Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/180

 The claret smooth, red as the lip we press, In sparkling fancy, while we drain the bowl; The mellow-tailed burgundy; and quick, As is the wit it gives, the gay champaign.

, by the cool declining year condens'd, Descend the copious exhalations, check'd As up the middle sky unseen they stole, And roll the doubling fogs around the hill. No more the mountain, horrid, vast, sublime, Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides, And high between contending kingdoms rears The rocky long division, fills the view With great variety; but in a night Of gathering vapour, from the baffled sense, Sinks dark and dreary. Thence expanding far, The huge dusk, gradual, swallows up the plain: Vanish the woods. The dim-seen river seems Sullen, and slow, to roll the misty wave. Even in the height of noon opprest, the sun Sheds weak, and blunt, his wide-refracted ray; Whence glaring oft, with many a broadened orb, He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth, Seen thro' the turbid air, beyond the life, Objects appear; and, wilder'd, o'er the waste The shepherd stalks gigantic. Till at last Wreath'd dun around, in deeper circles still Successive closing, sits the general fog Unbounded o'er the world; and, mingling thick, A formless grey confusion covers all. As when of old (so sung the ) Light, uncollected, thro' chaos urg'd Its infant way; nor Order yet had drawn His lovely train from out the dubious gloom.

roving mists, that constant now begin To smoak along the hilly country, these, With