Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/192

 Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild O'er the sky'd mountain to the shadowy vale, While rocks and floods reflect the quivering gleam, The whole air whitens with a boundless tide Of silver radiance, trembling round the world.

when half-blotted from the sky her light, Fainting, permits the starry fires to burn, With keener luster thro' the depth of heaven; Or near extinct her deadened orb appears, And scarce appears, of sickly beamless white; Oft in this season, silent from the north A blaze of meteors shoots: ensweeping first The lower skies, they all at once converge High to the crown of heaven, and all at once Relapsing quick as quickly reascend, And mix, and thwart, extinguish, and renew, All ether coursing in a maze of light.

look to look, contagious thro' the croud, The panic runs, and into wondrous shapes Th' appearance throws: armies in meet array, Throng'd with aërial spears, and steeds of fire; Till the long lines of full-extended war In bleeding sight commixt, the sanguine flood Rolls a broad slaughter o'er the plains of heaven. As thus they scan the visionary scene, On all sides swells the superstitious din, Incontinent; and busy frenzy talks Of blood and battle; cities over-turn'd, And late at night in swallowing earthquake sunk, Or hideous wrapt in fierce ascending flame; Of fallow famine, inundation, storm; Of pestilence, and every great distress; Empires