The poetical works of William Lisle Bowles Volume 1 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 edition. Excerpt: ... Making no dimple on the watery mass; To the huge grampus, spouting, as he rolls, A cataract, amid the cold clear sky, And furrowing far and wide the northern deep. Thy presence permeates and fills the whole! As the poor butterfly, that, painted gay, With mealy wings, red, amber, white, or dropped With golden stains, floats o'er the yellow corn, ieo Idly, as bent on pastime, while the morn Smiles on his devious voyage; if inclosed In the exhausted prison,1 whence thy breath With suction slow is drawn, he feels the change How dire! in palsied inanition drops! Weak flags his weary wing, and weaker yet; His frame with tremulous convulsion moves A moment, and the next is still in death. So were the great and glorious world itself; The tenants of its continents, all ceased! I70 A wide, a motionless, a putrid waste, Its seas! How droops the languid mariner, 1 Air-pump. When not a breath, along the sluggish main, 173 Strays on the sultry surface as it sleeps; When far away the winds are flown, to dash The congregated ocean on the Cape Of Southern Africa, leaving the while The flood's vast surface noiseless, waveless, white, Beneath Mozambique's long-reflected woods, A gleaming mirror, spread from east to west, iso Where the still ship, as on a bed of glass, Sits motionless. Awake, ye hurricanes! Ye winds that harrow up the wintry waste, Awake! for Thunder in his sounding car, Flashing thick lightning from the rolling wheels, And the red volley, charged with instant death, Were music to this lingering, sickening calm, The same eternal sunshine; still, all still, Without a vapour, or a sound. If thus, 190 Beneath the burning, breathless atmosphere, Faint Nature sickening droop; who shall ascend The height, where Silence, since the world began, Has...