The Rainbow

Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.

Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,

Mix'd in wild concert, with the warbling

Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,

And hollow lows responsive from the vales,

Whence, blending all, the sweeten'd zephyr springs.

Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,

Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal

Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds,

In fair proportion running from the

To where the violet fades into the sky.

Here, awful Newton, the dissolving

Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism;

And to the sage-instructed eye

The various twine of light, by thee

From the white mingling maze.

Not so the boy;

He wondering views the bright enchantment bend,

Delightful, o'er the radiant fields, and

To catch the falling glory; but

Beholds th' amusive arch before him fly,

Then vanish quite away.