Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/126

That with unfading verdure smile around.
Ambitious, thence the manly river breaks;
And gathering many a flood, and copious fed
With all the mellow'd treasures of the sky,
Winds in progressive majesty along: 810
Thro' splendid kingdoms now devolves his maze,
Now wanders wild o'er solitary tracts
Of life-deserted sand; till, glad to quit
The joyless desart, down the Nubian rocks
From thundering steep to steep, he pours his urn, 815
And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave.

His brother Niger too, and all the floods
In which the full-form'd maids of Afric lave
Their jetty limbs; and all that from the tract
Of woody mountains stretch'd thro' gorgeous Ind 820
Fall on Cormandel's coast, or Malabar;
From ^[1]Menam's orient stream, that nightly shines
With insect-lamps, to where Aurora sheds
On Indus' smiling banks the rosy shower:
All, at this bounteous season, ope their urns, 825
And pour untoiling harvest o'er the land.

Nor less thy world, Columbus, drinks, refresh'd,
The lavish moisture of the melting year.
Wide o'er his isles, the branching Oronoque
Rolls a brown deluge; and the native drives 830
To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees,
At once his dome, his robe, his food, and arms.
Swell'd by a thousand streams, impetuous hurl'd
From all the roaring Andes, huge descends
The mighty ^[2]Orellana. Scarce the Muse 835
Dares stretch her wing o'er this enormous mass

Of

1. The river that runs thro' Siam; on whose banks a vast multitude of those insects called Fire-flies make a beautiful appearance in the night.
2. The river of the Amazons.