A radiant form appeared, Celestial, and with heavenly accent said: Noah, I come commissioned from above, 260 Where angels move before th' eternal throne Of heaven's great King in glory, to dispel The mists of darkness from thy sight; for know, Not unpermitted of th' Eternal One The shadows of thy melancholy dream Hung o'er thee slumbering: Mine the task to show Futurity's faint scene;--now follow me.
He said; and up to the unclouded height Of that great Eastern mountain,[157] that surveys Dim Asia, they ascended.

Then his brow 270 The Angel touched, and cleared with whispered charm The mortal mist before his eyes .-- At once (As in the skiey mirage, when the seer From lonely Kilda's western summit sees A wondrous scene in shadowy vision rise) The NETHER WORLD, with seas and shores, appeared Submitted to his view: but not as then, A melancholy waste, deform and sad; But fair as now the green earth spreads, with woods, Champaign, and hills, and many winding streams 280 Robed, the magnificent illusion rose.
He saw in mazy longitude devolved The mighty Brahma-Pooter; to the East Thibet and China, and the shining sea That sweeps the inlets of Japan, and winds Amid the Curile and Aleutian isles, Pale to the north.

Siberia's snowy scenes Are spread; Jenisca and the freezing Ob Appear, and many a forest's shady track Far as the Baltic, and the utmost bounds 290 Of Scandinavia; thence the eye returns: And lo! great Lebanon--abrupt and dark With pines, and airy Carmel, rising slow Above the midland main, where hang the capes Of Italy and Greece; swart Africa, Beneath the parching sun, her long domain Reveals, the mountains of the Moon, the source Of Nile, the wild mysterious Niger, lost Amid the torrid sands; and to the south Her stormy cape.

Beyond the misty main 300 The weary eye scarce wanders, when behold Plata, through vaster territory poured; And Andes, sweeping the horizon's tract, Mightiest of mountains! whose eternal snows Feel not the nearer sun; whose umbrage chills The murmuring ocean; whose volcanic fires A thousand nations view, hung like the moon High in the middle waste of heaven; thy range, Shading far off the Southern hemisphere, A dusky file Titanic.

310 So spread Before our great forefather's view the globe Appeared; with seas, and shady continents, And verdant isles, and mountains lifting dark Their forests, and indenting rivers, poured In silvery maze.