Doubtful and inaccessible it lies;
Or ’tis a sea with shallows bank’d around,
Or ’tis a broken land with waters drown’d;
Here shores advanced o’er Neptune’s rule we find,
And there an inland ocean lags behind.
* * * * * *
Perhaps, when first the world and time began,
Here swelling tides and plenteous waters ran;
But long confining on the burning zone,
The sinking seas have felt the neighb’ring sun: