The poetical works of James Thomson ...

176 ILIBERTY. PART III.
A sullen land of lakes, and fens immense,
Of rocks, resounding torrents, gloomy heaths,
And cruel deserts black with sounding pine;
Where nature frowns: tho' sometimes into smiles
She softens; and immediate, at the touch
Of southern gales, throws from the sudden glebe
Luxuriant pasture, and a waste of flowers.
But, cold-compress'd, when the whole loaded
heaven
Descends in snow, lost in one white abrupt,
Lies undistinguish'd earth; and, seized by frost,
Lakes, headlong streams, and floods, and oceans
sleep.
Yet there life glows; the furry millions there
Deep dig their dens beneath the sheltering snows:
And there a race of men prolific swarms,
To various pain, to little pleasure used;
On whom, keen-parching, beat Riphbean winds;
Hard like their soil, and like their climate fierce,
The nursery of nations!- These I roused,
Drove land on land, on people people pour'd;
Till from almost perpetual night they broke,
As if in search of day; and o'er the banks
Of yielding empire, only slave-sustain'd,
Resistless raged; in vengeance urged by me.'Long in the barbarous heart the buried seeds
Of Freedom lay, for many a wintry age;
And though my, spirit work'd, by slow degrees,
Nought but its pride and fierceness yet appear'd.
Then was the night of time, that parted worlds.