Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/67

For oft, engender'd by the hazy North,
Myriads on myriads, insect armies warp120
Keen in the poison'd breeze; and wasteful eat,
Thro' buds and bark, into the blacken'd core,
Their eager way. A feeble race! yet oft
The sacred sons of vengeance, on whose course
Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year.125
To check this plague the skilful farmer chaff,
And blazing straw, before his orchard burns;
Till, all involv'd in smoke, the latent foe
From every cranny suffocated falls:
Or scatters o'er the blooms the pungent dust130
Of pepper, fatal to the frosty tribe:
Or, when th' envenom'd leaf begins to curl,
With sprinkled water drowns them in their nest:
Nor, while they pick them up with busy bill,
The little trooping birds unwisely scares.135

Be patient, swains; these cruel-seeming winds
Blow not in vain. Far hence they keep, repress'd,
Those deep'ning clouds on clouds, surcharg'd with rain,
That o'er the vast Atlantic hither borne,
In endless train, would quench the summer blaze,140
And, chearless, drown de crude unripen'd year.

The north-east spends his rage; and now, shut up
Within his iron caves, th' effusive south
Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven
Breathes the big clouds with vernal showrs distent.145
At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,
Scarce staining ether; but by swift degrees,
In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapour sails
Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep
Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom:150
Not such as wintry-storms on mortals shed,