Of regions pregnant with a hundred states.
He holds in balance, ranged on either hand,
Two distant oceans and their sundering land;
Commands and drains the interior tracts that lie
Outmeasuring Europe's total breadth of sky.

High in the north his parent fountains wed,
And oozing urns adorn his infant head;
In vain proud Frost his nursing lakes would close,
And choke his channel with perennial snows;
From all their slopes he curves his countless rills,
Sweeps their long marshes, saps their settling hills;
Then stretching, straighteningsouth, he gaily gleams,
Swells thro the climes, and swallows all their streams;
From zone to zone, o'er earth's broad surface curl'd,
He cleaves his course, he furrows half the world,
Now roaring wild thro bursting mountains driven,
Now calm reflecting all the host of heaven;
Where Cynthia pausing, her own face admires,
And suns and stars repeat their dancing fires.
Wide o'er his meadowy lawns he spreads and feeds
His realms of canes, his waving world of reeds;
Where mammoth grazed the renovating groves,
Slaked his huge thirst, and chill'd his fruitless loves;
Where elks, rejoicing o'er the extinguished race,
By myriads rise to fill the vacant space.
Earth's widest gulph expands to meet his wave,
Vast isles of ocean in his current lave;
Glad Thetis greets him from his finish'd course,
And bathes her Nereids in his freshening source.