Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/69

Thus all day long the full-distended clouds185
Indulge their genial stores, and well-shower'd earth
Is deep enrich'd with vegetable life;
Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.190
The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes
Th' illumin'd mountain, thro' the forest streams,
Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist,
Far smoaking o'er th' interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.195
Moist, bright, and green, the landskip laughs around.
Full swell the woods; their every musick wakes,
Mix'd in wild consort with the warbling brooks
Increas'd, the distant bleatings of the hills,
And hollow lows responsive from the vales,200
Whence blending all the sweeten'd zephyr springs.
Meantime refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion running from the red,205
To where the violet fades into the sky.
Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism;
And to the sage-instructed eye unfold
The various twine of light, by thee disclos'd210
From the white mingling maze. Not so the boy:
He wond'ring views the bright enchantment bend,
Delightful, o'er the radiant fields, and runs
To catch the falling glory; but amaz'd
Beholds th' amusive arch before him fly,215
Then vanish quite away. Still night succeeds,
A softened shade, and saturated earth
Awaits the morning-beam to give to light,