The claret smooth, red as the lip we press,
In sparkling fancy, while we drain the bowl;
The mellow-tailed burgundy; and quick,
As is the wit it gives, the gay champaign. 705
Now, by the cool declining year condens'd,
Descend the copious exhalations, check'd
As up the middle sky unseen they stole,
And roll the doubling fogs around the hill.
No more the mountain, horrid, vast, sublime, 710
Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides,
And high between contending kingdoms rears
The rocky long division, fills the view
With great variety; but in a night
Of gathering vapour, from the baffled sense, 715
Sinks dark and dreary. Thence expanding far,
The huge dusk, gradual, swallows up the plain:
Vanish the woods. The dim-seen river seems
Sullen, and slow, to roll the misty wave.
Even in the height of noon opprest, the sun 720
Sheds weak, and blunt, his wide-refracted ray;
Whence glaring oft, with many a broadened orb,
He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth,
Seen thro' the turbid air, beyond the life,
Objects appear; and, wilder'd, o'er the waste 725
The shepherd stalks gigantic. Till at last
Wreath'd dun around, in deeper circles still
Successive closing, sits the general fog
Unbounded o'er the world; and, mingling thick,
A formless grey confusion covers all. 730
As when of old (so sung the Hebrew Bard)
Light, uncollected, thro' chaos urg'd
Its infant way; nor Order yet had drawn
His lovely train from out the dubious gloom.
These roving mists, that constant now begin 735
To smoak along the hilly country, these,
With
