How green the plains! how balsam-fraught the breeze!

How bend with golden fruit the loaded trees;

While, fluttering midst their boughs in joyful notes,

Myriads of birds attune their warbling throats!

Blooms all the ground with flowers! and mark, oh! mark

That giant palm, whose foliage broad and dark

Plays on the sun-clad rock!—Beneath, a cave

Spreads wide its sparry mouth: while loosely wave

A thousand creepers, dyed with thousand stains,

Whose wreaths enrich the trees, and cloathe the plains.