And o'er the varied landscape, restless, rove, Fervent with life of every fairer kind. A land of wonders! which the sun still eyes With ray direct, as of the lovely realm Enamor'd, and delighting there to dwell. How chang'd the scene! In blazing height of noon. The sun, oppress'd, is plung'd in thickest gloom. Still horror reigns, a dreary twilight round, Of struggling night and day malignant mix'd. For to the hot equator crowding fast, Where, highly rarefied, the yielding air Admits their stream, incessant vapors roll, Amazing clouds on clouds continual heap'd; Or whirl'd tempestuous by the gusty wind, Or silent borne along, heavy and slow, With the big stores of steaming oceans charg'd. Meantime, amid these upper seas, condens'd Around the cold aerial mountain's brow, And by conflicting winds together dash'd, The thunder holds his black tremendous throne; From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage; Till, in the furious elemental war Dissolv'd, the whole precipitated mass Unbroken floods and solid torrents pours. [Illustration: Birth of the Nile] The treasures these, hid from the bounded search Of ancient knowledge; whence, with annual pomp, Rich king of floods! o'erflows the swelling Nile. From his two springs, in Gojam's sunny realm, Pure-welling out, he through the lucid lake Of fair Dembia rolls his infant stream. There, by the naiads nurs'd, he sports away His playful youth, amid the fragrant isles That with unfading verdure smile around. Ambitious, thence the manly river breaks; And gathering many a flood, and copious fed With all the mellow'd treasures of the sky, Winds in progressive majesty along: Through splendid kingdoms now devolves his maze; Now wanders wild o'er solitary tracts Of life-deserted sand: till glad to quit The joyless desert, down the Nubian rocks, From thundering steep to steep, he pours his urn. And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave. [Illustration: From steep to steep he pours his urn] His brother Niger too, and all the floods In which the full-form'd maids of Afric lave Their jetty limbs; and all that from the tract Of woody mountains stretch'd through gorgeous Ind Fall on Cormandel's coast, or Malabar; From Menam's orient stream, that nightly shines With insect lamps, to where aurora sheds On Indus' smiling banks the rosy shower; All, at this bounteous season, ope their urns, And pour untoiling harvest o'er the land.