- Shuns night; or, full-orb’d, in Night’s forehead glows:
- For, see! the mists, that late involv’d the hill,
- Disperse; the midday-sun looks red; strange burs
- Surround the stars, which vaster fill the eye. [315]
- A horrid stench the pools, the main emits;
- Fearful the genius of the forest sighs;
- The mountains moan; deep groans the cavern’d cliff.
- A night of vapour, closing fast around,
- Snatches the golden noon.—Each wind appeas’d, [320]
- The North flies forth, and hurls the frighted air:
- Not all the brazen engineries1 of man,
- At once exploded, the wild burst surpass.
- Yet thunder, yok’d with lightning and with rain,
- Water with fire, increase the infernal din: [325]
- Canes, shrubs, trees, huts, are whirl’d aloft in air.——
- The wind is spent; and “all the isle below
- “Is hush as death.”2
- Soon issues forth the West, with sudden burst;
- And blasts more rapid, more resistless drives: [330]
VER. 314. strange burs] These are astral halos. Columbus soon made himself master of the signs that precede a hurricane in the West-Indies, by which means he saved his own squadron; while another large fleet, whose commander despised his prognostics, put to sea, and was wrecked.