THE SOUNDS which last he heard at night | |
| Awoke his recollection first at morn. | |
| A scene of wonders lay before his eyes. | |
| In mazy windings o’er the vale | |
| A thousand streamlets strayed, | 5 |
| And in their endless course | |
| Had intersected deep the stony soil, | |
| With labyrinthine channels islanding | |
| A thousand rocks, which seemed | |
| Amid the multitudinous waters there | 10 |
| Like clouds that freckle o’er the summer sky, | |
| The blue ethereal ocean circling each, | |
| And insulating all. | |
| |
| Those islets of the living rock | |
| Were of a thousand shapes, | 15 |
| And Nature with her various tints | |
| Diversified anew their thousand forms; | |
| For some were green with moss, | |
| Some ruddier tinged, or gray, or silver-white, | |
| And some with yellow lichens glowed like gold, | 20 |
| Some sparkled sparry radiance to the sun. | |
| Here gushed the fountains up, | |
| Alternate light and blackness, like the play | |
| Of sunbeams on a warrior’s burnished arms. | |
| Yonder the river rolled, whose ample bed, | 25 |
| Their sportive lingerings o’er, | |
| Received and bore away the confluent rills. | |
| |
| This was a wild and wondrous scene, | |
| Strange and beautiful, as where | |
| By Oton-tala, like a sea of stars, | 30 |
| The hundred sources of Hoangho burst. | |
| High mountains closed the vale, | |
| Bare rocky mountains, to all living things | |
| Inhospitable; on whose sides no herb | |
| Rooted, no insect fed, no bird awoke | 35 |
| Their echoes, save the eagle, strong of wing, | |
| A lonely plunderer, that afar | |
| Sought in the vales his prey. | |
| |
