h their separate people,
Laws, and customs, and strange dealings;
And these worlds are ever turning,
Moving round the orbs of splendor,
Fixed, in the height of spaces,
For a light and heat unto them.
Now we wonder if these people
Are by evil spirits haunted,
Which incite them to rebellion,
And destroy their God-like image;
But we cannot solve the wonder,
And must choose to sit in darkness.
Then I guide you hence awayward
From the sparkling of this system,
From the sun's rebounding brightness,
And the pale moon's ever-fair light,
And the many colored star lights,
Blended in a great profusion,
To the limits of our world,
Which we best can know and search in.
First, unto the boundless ocean,
By the billow which returneth
Echo to great Neptune's call,
Where the mermaid host sojourneth
In his ancient rocky hall;
Where Leviathan, the mighty
Keeper of all Neptune's treasure,
Roams around the rocky caverns
In majestic state, exploring.
Let us see these mighty waters
When they rise in foaming billows,
Swallowing towns, and ships, and people,
Roaring like a mighty thunder;
And, when they are still and peaceful,
Like a plain of pasture spreading,
Sleeping as a virgin sleepeth
Ere vain love-dreams fill her bosom.
Both these aspects are majestic,
Grand, and pleasing, and inspiring.
On a bark we will convey us
Through the peering rocks and islands,
Where the Summer brings its sunshine,
And the Winter frost and snow-storms,
For a season to the lone isles.
Then unto the tropic regions,
Where the proud sun pours its glory
On the burning sandy deserts;
Streams of brightness everlasting,
Like ten thousand mountains blazing;
And the khamsheens wild and fiercely
Sweep in burning flakes along them,
And torment the weary traveller
Who is slowly wading through them,
Thirsting for a cooling river.
And 'tis there the wild tornado
Riseth in its frame of terror,
Wild, and fierce, and unrelenting.
To the spreading woods and forests
Of the black pine and the myrtle,
Of the cedar and the red birch,
Of the oak tree and the walnut,
Of the tulip and mahogany,
All in branchy webwork blended,
That the light can hardly enter
To remove the clouds of darkness
In the vast and deep recesses;
Where the lion and the tiger,
Where the panther and the leopard,
And the jaguar and hyaena,
And the tan wolf and the ocelot,
In the daytime hold their parley,
And resort for wakeful slumbers,
Till the dusky hand of black night