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The tenants of its continents, all ceased! 170 A wide, a motionless, a putrid waste, Its seas! How droops the languid mariner, When not a breath, along the sluggish main, 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, 180 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 sat on Cimborazzo's highest peak, A thousand toises o'er the cloud's career, Soaring in finest ether? Far below, He sees the mountains burning at his feet, Whose smoke ne'er reached his forehead; never there, Though the black whirlwind shake the distant shores, The passing gale has murmured; never there 200 The eagle's cry has echoed; never there The solitary condor's weary wing Hath yet ascended! Let the rising thought Beyond the confines of this vapoury vault Be lifted, to the boundless void of space, How dread, how infinite! where other worlds, Ten million and ten million leagues aloft, In other precincts with their shadows roll. There roams the sole erratic comet, borne 210 With lightning speed, yet twice three hundred years Its destined course accomplishing. Then whirled, Far from the attractive orb of central fire, Back through the dim and infinite abyss, Dread flaming visitant, ere thou return'st, Empires may rise and fail; the palaces, That shone on earth, may vanish like the dews Of morning, scarce illum
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