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Ay, the waned moon through midnight vapours seen, Fit emblem is of that retrenching light, Dubious and dim, which to the earliest Patriarchs Was at the first vouchsafed; a moral guide, Soon clouded and obscured to their descendants, Who peopled far and wide, in scatter'd tribes, The fertile earth.—But this is interruption. Proceed, my son.

Well, on the lofty summit We halted, and the day's returning light On this exalted station found us. Then Our brighten'd curtain, wearing into shreds And rifted masses, through its opening gave Glimpse after glimpse of slow revealed beauty, Which held th' arrested senses magic bound, In the intensity of charm'd attention.

From such an eminence, the op'ning mist Would to the eye reveal most beauteous visions.

First, far beneath us, woody peaks appear'd And knolls with cedars crested; then, beyond. And lower still, the herdsmen's cluster'd dwellings,