Now sunk the sun, whose fiery rays
Revealed in all their energies
Paled the rich azure of the skies,
Quenching their bloom in one wide-scorching blaze:
Sullenly plunging to his rest
In lurid glare he robed the west;
His red, round orb glowing in rayless wrath
Denounced the terrors of his morning path;
An ashen gloom as of a thunder-cloud
The horizon girt with dusky shroud:
Seemed it as if the fires of day
On the parched earth but smouldering lay,
Till lit by morn's electric ray
Again in one bright gush all nature to display.
The warriors paused; and, having found
A hollow by green mounds hemmed round,
Prepared for food their simple fare:
This quickly done, they quenched with care
The glowing embers, and in low
And earnest tones then communed
How, in the morning, to proceed;
And how, themselves unseen, to know
The present station of the foe.
