Their various hues: and hence when vernal rains Descending swift have burst the low’ring clouds, Thy splendors through the dissipating mists In its fair vesture of unnumber’d hues Array the show’ry bow. At thy approach The morning risen from her pearly couch With rosy blushes decks her virgin cheek; The ev’ning on the frontispiece of heav’n His mantle spreads with many colours gay; The mid-day skies in radiant azure clad, The shining clouds, and silver vapours rob’d In white transparent intermixt with gold, With bright variety of splendor cloath All the illuminated face above. When hoary-headed winter back retires To the chill’d pole, there solitary sits Encompass’d round with winds and tempests bleak In caverns of impenetrable ice, And from behind the dissipated gloom Like a new Venus from the parting surge The gay-apparell’d spring advances on; When thou in thy meridian brightness sitt’st, And from thy throne pure emanations flow Of glory bursting o’er the radiant skies: Then let the muse Olympus’ top ascend, And o’er Thessalia’s plain extend her view, And count, O Tempe, all thy beauties o’er. Mountains, whose summits grasp the pendant clouds, Between their wood-invelop’d slopes embrace The green-attired vallies. Every flow’r Here in the pride of bounteous nature clad Smiles on the bosom of th’ enamell’d meads. Over the smiling lawn the silver floods Of fair Peneus gently roul along, While the reflected colours from the flow’rs, And verdant borders pierce the lympid waves, And paint with all their variegated hue The yellow sands beneath. Smooth gliding on The waters hasten to the neighbouring sea. Still the pleas’d eye the floating plain pursues; At length, in Neptune’s wide dominion lost, Surveys the shining billows, that arise Apparell’d each in Phœbus’ bright attire: Or from a far some tall majestick ship, Or the long hostile lines of threat’ning fleets, Which o’er the bright uneven mirror sweep, In dazling gold and waving purple deckt; Such as of old, when haughty Athens power Their hideous front, and terrible array Against Pallene’s coast extended wide, And with tremendous war and battel stern The trembling walls of Potidæa shook. Crested with pendants curling with the breeze The upright masts high bristle in the air, Aloft exalting proud their gilded heads. The silver waves against the painted prows Raise their resplendent bosoms, and impearl The fair vermillion with their glist’ring drops: And from on board the iron-cloathed host Around the main a gleaming horrour casts; Each flaming buckler like the mid-day sun, Each plumed helmet like the silver moon, Each moving gauntlet like the light’ning’s blaze, And like a star each brazen pointed spear. But lo the sacred high-erected fanes, Fair citadels, and marble-crowned towers, And sumptuous palaces of stately towns Magnificent arise, upon their heads