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