And half the mountains melt into the tide.

Tho’ thirst were ne’er so resolute, avoid 420

The sordid lake, and all such drowsy floods

As fill from Lethe Belgia’s slow canals;

(With rest corrupt, with vegetation green;

Squalid with generation, and the birth

Of little monsters;) till the power of fire 425

Has from profane embraces disengag’d

The violated lymph. The virgin stream

In boiling wastes its finer soul in air.