Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/130

Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,
Where the round ether mixes with the wave, 940
Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds;
At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart
Sinks helpless; while the wonted roar is up.
And hiss continual thro' the tedious night. 945
Yet here, even here, into these black abodes
Of monsters, unappall'd, from stooping Rome,
And guilty Cæsar, Liberty retir'd,
Her Cato following thro' Numidian wilds:
Disdainful of Campania's gentle plains, 950
And all the green delights Ausonia pours;
When for them she must bend the servile knee,
And fawning take the splendid robber's boon.

Nor slop the terrors of these regions here.
Commission'd demons oft, angels of wrath,955
Leet loose the raging elements. Breath'd hot,
From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
And the wide glittering waste of burning sand,
A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil, 960
Son of the desart! even the camel feels,
Shot thro' his wither'd heart, the fiery blast.
Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Strait the sands,
Commov'd around, in gathering eddies play: 965
Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;
Till, with the general all-involving storm
Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;
And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,
Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep, 970
Beneath descending hills, the caravan
Is buried deep. In Cairo's crouded streets,

Th'-