And fade those lips where fresh vermilion shone,
Cold as the clay, or monumental stone;--
O'er all her limbs an icy numbness spreads,
And marble death eternal quiet sheds.

[2]Great sculptor hail! whom Nature's self design'd
To trace the labyrinths of the human mind--
To read the heart, and give with strong control,
To stone the silent workings of the soul:
Thine all-creative hand, thy matchless skill
Could what unbounded genius plann'd, fulfil.
Hence sprang that grief-wrung form--the languid eye--
The bloodless lip, and look of agony--
That face, where mute contending passions play--
That life of pain, of anguish, and dismay.

To sink she seems beneath the afflictive weight
Of gloomy cares portentous of her fate;--
Yet on her brow still soft Affection beams,
Tho' Desperation prompts her sombre dreams.
Parental feelings thrill her tortur'd breast,
And all the frantic mother stands confest--
A very Niobe--sad, hapless name!
In figure, features, and in all the same:
The same in all as Vengeance fierce pursued
Far to a wild and cheerless solitude.
For Salmo's bard has sung (by Heaven's decrees)
In awful pomp she mounted on the breeze--
Borne by the buoyant wind--a ghostly form--
She sail'd along the region of the storm.