Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/183

 Overtopping all these giant-sons of earth, Let the dire Andes, from the radiant Line Stretch'd to the stormy seas that thunder round The southern pole, their hideous deeps unfold! Amazing scene! Behold! the glooms disclose. I see the rivers in their infant beds! Deep, deep I hear them, lab'ring to get free! I see the leaning strata, artful rang'd; The gaping fissures to receive the rains, The melting snows, and ever-dripping fogs. Strow'd bibulous above I see the sands, The pebbly gravel next, the layers then Of mingled moulds, of more retentive earths. The gutter'd rocks and mazy-running clefts; That, while the stealing moisture they transmit, Retard its motion, and forbid its waste. Beneath th' incessant weeping of these drains, I see the rocky siphons stretch'd immense, The mighty reservoirs, of harden'd chalk, Or stiff compacted clay, capacious form'd. O'erflowing thence, the congregated stores, The crystal treasures of the liquid world, Thro' the stirr'd sends a bubbling passage burst; And welling out, the middle steep, Or from the bottoms of the bosom'd hills, In pure effusion flow. United, thus, Th' exhaling sun, the vapour-burden'd air, The gelid mountains, that to rain condens'd These vapours in continual current draw, And send them, o'er the fair-divided earth, In bounteous rivers to the deep again, A social commerce hold, and firm support The full-adjusted harmony of things.