Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around. <br />Full swell the woods; their every music wakes, <br />Mix'd in wild concert, with the warbling brooks <br />Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills, <br />And hollow lows responsive from the vales, <br />Whence, blending all, the sweeten'd zephyr springs. <br />Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud, <br />Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow <br />Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds, <br />In fair proportion running from the red <br />To where the violet fades into the sky. <br />Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds <br />Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism; <br />And to the sage-instructed eye unfold <br />The various twine of light, by thee disclosed <br />From the white mingling maze. Not so the boy; <br />He wondering views the bright enchantment bend, <br />Delightful, o'er the radiant fields, and runs <br />To catch the falling glory; but amazed <br />Beholds th' amusive arch before him fly, <br />Then vanish quite away.<br /><br />James Thomson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-rainbow-24/
