Page:John Buchan - Musa Piscatrix.djvu/30

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I count it higher pleasure, to behold The stately compass of the lofty sky; And in the midst thereof, like burning gold. The flaming chariot of the world's great eye; The watery clouds, that in the air up-roll'd, With sundry kinds of painted colours fly; And fair Aurora, lifting up her head. Still blushing, rise from old Tithonus' bed; The hills and mountains raised from the plains; The plains extended, level with the ground; The grounds, divided into sundry veins; The veins, enclosed with rivers running round; These rivers, making way through Nature's chains, With headlong course into the sea profound; The raging sea, beneath the valleys low, Where lakes and rills and rivulets do flow;

The lofty woods,—the forests wide and long,— Adorned with leaves, and branches fresh and green,— In whose cool bowers the birds with many a song. Do welcome with their quire the summer's Queen; The meadows fair, where Flora's gifts among Are intermixt, with verdant grass between; The silver-scaled fish that softly swim Within the sweet brook's crystal wat'ry stream.

All these, and many more, of His creation That made the heavens, the Angler apt doth see, Taking therein no little delectation. To think how strange, how wonderful they be;