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

Desponding fear, of feeble fancies full, 285
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, 290
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. 295
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, 300
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 305
And petrifies the heart. Nature disturb'd
Is deem'd, vindictive, to have chang'd her course.

Hence in old dusky time, a deluge came:
When the deep-cleft disparting orb, that arch'd
The central waters round, impetuous rush'd, 310
With universal burst, into the gulph,
And o'er te 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. 315

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

Shook