Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/67

 For oft, engender'd by the hazy North, Myriads on myriads, insect armies warp Keen in the poison'd breeze; and wasteful eat, Thro' buds and bark, into the blacken'd core, Their eager way. A feeble race! yet oft The sacred sons of vengeance, on whose course Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year. To check this plague the skilful farmer chaff, And blazing straw, before his orchard burns; Till, all involv'd in smoke, the latent foe From every cranny suffocated falls: Or scatters o'er the blooms the pungent dust Of pepper, fatal to the frosty tribe: Or, when th' envenom'd leaf begins to curl, With sprinkled water drowns them in their nest: Nor, while they pick them up with busy bill, The little trooping birds unwisely scares.

patient, swains; these cruel-seeming winds Blow not in vain. Far hence they keep, repress'd, Those deep'ning clouds on clouds, surcharg'd with rain, That o'er the vast Atlantic hither borne, In endless train, would quench the summer blaze, And, chearless, drown de crude unripen'd year.

north-east spends his rage; and now, shut up Within his iron caves, th' effusive south Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven Breathes the big clouds with vernal showrs distent. At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise, Scarce staining ether; but by swift degrees, In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapour sails Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom: Not such as wintry-storms on mortals shed, Rh