As when two vultures on the mountains height Stoop with resounding pinions to the fight; They cuff, they tear, they raise a screaming cry; The desert echoes, and the rocks reply: The warriors thus opposd in arms, engage With equal clamours, and with equal rage.
As when a torrent, swelld with wintry rains, Pours from the mountains oer the delugd plains, And pines and oaks, from their foundations torn, A countrys ruins! to the seas are borne: Fierce Ajax thus oerwhelms the yielding throng.
As wasps, provokd by children in their play, Pour from their mansions by the broad high-way, In swarms the guiltless traveller engage, Whet all their stings, and call forth all their rage: All rise in arms, and with a genral cry Assert their waxen domes, and buzzing progeny. Thus from the tents the fervent legion swarms, So loud their clamours, and so keen their arms.
As is the race of leaves, such is that of men; some leaves the wind scatters upon the ground, and others the budding wood produces, for they come again in the season of Spring. So is the race of men, one springs up and the other dies.