From The Revolt of Islam
“There was no food, the corn was trampled down.
The flocks and herds had perished; on the shore
The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown;
The deeps were foodless, and the winds no more
Creaked with the weight of birds, but as before
Those winged things sprang forth, were void of shade;
The vines and orchards, Autumn’s golden store,
Were burned; – so that the meanest food was weighed
With gold, and Avarice died before the god it made.
There was no corn – in the wide market place
All loathiest things, even human flesh, was sold;
They weighed it in small scales – and many a face
Was fixed in eager horror then; his gold
The miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold
Through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain;
The mother brought her eldest-born, controlled
By instinct blind as love, but turned again
And bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain.
It was not hunger now but thirst. Each well
Was choked with rotting corpses, and became
A cauldron of green mist made visible
At sunrise. Thither still the myriads came,
Seeking to quench the agony of the flame,
Which raged like poison through their bursting veins;
Naked they were from torture, without shame,
Spotted with nameless scars and lurid plains.
Childhood and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.
It was not thirst but madness! Many saw
Their own lean image everywhere, it went
A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe
Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent
Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,
Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed
Contagion on the sound; and others rent
Their matted hair and cried aloud, ‘We tread
On fire! The avenging Power his hell on earth has spread.’”
From A Defence of Poetry
” …and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave,”