Mists In Autumn

Now, by the cool, declining year condescend, Descend the copious exhalations, check'd, As up the middle sky unseen they stole, And roll the doubling fogs around the hill. No more the mountain, horrid, vast, sublime, Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides, And high between contending kingdoms rears The rocky long division, fills the view With great variety; but in a night Of gath'ring vapour from the baffled sense Sinks dark and dreary; thence expanding far, The huge dusk gradual swallows up the plain: Vanish the woods; the dim-seen river seems Sullen and slow to roll the misty wave. Ev'n in the height of noon, oppress'd, the sun Sheds weak and blunt his wide-refracted ray, Whence glaring oft with many a broaden'd orb He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth, Seen through the turbid air, beyond the life Objects appear, and, wilder'd o'er the waste, The shepherd stalks gigantic: till at last, Wreath'd dun around in deeper circles, still Successive closing, sits the gen'ral fog Unbounded o'er the world, and, mingling thick, A formless gray confusion covers all.