The Boarding School; Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils / Consisting of Information, Instruction and Advice, Calculated to Improve the Manners and Form the Character of Young Ladies. To Which Is Added, a Collection of Letters, Written by the Pupils to Their Instructress, Their Friends, and Each Other.

by Hannah Webster Foster

Still horror reigns, a dismal twilight round,

Of struggling night and day malignant mix’d,

Far to the hot equator crowding fast,

Where highly rarefy’d, the yielding air,

Admits their stream, incessant vapours roll,

Amazing clouds on clouds continual heap’d;

Or whirl’d tempestuous by the gusty wind,

Or silent, borne along, heavy and slow,

With the big stores of streaming oceans charg’d:

Meantime, amid these upper sea’s condens’d