Ravaging

“ Urge your bold prow, pursue your venturous way—
Pain, Havoc, Ruin, wait their destined prey!
And your proud vessels, year by year, shall find
(If no false dreams delude my prescient mind)
My wrath so dread in many a fatal storm,
Death shall be deem'd misfortune's mildest form. ”

“ When I have wept a thousand lives away,
When torment is grown weary of its prey,
When I have rav'd ten thousand years in fire,
Ten thousand thousand, let me then expire."
Deep anguish! but too late; the hopeless soul,
Bound to the bottom of the burning pool,
Though loth, and ever loud blaspheming, owns
He's justly doom'd to pour eternal groans;
Enclos'd with horrors, and transfix'd with pain,
Rolling in vengeance, struggling with his chain:
To talk to fiery tempests; to implore
The raging flame to give its burnings o'er ”

“ The fierce insatiate fire-fiend raging flew
In wild demoniac rage the structure through,
Tearing down rafters, hurling to the ground,
Props, pillars roof-beams with appalling sound.
Oh! what a scene of strife raged wildly there,
'Mid cries for help and struggles of despair;
All human efforts powerless to assuage,
The greedy fire-fiend's devastating rage.
The fiery monster dashed away all trace,
Of that late mimic world of beauteous grace,
Swallowing in a fleet, wrathful breath of rage,
All the vain baubles of the tinseled stage. ”

“ Many of them, sick with fright after the accident, shaken by nervous tremours, soaked in cold sweats, and the prey of continual nightmares, got up in spite of everything, and were as eager as any in their desire to fight against the earth, as though they had a revenge to take on it. ”

“ They are set round about her, as keepers of fields: because she hath provoked me to wrath, saith the Lord.
4:18. Thy ways, and thy devices have brought these things upon thee: this is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it hath touched thy heart.
4:19. My bowels, my bowels are in pain, the senses of my heart are troubled within me, I will not hold my peace, for my soul hath heard the sound of the trumpet, the cry of battle.
4:20. Destruction upon destruction is called for, and all the earth is laid waste: my tents are destroyed on a sudden, and my pavilions in a moment. ”

“ How often shall the lamp of the wicked be put out, and a deluge come upon them, and He shall distribute the sorrows of His wrath? They shall be as chaff before the face of the wind, and as ashes which the whirlwind scattereth. ”

“ She clasp'd her hands in pangs severe,
And shrieks reveal'd her agony.
And fainting on the earth she lay,
With struggles of convulsive breath,
As if weak life had fled away
In terror at the sight of death. ”

“ And men who oft had looked on death, unblanched, by flood or field, When every nerve to do and dare by agony was steeled, Now moaned aloud, or gnashed their teeth in helpless rage, To die, at whim of maddened brutes, like vermin in a cage! ”

“ When the individuals of a herd or family are excited to a sudden deadly rage by the distressed cries of one of their fellows, or by the sight of its bleeding wounds and the smell of its blood, or when they see it frantically struggling on the ground, or in the cleft of a tree or rock, as if in the clutches of a powerful enemy, they do not turn on it to kill but to rescue it. ”

“ I fought to wrest my mouth from this awful Thing that sealed it, but, if ever I succeeded and caught a single breath, the wet, sucking mass closed over my face again before I could cry out. I think I fought for hours, desperately, insanely, in a silence that was more hideous than any sound,—fought until I felt final death at hand, until the memory of all my life rushed over me like a flood, until I no longer had strength to wrench my face from that hellish succubus, until with a last mechanical struggle I fell and yielded to death. ”

“ Sitting there in the dark and the cold, he grew barely conscious of his own pain. This is Nature’s mercy. When the wound is beyond bearing she draws away the sufferer’s consciousness, and an extremity of agony brings its own relief, if only for a little while. ”

“ Sometimes, amidst the storms and tempests of life, when the rain of sorrow has been pouring down amain, and the lightning of wrath been flashing on our path, the clouds overhead, heavy and loaded with mischief to come, and the thunder rolling round and round after the flash, there will come a brief calm moment of sweet tranquillity, as if wrath and enmity, and strife and care, and misfortune, had cast themselves down to rest, exhausted with their fury. ”

“ For hours we lay thus in all the intensity of an inner storm and stress, which it seemed could not fail to develop us, to mould us, to age us, to leave on us its scars, to bequeath us its peace or remorse or despair, as would some great mysterious dark experience direct from the sources of life. ”

“ Think ye that Heaven will long withhold its vengeance from atrocities that cry aloud to it night and day—that the innocent blood ye have spilt will sink, unavenged, into the earth? Fear and tremble, for the hour of wrath and woe is at hand! ”

“ Flood and fire, fever and famine and the sword—even ignorance, indolence, and carpet-baggery—she may endure and conquer while her blood remains pure; but once taint the well-spring of her life, and all is lost—even honor itself. ”

“ To see the writhing agony of the suffering wretch when cast into the darting flames, and hear his piercing shrieks as the blaze gradually envelopes his whole body, until the life is scorched out of the victim, and he falls prostrate among the logs, soon to become a charred mass of cinders undistinguishable from the element that consumed it—it is indeed a sight only fit for savages to look at. ”

“ Awful, unutterable, sorrow piercing her heart, like barbed arrows, each of which leaves its sting in the wound, looking out pitifully from a myriad of eyes, making life impossible and death the only refuge to be hoped for! ”

“ Am I not trudging on and on through life, dragging the horror of it behind me through the mud, except when the horror drags me? To whom am I to turn—to other beasts like him?—sitting patiently around, grinning and slavering, awaiting their turn when the horror of it crushes me to the mud? ”

“ There was a feeling of horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood. They lay with their hearts in the grip of an intense anguish. The wind came through the tree fiercer and fiercer. ”

“ Then his vigorous and manly limbs would writhe with the agony of his dreaming soul, till horror and despair would burst the bands of sleep, and he would start again upon his feet to wreak his great revenge upon the enemy. ”

“ The shivered surge; when rising griefs deform
Thy peaceful breast, hie to yon steep, and think,—
When thou dost mark the melancholy tide
Beneath thee, and the storm careering wide,—
Tossed on the surge of life how many sink! [Pg 24]
And if thy cheek with one kind tear be wet,
And if thy heart be smitten, when the cry
Of danger and of death is heard more nigh,
Oh, learn thy private sorrows to forget;
Intent, when hardest beats the storm, to save
One who, like thee, has suffered from the wave. ”

“ We struggled with death during the whole of the night, holding firmly by the ropes which were made very secure.—Tossed by the waves from the back to the front, and from the front to the back, and sometimes precipitated into the sea; floating between life and death, mourning our misfortunes, certain of perishing; we disputed, nevertheless, the remainder of our existence, with that cruel element which threatened to engulf us. ”

“ Suddenly, amid a terrific peal of thunder, a quivering mass of fire crashed down amid our ranks, shaking the earth beneath and the air around us. Horror made us fall upon our knees, every animal hid its head in the earth, and the fearful tumult roared into our ears the judgment of a mighty God. ”

“ That thrills the aching spirit with unrest
And sets the brain on fire.
Oh! God, but once to rise above the flesh,
To breathe our inmost thoughts in one vast sigh
Of rapture. Oh! to realise ourselves,
And at that moment ... die. ”

“ Gaunt-cheeked, hollow-eyed wretches, smeared all over with dust and mud, bruised, bleeding, the long fear of imminent death yet written on our countenances, we were, indeed, a sight to frighten the daylight. ”

“ Leave the dead and come to the assistance of the living.’ As in a dream I felt hands working over me, and as the heavy timbers were drawn from my benumbed limbs, and once more the life blood began to flow, the exquisite torture was more than I could endure, and again I fainted. ”

“ There are just so many waves to go over us, just so many arrows of stinging thought to be shot into our soul, just so many faintings and sinkings and revivings only to suffer again, belonging to and inherent in our portion of sorrow ”

“ The gale outside was like a living immensity, a vast soul raging with world-suffering, thousand-voiced and thousand-winged, and under its raging agony, which filled all the air above the land, the house that contained the life of them all was small as some tiny casket.... ”

“ How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of slumber, and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one's own hapless heart—to return from the land of deceptive dreams, to the heavy knowledge of unchanged disaster!—Thus was it with me, now, and for ever! ”

“ There lay the ghastly dead, cold and pale in the grey light of the morning,—across them in heaps the wounded, quivering with intensity of agony, grasping the gory ground with convulsive clutches, and tearing up the earth, which was soon to cover them, in handfuls, while their eyes, starting from the sockets, were becoming glazed and terrible in death. ”

“ Dragging with her one woman who was paralysed with fright, she induced the others to follow her, and when they were out of the line of fire, proceeded to examine the terrific wounds from which one and all declared themselves to be suffering. ”

“ It is absolutely impossible to give even a faint idea of the horror, the agony, the heart-rending terror that harrowed up his soul, whenever the thought of death flashed across his mind. He received me with phrensied ardour, in which hope and fear were strongly depicted. ”

“ At last I began to wonder whether those earth-shaking beasts had not been an evil dream, and was just venturing to stretch out a cramped leg, and rally myself upon my cowardice, when, without warning, at my elbow rose the most ear-piercing scream of rage that ever came from a living throat. ”

“ I must go, even if blown like a leaf before the gales of heaven; must fly, if even to certainty of destruction. I had felt this necessity once before, be it remembered, but never so stringently, so morbidly as now. I was yielding under the agony, the anxiety incident to my condition ”

“ Over them, we find the wrecks of a former world—once as beautiful, as thickly peopled, but more thoughtless and more wicked than the present, which was hurled into one general chaos, and its component, but incongruous parts, amalgamated in awful mockery by the deluge—that tremendous evidence of the wrath of Heaven. ”

“ That of their care thou hast no stronger proof?
Perhaps they do not like to hear or see
Thy last deep groan, thy dying agony!
The grass upspurn’d,
Thine eye upturn’d,
Bespeak its weight to heedless passers by!
That hoarse deep sigh, the sad effect of sin,
Proclaims the depth of agony within!
On man and beast,
Greatest and least,
Grim Death doth feed, and glad his victim win! ”

“ I experienced the overwhelming dread that one has in presence of things supernatural, in presence of irreparable disaster. My boyish head whirled round and soared. I began to cry with all my might, without knowing why, a prey to terror, to grief, to a dreadful bewilderment. ”

“ I remember climbing until I was worn out, of toiling upward with bleeding hands and feet, of fighting on when I was dizzy for want of food and water, of struggling up when my body screamed in pain for me to surrender and drop to merciful oblivion in the abyss! ”

“ To the dreadful crash of the two great bodies of wood and iron, which splintering against one another, instantly foundered, one loud cry was added—a cry of agony and death—the cry of a hundred human creatures swallowed up at once by the waves! ”

“ For near at hand there lay such countless woes, Such up-heaped horrors as no tongue can tell, Where helpless Pity's ineffectual throes Made that long shambles seem one ghastly hell, And all the broken, battered, blood-stained rows Of dead seem blessed in that they sleep so well ”

“ Their breath is agitation, and their life A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last, And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife, That should their days, surviving perils past, Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast With sorrow and supineness, and so die ”

“ The night with every passing moment seemed yawning wider and wider before him in a chasm that threatened ruin, and disaster, and the wreckage of everything that in life was worth the living, and—no,’ Not yet! ”

“ That storm will some day burst upon you, you cursed off-scourings, and it will disperse you to the ends of the earth, you scabs on the body of the people—the people from whom you, yourselves are descended. ”

“ Heavy and coarse beasts trampled upon me with the dull steps of terribly heavy feet; cold tusks of bloody mouths tore my tender body—and in my powerless sorrow I bit the sand, I swallowed the dust of the ground—I was dying of despair. Crushed, I was dying every day. Every day I was dying of despair. ”

“ Then turning from the sight, he rushed away, not caring whither, sobbing such sobs as the lost souls in hell may sob in their despair—a dreadful sobbing, that told of a hopeless agony too intense to be endured for long by weak human flesh. ”