Mystick and Charles refresh their seaward isles, And gay Piscateway pays his passing smiles; Swift Kenebec, high bursting from his lakes, Shoots down the hillsides thro the clouds he makes; And hoarse resounding, gulphing wide the shore, Dread Laurence labors with tremendous roar; Laurence, great son of Ocean! lorn he lies, And braves the blasts of hyperborean skies. Where hoary winter holds his howling reign, And April flings her timid showers in vain, Groans the choked Flood, in frozen fetters bound, And isles of ice his angry front surround.
As old Enceladus, in durance vile, Spreads his huge length beneath Sicilia's isle, Feels mountains, crush'd by mountains, on him prest, Close not his veins, nor still his laboring breast; His limbs convulse, his heart rebellious rolls, Earth shakes responsive to her utmost poles, While rumbling, bursting, boils his ceaseless ire, Flames to mid heaven, and sets the skies on fire. So the contristed Laurence lays him low, And hills of sleet and continents of snow Rise on his crystal breast; his heaving sides Crash with the weight, and pour their gushing tides, Asouth, whence all his hundred branches bend, Relenting airs with boreal blasts contend; Far in his vast extremes he swells and thaws, And seas foam wide between his ice-bound jaws. Indignant Frost, to hold his captive, plies His hosted fiends that vex the polar skies, Unlocks his magazines of nitric stores, Azotic charms and muriatic powers; Hail, with its glassy globes, and brume congeal'd, Rime's fleecy flakes, and storm that heaps the field Strike thro the sullen Stream with numbing force, Obstruct his sluices and impede his course. In vain he strives; his might interior fails; Nor spring's approach, nor earth's whole heat avails; He calls his hoary Sire; old Ocean roars Responsive echoes thro the Shetland shores. He comes, the Father! from his bleak domains, To break with liquid arms the sounding chains; Clothed in white majesty, he leads from far His tides high foaming to the wintry war. Billows on billows lift the maddening brine, And seas and clouds in battling conflict join, O'erturn the vast gulph glade with rending sweep, And crash the crust that bridged the boiling deep; Till forced aloft, bright bounding thro the air, Moves the blear ice, and sheds a dazzling glare; The torn foundations on the surface ride, And wrecks of winter load the downward tide.