Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/72

 Desponding fear, of feeble fancies full, Weak and unmanly, loosens every power. Even love itself is bitterness of soul, A pensive anguish pining at the heart; Or, sunk to sordid interest, feels no more That noble wish, that never cloy'd-desire, Which, selfish joy disdaining, seeks alone To bless the dearer object of its flame. Hope sickens with extravagance; and grief, Of life impatient, into madness swells; Or in dead silence wastes the weeping hours. These, and a thousand mix'd emotions more, From ever-changing views of good and ill, Form'd infinitely various, vex the mind With endless storms: whence, deeply rankling, grows The partial thought, a listless unconcern, Cold, and averting from our neigbour's good; Then dark disgust, and hatred, winding wiles, Coward deceit, and ruffian violence: At last, extinct each social feeling, fell And joyless inhumanity pervades And petrifies the heart. Nature disturb'd Is deem'd, vindictive, to have chang'd her course.

in old dusky time, a deluge came: When the deep-cleft disparting orb, that arch'd The central waters round, impetuous rush'd, With universal burst, into the gulph, And o'er tethe [sic] high-pil'd hills of fractur'd earth Wide dash'd the waves, in undulation vast; Till, from the center to the streaming clouds, A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe.

Seasons since have, with severer sway, Oppress'd a broken world: the Winter keen Shook