Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/129

 A rapid lightning darts, arresting swift The vital current. Form'd to humble Man, This child of vengeful Nature! there, sublim'd To fearless lust of blood, the savage race Roam, licens'd by the shading hour of guilt, And foul misdeed, when the pure day has shut His sacred eye. The tyger darting fierce, Impetuous on the prey his glance has doom'd: The lively-shining leopard, speckled o'er With many a spot, the beauty of the waste; And, scorning all the taming arts of Man, The keen hyena, fellest of the fell. These, rushing from th' inhospitable woods Of Mauritania, or the tufted isles, That verdant rise amid the Lybian wild, Innumerous glare around their shaggy king, Majestic, stalking o'er the printed sand; And, with imperious and repeated roars, Demand their fated food. The fearful flocks Croud near the guardian swain; the nobler herds, Where round their lordly bull, in rural ease, They ruminating lie, with horror hear The coming rage. Th' awaken'd village starts; And to her fluttering breast the mother strains Her thoughtless infant. From the Pyrate's den, Or stern Morocco's tyrant fang escap'd, The wretch half-wishes for his bonds again: While, uproar all, the wilderness resounds, From Atlas eastward to the frighted Nile.

he! who from the first of joys, Society, cut off, is left alone Amid this world of death. Day after day, Sad on the jutting eminence he fits, And views the main that ever toils below; Still