades:
Stretch'd at his ease, the weary lab'rer shares
A sweet forgetfulness of human cares:
At once in silence sink the sleeping gales,
The mast they drop, and furl the flagging sails;
All night, all day, they ply the bending oars
Tow'rd Carpathus, and reach the rocky shores;
Thence Crete they view emerging from the main,
The queen of isles; but Crete they view in vain;
There Talus, whirling with resistless sway
Rocks sheer uprent, repels them from the bay;
A giant, sprung from giant race, who took
Their births from entrails of the stubborn oak;
Fierce guard of Crete! by Jove assistant giv'n
To legislators styl'd the sons of heaven:
To mercy deaf, he thrice each year explores
The trembling isle, and strides from shores to shores:
A form of living brass! one part beneath
Alone he bears, a path to let in death,
Where o'er the ankle swells the turgid vein,
Soft to the stroke, and sensible of pain.
And now her magic spells Medea tries,
Bids the red fiends, the dogs of Orcus, rise,
That starting dreadful from th' infernal shade,
Ride heaven in storms, and all that breathes invade.
Thrice she applies the power of magic prayer,
Thrice hell-ward bending mutters charms in air;
Then, turning tow'rd the foe, bids mischief fly,
And looks destruction as she points her eye;
Then spectres, rising from Tartarean bowers
Howl round in air, or grin along the shores;
While, tearing up whole hills, the giant throws,
Outrag'ous, rocks on rocks, to crush the foes;
But, frantic as he strides, a sudden wound,
Bursts the life vein, and blood o'erspreads the ground;
As from the furnace in a burning flood
Pours molten lead, so pours in streams his blood:
And now he staggers as the spirit flies;
He faints, he sinks, he tumbles, and he dies.
As some huge cedar on a mountain's brow
Pierc'd by the steel, expects the final blow,
A while it totters with alternate sway,
Till fresh'ning breezes thro' the branches play,
Then, tumbling downward, with a thund'ring sound,
Falls headlong, and o'erspreads a breadth of ground;
So, as the giant falls, the ocean roars,
Outstretch'd he lies, and covers half the shores.