Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/126

 That with unfading verdure smile around. Ambitious, thence the manly river breaks; And gathering many a flood, and copious fed With all the mellow'd treasures of the sky, Winds in progressive majesty along: Thro' splendid kingdoms now devolves his maze, Now wanders wild o'er solitary tracts Of life-deserted sand; till, glad to quit The joyless desart, down the Nubian rocks From thundering steep to steep, he pours his urn, And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave.

brother Niger too, and all the floods In which the full-form'd maids of Afric lave Their jetty limbs; and all that from the tract Of woody mountains stretch'd thro' gorgeous Ind Fall on Cormandel's coast, or Malabar; From Menam's orient stream, that nightly shines With insect-lamps, to where Aurora sheds On Indus' smiling banks the rosy shower: All, at this bounteous season, ope their urns, And pour untoiling harvest o'er the land.

less thy world,, drinks, refresh'd, The lavish moisture of the melting year. Wide o'er his isles, the branching Oronoque Rolls a brown deluge; and the native drives To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees, At once his dome, his robe, his food, and arms. Swell'd by a thousand streams, impetuous hurl'd From all the roaring Andes, huge descends The mighty Orellana. Scarce the Muse Dares stretch her wing o'er this enormous mass Of