The seeds of vice; whose spotless swains ne'er knew 885
Injurious deed, nor, blasted by the breath
Of faithless love, their blooming daughters woe.
Still, pressing on, beyond Tornea's lake,
And Hecla flaming thro' a waste of snow,
And farthest Greenland, to the pole itself, 890
Where failing gradual life at length goes out,
The Muse expands her solitary flight;
And, hovering o'er the wild stupendous scene,
Beholds new seas beneath [1]another sky.
Thron'd in his palace of cerulean ice, 895
Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court;
And thro' his airy hall the loud misrule
Of driving tempest is for ever heard!
Here the grim tyrant meditates his wrath;
Here arms his winds with all-subduing frost; 900
Moulds his fierce hail, and treasures up his snows,
With which he now oppresses half the globe.
Thence winding eastward to the Tartar's coast,
She sweeps the howling margin of the main;
Where undissolving, from the first of time, 905
Snows swell on snows amazing to the sky;
And icy mountains, high on mountains pil'd,
Seem to the shivering sailor from afar,
Shapeless and white, an atmosphere of clouds.
Projected huge, and horrid, o'er the surge, 910
Alps frown on alps; or rushing hideous down,
As if old chaos was again return'd,
Wide-rend the deep, and shake the solid pole.
Ocean itfelf no longer can resist
The binding fury; but, in all its rage 915
Of tempest taken by the boundless frost,
- ↑ The other hemisphere.
Is
