'But beyond these fading slender cities, many leagues away,
Strange brooding mountains lay heaped, crowding range on range
In a changing cloudy splendour; and beyond, in lakes of light,
As eastward still I staggered, there swam into my sight,
More vast and hoar and haggard, shoulders of ice and snow
Bounding the heavens low of burnished brass, whereunder
The hot plains of Cathay perpetually slumber:
Where tawny millions breed in cities without number,
Whither, a hill-born thunder, rolling on Tartary
With torrents and barb'd lightning, swelleth the yellow river