J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Or forcing its way majestic proud and bold
Fortifying grandeur with all the full form showed
Of Abessinian beauties like the Hesperedes of old
Attending [all inserted] to charm its labours irrigating earth
Whose odoriferous sweets perfumes each gale
[And sell deleted] by creating delights like to Mahomets heaven
All provd but a dream cleared of the mist
That thou for many an age had hung around
The source at last he saw and thy deceit
Look’d down with wonder on the tepid pool
And shed his baffled sense but to dispurse [divest deleted]
The cloud which wrecks and gives uncertainty form
Space imprinting of folly clear to sense
Does but a generall good, and hence we know
That Nilas and the Thames [Niger inserted] but bubbles into day
And feel content that they should be so
Without further search yet to compress
By cold something good can from trifles flow
Would be greatest extreme far from good
Witness the various accidents that have caused
The deepest, wisest most profound of search
The laws of Gravity thou assisted to inspire
And hangs yet fondly o’er its beam pristine
The first great cause cannot be ascertained