And see where surly $WINTER passes off,
Far to the north, and call his ruffian blasts;
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shatter'd forest and the ravag'd vale:
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is uncomfirm'd,
And $WINTER oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless; so that scarce
The Bitten knows his time, with bill ingulpht
To shake the sounding marsh; or from the shore
The Plovers theirs, to scatter o'er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.
And last from $ARIES rolls the bounteous sun,
And the bright $BULL recieves him. Then no more
Th' expansive atmosphere is cramp'd with cold,
But full of life and vivifying soul,
Lifts the light clouds sublime, and spreads them thin,
Fleecy, and white, o'er all-surrounding heaven.
$FORTH fly the tepid airs; and unconfin'd,
Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays.
Joyous th' impatient husbandman perceives
Relenting nature, and his lusty steers,
Drives from their stalls, to where the well-us'd plow
Lies in the furrow loosen'd from the frost.
There unrefusing to the harness'd yoke,
They lend their shoulder, and begins their toil,
Chear'd by the simple song, and soaring lark.
Meanwhile incumbent o'er the shining share
The master leans, remove th' obstucting clay,
Winds the whole work, and sidelong lay the glebe.
$WHITE thro' the neighbouring fields the sower stalks,
With measur'd step, and liberal throws the grain
Into the faithful bosom of the Ground.
The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene.
$BE gracious, $HEAVEN! for now laborious man
Has done his due. Ye softering breezes, blow !
Ye softening dews, ye tender showers, descends!
And temper all, thou world-reviving sun,
Into the perfect year ! Nor, ye who live
In luxury and ease, in pomp and pride,
Think these lost themes unworthy of your ear.
'Twas such as these the rural $MARO sung
To the full $ROMAN court, in all its height
Of elegance and taste. The sacred plow
Employ'd the kings and father of mankind,
In ancient times. And some, with whom compar'd
You're but the beings of a summer's day,
Have held the scale of justice, shook the lance
Of mighty war, then with descending hand,
Unus'd to little delicacies, seiz'd
The plow, and greatly independant liv'd.
Ye generous $BRITIONS, cultivate the plow !
And o'er your hills, and long withdrawing vales,
Let $AUTUMN spread his treasures to the sun,
Luxuriant, and unbounded. As the sea,
Far thro' his azure, turbulent extent,
Your empire owns, and from a thousand shores
Wafts all the pomp of life into your ports;
So with superior boon may your rich soil,
Exuberant, nature's better blessing pour
O'er every land, the naked nations cloath,
And be th' exhaustless granary of a world.
Nor thro' the lenient air alone, this change
Delicious breathes; the penetrative sun,
His force deep-darting to the dark retreat
Of vegetation, sets the steaming power
At large, to wander o'er the vernant earth
In various hues, but chiefly thee, gay $GREEN !
Thou smiling $NATURE'S universal robe !
United light and shade ! where the sight dwells
With growing strength, and ever-new delight !
$ FROM the moist meadow to the brown-brow'd hill,
Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs,
And swells, and deepen to the cherish'd eye.
The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy groves
Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees,
Till the whole leafy forest stands display'd,
In full luxuriance, to the fighting gales;
While the deer rustle thro' the twining brake,
And the birds sing conceal'd. At once array'd
In all the colours of the flushing year,
By $NATURE'S swift and secret-working hand,
The garden glows, and fills the liberal air
With lavish fragrance; while the promis'd fruit
Lies yet a little embryo, unperceiv'd,
Within its crimson folds. Now from the town
Buried in smoak, and sleep, and noisom damps,
Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,
Where freshness breathes, and dash the lucid drops
From the bent bush, as thro' the fuming maze
Of sweet-briar hedges I pursue my walk;
Or taste the smell of dairy; or ascend
Some eminence, $AUGUSTA, in thy plains,
And see the country far-diffus'd around
One boundless blush, one white-empurpled shower
Of mingled blossom; where the raptur'd eye
Travels from joy to joy, and hid beneath
The fair prosusion, yellow $AUTUMN spies.
If brush'd from $RUSSIAN wilds a cutting gale
Rise not, and scatter from his foggy wings
The bitter mildew, or dry-blowing breathe
Untimely frost; before whose baleful blast,
The full-blown $SPRING thro' all her foliage shrinks,
Into a smutty, wide-dejected waste.
For oft engender'd by the hazy north,
Myriads on myriads, insect- armies waft
Keen in the poison'd breeze; and wasteful eat
Thro' buds, and bark, into the blacken'd Core,
Their eager way. A feeble race ! scarce seen,
Save by the prying eye; yet famine waits
On their corrosive course, and kills the year.
Sometimes o'er cities as they steer their flight,
Where rising vapour melts their wings away,
Gaz'd by th' astonish'd crowd, the horrid shower
Descends. And hence the skilful farmer chaff,
And blazing straw before his orchard burns;
Till, all involv'd in smoak, the latent foe
From every cranny suffocated falls;
Or onion, steaming hot, beneath his tree
Exposes fatal to the frosty tribe :
Nor, from their friendly task, the busy bill
Of little trooping birds instinctive scares.
These are not idle philosophic dreams,
Full $NATURE swarms with life. Th' unfaithful fen
In putrid steams emit the livid cloud
Of pestilence. Thro' subterranean cells,
Where searching sun-beams never found a way,
Earth animated heaves. The flowery leaf
Wants not its soft inhabitants. The stone,
Hard as it is, in every winding pore
Holds multitudes. But chief the forest-boughs,
Which dance unnumber'd to th' inspiring breeze,
The downy orchard, and the melting pulp
Of mellow fruit the nameless nations feed
Of evanescent insects. Where the pool
Stands mantled o'er with green invisible,
Amid the floating verdue millons stray.
Each liquid too, whether of acid taste,
Potent, or mild, with various forms abounds.
Nor is the lucid stream, nor the pure air,
Tho' one transparent vacancy they seem,
Devoid of theirs. Even animals subsist
On animals, in infinite descent;
And all so fine adjusted, that the loss
Of the least species would disturb the whole.
Stranger than this th' inspective glass confirms
Of lessening life; by $ WISDOM kindly hid
And to the curious gives th' amazing scenes
From eyes; to ear of man: for if at once
The worlds in worlds enclos'd were push'd to light,
Seen by his sharpen'd eye, and by his ear
Intensely bended heard, from the choice cate,
The freshest viands, and the brightest wines,
He'd turn abhorrent, and in dead of night,
When silence sleep o'er all, be stun'd with noise.
The North-east spends his rage, and now shut up
Within his iron caves, th' effusive South
Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven
Breathe the big clouds with vernal showers distent.
At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,
Scarce staining aether; but by fast degrees,
In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapour sails
Along the loaded sky, and mingling thick
Sit on th' horizon round a settled gloom.
Not such as wintry storms on mortal shed,
Oppressing life, but lovely, gentle, kind,
And full of every hope, and every joy,
The wish of Nature. Gradual sinks the breeze
Into a perfect calm; that not a breath
Is heard to quiver thro' the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves
Of aspin tall. Th' uncurling floods, diffus'd
In glassy breadth, seem thro' delusive lapse
Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all,
And pleasing expecation. Herds and flocks
Drop the dry sprig, and mute-imploring eye
The falling verdue. Hush'd in short suspense,
The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
And wait th' approaching sign to strike at once
Into the general choir. Even mountains, vales,
And forests seem, expansive, to demand
The promis'd sweetness. Man superior walks
Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
And looking lively gratitude. At last
The clouds consign their treasures to the fields,
And softly shaking on the dimply pool
Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow,
In large effusion o'er the freshen'd world.
'Tis scarce to patter heard, the stealing shower,
By such as wander thro' the forest-walks,
Beneath th' umbrageous multitude of leaves.
But who can hold the shade, while $HEAVEN descends,
In universal bounty, shedding herbs,
And fruits, and flowers, on $NATURE'S ample lap?
Imagination fir'd prevents their growth,
And while the verdant nutriment distills,
Beholds the kindling country colour round.
Thus all day long the full-distended clouds
Indulge their genial stores, and well shower'd earth
Is deep enrich'd with vegetable life;
Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
Looks our illustrious from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes
Th' illumin'd mountain, thro' the forest streams,
Shake on the floods, and in a yellow mist,
Far-smoaking o'er th' interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
Moist, bright, and green, the landskip laughs around.
Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
Mix'd in wild consort with the warbling brooks
Incres'd, th' unnumber'd bleatings of the hills,
The hollow lows responsive from the vales,
<13>
Whence blending all the sweten'd zephyr springs.
Mean time refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth,the grand aetherial bow
Shoots up immense! and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion, running from the red,
To where the violet fades into the sky.
Here, mighty $NEWTON, the dissolving clouds
Are, as they scatter'd round, thy numerous prism,
Untwisting to the philosophic eye
The various twine of light, by thee pursu'd
Thro' the white mingling maze. Not so the swain,
He wondering views the bright enchantment bend,
Delightful, o'er the radiant fields,and runs
To catch the falling glory; but amaz'd
Behold th' amusive arch before him fly,
Then vanish quite away. Still night succeeds,
A soften'd shade; and saturated earth
Awaits the morning beam, to give again,
Transmuted soon by Nature's chymistry,
The blooming blessings of the former day.
$THEN spring the living herbs, prosusely wild
O'er all the deep-green earth, beyond the power
Of $BOTANIST to number up their tribe ;
Whetever he steals along the lonely dale
In silent search; or thro' the forest, rank
With what the dull incurious weeds account,
Bursts his blind way; or climb the mountain rock,
Fir'd by the nodding verdue of its brow.
With such a liberal hand has $NATURE flung
Their seeds abroad, blown them about in the winds,
Innumerous mix'd them with the nursing mold,
The moistening current, and the prolific rain.
But who their virtues can declare? Who pierce
With vision pure into these secret stores
Of life, and health, and joy? The food of man
While yet he liv'd in innocence, and told
A length of golden years, unflesh'd in blood,
A stranger to the savage arts of life,
Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease,
The lord, and not the trynant of the world.
$THEN the glad morning wak'd the gladden'd race
of uncorrupted men, nor blush'd to see
Of suggard sleep beneath her sacred beam.
For their light slumber gently fum'd away,
And up they rose as vigorous as the sun,
Or to the culture of the willing glebe,
Or to the chearful tendance of the flock.
Mean time the song went round; and dance, and sport,
Wisdom, and friendly talk successive stole
Their Hours away. While in the rosy vale
Love breath'd his infant sighs, from anguish free,
Replete with bliss, and only wept with joy.
Nor yet injurious act, not surely deed
Was known among these happy sons of heaven;
For reason and benevolence were law.
Harmonious Nature too look'd smiling on.
Clean shone the skies, cool'd with enternal gales,
And balmy spirit all. The youthful sun
Shot his best rays; and still the gracious clouds
Drop'd fatness down; as o'er the swelling mead
The herd and flocks commixing play'd secure.
Which when, emergent from the gloomy wood,
The glaring lyon saw, his horrid heart
Was meeken'd, and he join'd his sullen joy.
For musick held the whole in perfect peace:
Soft sigh'd the flute; the tender voice was heard,
Warbling the joyous heart; the woodland round
Apply'd their quire; and winds and water flow'd
In consonance. Such were these prime of days.
$THIS to the $POETS gave the golden age;
When, as they sung in elevated phrase,
The sailor-pine had not the nations yet
In commerce mix'd; for every country teem'd
With every thing. Spontaneous harvest wav'd,
Still in a sea of yellow plenty round.
The forest was the vineyard, where untaught
To climb, unprun'd, and wild, the juicy grape
Burst into floods of wine. The knotted oak
Shook from its boughs the long transparent streams
Of honey, creeping thro' the matted grass.
Th' uncultivated thorn a ruddy shower
Of fuitage shed, on such as sat below,
In blooming ease, and from brown labour free,
Save what the copious gathering,grateful, gave.
The river foam'd with nectar; or diffuse,
Silent, and soft, the milky maze devolv'd.
Nor had the spongy, full-expanded fleece,
Yet drunk the $TRYIAN die. The stately ram
Shone thro' the mead, in native purple clad,
Or milder saffron; and the dancing lamb
The vivid crimson to the sun disclos'd.
Nothing had power to hurt; the savage soul,
Yet untransfus'd into the tyger's heart,
Burn'd not his bowels, nor his gamesome paw
Drove on the fleecy partners of his play:
While from the flowery brake the serpent roll'd
His fairer spires, and play'd his pointless tongue.
But now whate'er these gaudy fables meant,
And the white minutes which they shadow'd out,
Are found no more amid those iron times,
Those dregs of life! in which the human mind
Has lost the harmony ineffable,
Which forms the soul of happiness; and all
Is off the poise within; the passions all
Have burst their bounds; and reasons half extinct,
Or impotent, or else approving, sees
The foul disorder. Anger storms at large,
Without an equal cause; and fell revenge
Supports the falling rage. Close envy bites
With venom'd tooth; while weak, unmanly fear,
Full of frail fancies, loosens every power.
Even love itself is bitterness of soul,
A pleasing anguish pining at the heart.
Hope sickens with extravange; and grief
Of life impatient, into madness swells;
Or in dead silence wastes the weeping hours.
These, and a thousand mixt emotions more,
From ever-changing views of good and ill,
Form'd infinitely various, vex the mind
With endless storm. Whence, inly-rankling, grows
The selfish thought, a listless incorcern,
Cold, and averting from our neighbour's good;
Then dark disgust, and malice, winding wiles,
Sneaking deceit, and coward villany:
At last deep-rooted hatred, lewd reproach,
Convulsive wrath, and thoughtless fury, quick
To deeds of vilest aim. Even Nature's self
Is deem'd, vindictive, to have chang'd her course.
$HENCE in old time, they say, a deluge came;
When the disparting orb of earth, that arch'd
Th' imprison'd deep around, impetuous rush'd,
With ruin inconceivable, at once
Into the gulph, and o'er the highest hills
Wide-dash'd the waves, indulation vast:
Till, from the centre to the streaming clouds,
A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe.
$THE SEASONS since, as hoar $TRADITION tells,
Have kept their constant chace; the $WINTER keen
Pour'd out his waste of snows; and $SUMMER shot
His pestilential heats: great $SPRING before
Green'd all the year; and fruits and blossoms blush'd
In social sweetness on the self-same bough.
Clear was the temperate air; an even calm
Perpetual reign'd, save what zephrys bland
Breath'd o'er the blue expanse; for then nor storms
Were taught to blow, nor hurricanes to rage;
Sound slept the Waters: no sulphureous glooms
Swell'd in the sky, and sent the lightning forth:
While sickly damps, and cold autumnal fogs,
Sat not pernicious on the springs of life.
But now, from clear to cloudy, moist to dry,
And hot to cold, in restless change revolv'd,
Our drooping days are dwindled down to nought,
The fleeting shadow of a winter's sun.
$AND yet the wholesom herb neglected dies
In lone obscurity, unpriz'd for food;
Altho' the pure, exhilerating soul
Of nutriment, and health, salubrious breathes,
By $HEAVEN infus'd along its secret tubes.
For, with hot ravine fir'd, ensanguin'd man
Is now become the lyon of the plain,
And worse. The wolf, who from the nightly fold
Fierce-drags the bleating prey, ne'er drunk her milk,
Nor wore her warming fleece: nor has the steer,
At whose strong chest the deadly tyger hangs,
E'er plow'd for him. They too are temper'd high,
With hunger stung, and wild necessity,
Nor lodge pity in their shaggy breasts.
But $MAN whom $NATURE form'd of milder clay,
With every kind emotion in his heart,
And taught alone to weep; while from her lap
She pours ten thousand delicacies, herbs,
And fruits, as numerous as the drops of rain,
And beams that gave birth: shall he, fair form!
Who wears sweet smiles, and look erect on heaven,
E'er stoop to mingle with the prowling herd,
And dip his tongue in blood? The beast of prey,
'Tis true, deserves the fate in which he deals.
Him, from the thicket, let the hardy youth
Provoke, and foaming thro' the awakened woods
With every nerve pursue. But you, ye flocks,
What have ye done? Ye peaceful people, what,
To merit death? You, who have given us milk
In luscious streams, and lent us your own coat
Against the winter's cold? Whose usefulness
In living only lies? And the plain ox,
That harmless, honest, guileless animal,
In what has he offended? He, whose toil,
Patient, and every-ready, cloaths the land
With all the pomp of harvest: shall he bleed,
And wrestling groan beneath the cruel hands
Even of the clowns he feeds? And that perhaps
To swell the riot of the gathering feast,
Won by his labour? Thus the feeling heart
Would tenderly suggest: but 'tis enough,
In this late age, adventurous to have touch'd,
Light on the numbers of the $SAMIAN sage.
High $HEAVEN beside forbids the daring strain,
Whose wisest will has fix'd us in a state,
That must not yet to pure perfection rise.
$BUT yonder breathing prospect bids the muse
Throw all her beauty forth that daubling all
Will be to what I gaze; for who can paint
Like $NATURE? Can IMAGINATION boast,
Amid his gay creation, hues like hers?
And can he mix them with that matchless skill,
And lay them on so delicately fine,
And lose them in each other, as appears
In every bud that blows? If fancy then
Unequal fails beneath the lovely task;
Ah what shall language do ? Ah where finds words
Ting'd with so many colours? And whose power
To life approaching, may perfume my lays
With that fine oil, these aromatic gales,
Which inexhaustive flow continual round?
Yet tho' successless, will the toil delight.
Come then, ye virgins, and ye youths, whose hearts
Have felt the raptures of refining love;
Oh come, and while the rosy-footed $MAY
steals blushing on, together let us walk
The morning dews, and gather in their prime
Fresh-blooming flowers,to deck the braided hair,
And the white bosom that improves their sweets.
$SEE, where the winding vale her lavish stores,
Irriguous, spreads. See, how the lilly drinks
The latent rill, scarce oozing thro' the grass
Of growth luxuriant; or the humid bank
Profusely climbs. Turgent, in every pore
The gummy moisture shines; new lustre lends,
And feeds the spirit that diffusive round
Refreshes all the dale. Long let us walk,
Where the breeze blows from yon extended field
Of blossom'd beans: $ARABIA cannot boast
A fuller gale of joy than, liberal,thence
Breathes thro' the sense, and take the ravish'd soul.
Nor is the meadow worthless of our foot,
Full of fresh verdure, and unnumber'd flowers,
The negligence of $NATURE, wide, and wild;
Where, undisguis'd by mimic $ART, the spreads
Unbounded beauty to the boundless eye.
'Tis here that their delicous task the bees,
In swarming millons, tend. Around, athwart,
This way, and that, the busy nations fly,
Cling to the bud, and, with inserted tube,
Its soul, its sweetness, and its manna suck.
The little chymist thus, all-moving $HEAVEN
Has taught: and oft, of bolder wings, he dares
The purple heath, or where the wild-thymes grows,
And yellow loads him with the luscious spoil.
At length the finish'd garden to the view
Its vistas opens, and its alleys green.
Snatch'd thro' the verdant maze, the hurried eye
Distracted wanders; now the bowery walk
Of covert close, where scarce a speck of day
Falls on the lengthen'd gloom, protracted darts;
Now meets the bending sky, the river now
Dimpling along, the breezy-ruffled lake,
The forest running around, the rising spire,
Th' aetheral mountain, and the distant main.
But why so far excursive? when at hand,
Along the blushing borders, dewy-bright,
And in yon mingled wildness of flowers,
Fair-handed $SPRING unbosoms every grace;
Throws out the snow-drop, and the crocus first,
The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue,
Dew-blending cowslips, and of nameless dies
Anemonies, auriculas a tribe
Peculiar powder'd with a shining sand,
Renunculas, and iris many-hued.
Then comes the tulip-race, where Beauty plays
Her gayest freaks: from family diffus'd
To family, as flies the father-dust,
The varied colours run; and while they $BREAK
On the charm'd $FLORIST'S eye, he curious stands,
And new-flush'd glories all ecstatic marks.
Nor hyacinths are wanting, nor junquils
Of potent fragance, nor narcissus white,
Nor strip'd carnations, nor enamel'd pinks,
Nor shower'd from every bush the damask-rose.
Infinite numbers, delicacies, smells,
With hues on hues expression cannot paint,
The breath of $NATURE, and her endless bloom.
$HAIL,MIGHTY BEING! UNIVERSAL SOUL
Of heaven and earth! $ESSENTIAL PRESENCE, hail!
$TO THEE I bend the knee; to THEE my thoughts
Continual climb; whole, with a master-hand,
Hast the great whole into perfection touch'd.
$BY THEE, the various vegative tribes,
Wrapt in a filmy net, and clad with leaves,
Draw the live aether, and imbide the dew.
By $THEE dispos'd into congenial soils,
Stands each attractive plant, and sucks, and swells
The juicy tide; a twining mass of tubes.
AT $THY command, the vernal sun awakes
The torpid sap, detruded to the root
By wintry winds, that now, in fluent dance,
And lively fermentatiom, mounting, spreads
All this innumerous-colour'd scene of things.
$ASCENDING from the vegetable world
To higher life, with equal wing ascend,
My panting muse; and hark, how loud the woods
Invite you forth in all your gayest trim.
Lend me your song, ye nightingales! oh pour
The mazy-running soul of melody
Into my varied verse! while I deduce,
From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings,
The symphony of $SPRING, and touch a theme
Unknown to fame, $THE PASSION OF THE GROVES,
Just as the spirit of love is sent abroad,
Warm thro' the vital air, and on their hearts
Harmonious seizes, the gay troop begin,
In galliant thought, to plume the painted wing;
And try again the long forgotten strain,
At first faint-warbled. But no sooner grows
< P 29>
The soft infusion prevalent, and wide,
Than, all alive, at once their joy o'erflows
In musick unconfin'd. Up-springs the lark,
Shrill-voiced, and loud, the messenger of morn;
Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings
Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts
Call up the tuneful nations. Every copse
Thick-wove, and tree irregular, and bush
Bending with dewy moisture, o'er the heads
Of the coy quiristers that lodge within,
Are prodigal of harmony. the trush
And wood-lark, o'er the kind-contending throng
Superior heard, run thro' the sweetest length
Of notes; when listening $PHILOMELA deigns
To let them joy, and purposes, in thought
Elate, to make her night excel their day.
The black-bird whistles from the thorny brake;
The mellow bull-finch answeres from the grove:
Nor are the linnets, o'er the flowering furze
Pour'd out profusely, silent. Join'd to these
Thousands beside, thick as the covering leaves
They warble under, or the nitid hues
That speck them o'er, their modulations mix
Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw,
And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone,
Here aid the consort: while the Stock-dove breathes
A melancholy murmur thro' the whole.
'Tis love creates their gaiety, and all
This waste of music is the voice of love:
Which even to birds, and beasts, the tender arts
Of pleasing teaches. Hence the glossy kind
Try every winning way inventive love
Can dictate, and in fluttering courtship pour
Their little souls before her. Wide around,
Respectful, first in airy rings they rove,
Endeavoring by a thousand tricks to catch
The cunning, conscious, half-averted glance
Of their regardless charmer. Should the seem
Softening the least approvance to bestow,
Their colours burnish, and by hope inspir'd
They brisk advance; then on a sudden struck
Retire disorder'd; then again approach;
And throwing out the last efforts of love,
In fond rotation spreads the spotted wing,
And shiver every feather with desire.
$CONNUBIAL leagues agreed, to the deep woods
They haste away, each as their fancy leads,
Pleasure, or food, or secret safety prompts;
That $NATURE'S great command may be obey'd,
Nor all the sweet sensations they perceive
Indulg'd in vain. Some to the holly-hedge
Nestling repair, and to the thicket some;
Some to the rude protection of the thorn
Resolve to trust their young. The clefted tree
Offers its kind concealment to a few,
Their food its inscects, and its moss their nests
Other apart far in the grassy dale
Their humble texture weave. But most delight
In unfrequented glooms, or shaggy banks,
Steep, and divided by a babbling brook,
Whole murmurs sooth them all the live-long day,
When for a season fix'd. Among the roots
Of hazel, pendant o'er the plaintive stream,
They frame the first foundation of their domes,
Dry sprigs of trees, in artful manner laid,
And bound with clay together. Now 'tis nought
But hurry hurry thro' the busy air,
Beat by unnumber'd wings. The swallow sweeps
The flimy pool, to build his hanging house
Ingeniously intent. Oft from the back
Of herds and flocks a thousand tugging bills
Pluck hair, and wool; and oft, when unobsev'd,
Steal from the barn the straw; till soft, and warm,
Clean, compleat, their habitation grows.
As thus the patient dam assiduous fits,
Not to be tempted from her tender task,
Or by sharp hunger, or by smooth delight,
Thro' the whole loosen'd Spring around her blows,
Her sympathizing lover takes his stand
High on th' opponent bank, and ceaseless sings
The tedious time away; or else supplies
Her place a moment, while the sudden flits
To pick the scanty meal. Th' appointed time
With pious toil fulfill'd, the callow young
Warm'd, and expanded into perfect life,
Their brittle bondage break, and come to light,
A helpless family, demanding food
With constant clamour. Oh what Passion then,
What melting sentiments of kindly care
Seize the new parent's hearts? Away they fly
Affectionate, and undesiring bear
The most delicious morsel to their young,
Which equally distributed, again
The search begins. So pitiful, and poor,
A gentle pair on providential $HEAVEN
Cast, as they weeping eye their clament train,
Check their own appetites, and give them all.
Nor is the courage of the fearful kind,
Nor is their cunning less, should some rude foot
Their woody haunts molest; stealthy, aside
Into the centre of a neighbouring bush
They drop, and whirring thence alarm'd, deceive
The rambling school-boy. Hence around the head
Of traveller, the white-wing'd plover wheels
Her founding flight, and then directly on
In long excursion skims the level lawn,
To tempt you from her nest. The wild-duck hence
O'er the rough moss, and o'er the trackless waste
The heath-hen flutters, as if hurt, to lead
The hot pursuing spaniel far astray.
$BE not the muse asham'd, here to bemoan
Her brothers of the grove, by tyrant man
Inhuman caught, and in the narrow cage
From liberty confin'd, and boundless air.
Dull are the pretty slaves, their plumage dull,
Ragged, and all its brightening lustre lost;
Nor is that luscious wildness in their notes
That warbles from the beech. Oh then desist,
Ye friends of harmony! this barbarous art
Forbear, if innocence and musick can
Win on your hearts, or piety persuade.
But let not chief the nightingale lament
Her ruin'd care, too delicately fram'd
To brook the harsh confinement of the cage.
Oft when returning with her loaded bill,
Th' astonish'd mother finds a vacant nest,
By the hard hand of unrelenting clowns
Robb'd to the ground the vain provision falls;
Her pinions ruffle, and low-drooping scarce
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade:
Where, all abandon'd to despair, she sings
Her sorrows thro' the night; and, on the bough
Sad-fitting, still at every dying fall
Take up again her lamentable strain
Of winding woe, till wide around the woods
Sigh at her song, and with her wail resound.
$AND now the feather'd youth their former bounds
Ardent disdain, and weighing oft their wings,
Demand the free possession of the sky.
But this glad office more, and then dissolves
Parental love at once; for needless grown,
Unlavish $WISDOM never works in vain.
'Tis on some evening, sunny, grateful, mild,
When nought but balm is breathing thro' the woods,
With yellow lustre bright, that the new tribes
Visit the spacious heavens, and look abroad
On $NATURE'S common, far as they see,
Or wing, their range, and pasture. O'er the boughs
Dancing about, still at the giddy verge
Their resolution fails; their pinions still,
In loose libration stretch'd, the void abrupt
Trembling refuse: till down before them fly
The parent-guides, and chide, exhort,command,
Or push them off. The surging air receives
The plumy burden; and their self-taught wings
Winnow the waving element. On ground
Alighted, bolder up again they lead
Farther and farther on the lengthning flight;
Till vanish'd every fear, and every power
Rouz'd into life, and action, in the void
Th' exoner'd parents see their soaring race,
And once rejoicing, never know them more.
$HIGH from the summit of a craggy cliff,
Hung o'er the green sea, grudging at its base,
The royal eagle draws his young, resolv'd
To try them at the sun. Strong-pounc'd, and bright
As burnish'd day, they up the blue sky wind,
Leaving dull sight below, and with a fixt gaze
Drink in their native noon: the father-king
Clap his glad pinions, and approves the birth.
$And should I wander to the rural seat,
Whose aged oaks, and venerable gloom,
Invite the noisy rook; with pleasure there,
I might the various polity survey
Of the mixt houshold kind. The careful hen
Calls all her chirping family around,
Fed, and defended by the fearless cock,
Whose breast with ardour flames, as on he walks
Graceful, and crows defiance. In the pond,
The finely-checker'd duck, before her train,
Rows garrulous. The stately-swailing swan
Give out his snowy plumage to the gale,
And arching proud his neck, with oary feet
Bears forward fierce, and beats you from the bank,
Protective of his young. The turkey nigh,
Loud-threatening, redden; while the peacock spreads
His every-colur'd glory to the sun,
And swims in floating majesty along.
O'er the whole homely scene, the cooing dove
Flies thick in amorous chace, and wanton rolls
The glancing eye, and turns the changeful neck.
While thus the gentle tenants of the shade
Indulge their purer loves, the rougher world
Of brutes below, rush furious into flame,
And fierce desire. Thro' all his lusty veins
The bull, deep scorcht, receives the raging fire.
Of pasture sick, and negligent of food,
Scarce-seen, he wades among the yellow broom,
While o'er his brawny back the rambling sprays
Luxuriant shoot; or thro' the mazy wood
Dejected wanders, nor th' inticing bud
Crops, tho' it presses on his careless sense:
For, wrapt in mad imagination, he
Roars for the fight, and idly butting, feigns
A rival gor'd in every knotty trunk.
Such should he meet, the bellowing war begins;
Their eyes flash fury; to the hollow'd earth,
Whence the sand flies, they mutter bloody deeds,
And groaning vast th' impetuous battle mix:
While the fair heifer, redolent, in view
Stand kindling up their rage. The trembling steed,
With this hot impulse seiz'd in every nerve,
Nor hears the rein, nor heeds the souding whip;
Blow are not felt; but tossing high his head,
And by the well-known joy, to distant plains
Attracted strong, all wild, he bursts away;
O'er rocks, and woods, and craggy mountains flies,
And neighing, on the aerial summit takes
Th' headlong torrents foaming down the hills,
Even where the maddness of the straiten'd streams
Turns in black eddies round: Such is the force
With which his frantick heart, and sinews swell.
$NOR, undelighted by the boundless $SPRING,
Are the broad monsters of the boiling deep:
From the deep ooze, and gelid cavern rous'd,
They flounce, and tumble in unweidy joy.
Dire were the strain, and dissonant, to sing
The cruel raptures of the savage kind:
How the red lioness, her whelps forgot
Amid the thoughtless fury of her heart:
The lank rapacious wolf; the unshapely bear;
The spotted tyger, fellest of the fell;
And all the terrors of the $LIBYAN swain,
By this new flame their native wrath sublim'd,
Roam the resouding waste in fiercer bands,
And growl their horrid loves. But this the theme
I sing, transported, to the $BRITISH fair,
Forbids, and leads me to the mountain-brow,
Where sits the shepherd on the grassy turf,
Inhaling, healthful, the descending sun.
Around him feeds his many-bleating flock,
Of various cadence; and his sportive lambs,
This way, and that, convolv'd in friskful glee,
Their little frolicks play. And now the race
Invite them forth; when swift, the signal given,
They start away, and sweep the massy mould
That runs arounds the hill; the rampart once
Of iron war, in antient barbarous times,
When disunited $BRITIAN ever bled,
Lost in eternal broil; ere yet she grew
To this deep-laid, indissoluble state,
Where $WEALTH and COMMERCE lift their golden head,
And o'er our Labours $LIBERTY and LAW
Illustrious watch, the wonder of a world!
$WHAT is this $MIGHTY BREATH ye curious, say,
Which in a language rather felt than heard,
Instruct the fowls of heaven; and thro' their breasts
These arts of love diffuses? What, but $GOD?
Inspiring $GOD! who boundless spirit all,
And unremitted energy pervades,
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.
He ceasless works alone, and yet alone
Seems not to work, with such perfection fram'd
Is this complex, amazing scheme of things.
But tho' conceal'd, to every pure eye
Th' informing author his works appears;
His grandeur in heavens: the sun, the moon,
Whether that fires the day, or falling, this
Pours out a lucid softness o'er the night,
Are but a beam from him. The glittering stars,
By the deep ear of meditation heard,
Still in their midnight watches sing of him.
He nods a calm. The tempest blows his wrath,
Roots up the forest, and o'erturns the main.
The thunder is his voice; and the red flash
His speedy sword of justice. At his touch
The mountains flame. He takes the solid earth,
And rocks the nations. Nor in these alone,
In every common instance $GOD is seen;
And to the man, who casts his mental eye
Abroad, unnotic'd wonders rise.But chief
In thee, boon $SPRING, and in thy softer scenes,
The smiling $GOD appears; while water, earth,
And air attest his bounty, which instils
Into the brutes this temporary thoughts,
And annual melts their undesigning hearts
Profusely thus in tenderness, and joy.
$STILL let my song a nobler note assume,
And sing th' infusive force of $SPRING on man;
When heaven and earth, as if contending, vie
To raise his being, and serene his soul.
Can he forbear to smile with $NATURE? Can
The stormy passion in his bosom rowl,
While every gale is peace, and every grove
Is melody? Hence, from the bounteous walks
Of flowing $SPRING, ye fordid sons of earth,
Hard, and unfeeling, of another's woe,
Or only lavish to yourselves; away.
But come, ye generous breasts, in whole wide thought,
Of all his works, $CREATIVE BOUNTY, most,
Divinely burns; and on your open front,
And liberal eye, sits, from his dark retreat
Inviting modest want. Nor only fair,
And easy of approach; your active search
Leave no cold wintry corner unexplor'd,
Like silent-working $HEAVEN, surprizing oft
The lonley heart with unexpected good.
For you the roving spirit of the wind
Blow $SPRING abroad; for you the teeming clouds
Descend in buxom plenty o'er the world;
And the sun spreads his genial blaze for you,
Ye flower of human race! In these green days,
Sad-pining sickness lifts her languid head;
Lise flows afresh; and young-ey'd health exhalts
The whole creation round. Contentment walks
The sunny glade, and feels an inwards bliss
Spring o'er his mind, beyond the power of kings
To purchase. Pure sernity apace
Induces thought, and contemplation still.
By small degrees the love of nature works,
And warms the bosom; till at last arriv'd
To rapture, and enthusiatic heat,
We feel the present $DEITY, and taste
The joy of $GOD, to see a happy world.
' Tis $HARMONY, that world-attuning power,
By which all beings are adjusted, each
To all around, impelling, and impell'd,
In endless circulation, that inspires
This universal smile. Thus the glad skies,
The wide-rejoycing earth, the woods, the streams,
With every $LIFE they hold, down to the flower
That paints the lowly vale, or insect-wing
Wav'd o'er the shepherd's slumber, thro' the mind
To nature tun'd, with a light-flying hand,
Invisible; quick-urging, thro' the nerves,
The glittering spirits in a flood of day.
$HENCE from the virgin's cheek, a fresher bloom
Shoots less and less, the live carnation round;
Her lips blush deeper sweets; the breathes of youth;
The shining moisture swells into her eyes,
In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves
With palpitations wild; kind tumults seize
Her veins, and all her yielding soul is love.
From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
Full of the dear estatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment. Ah then, ye fair!
Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts;
Dare not th' infectious sigh; the pleading eye,
In meek submission drest, deject and low,
But full of tempting guile. Let not the tongue,
Prompt to decieve, with adultion smooth,
Gain on your purpos'd wills. Nor in the bower,
Where woodbines flaunt, and roses shed a couch,
While evening draws her crimson curtains round,
Trust your lost minutes with the betraying man.
$AND let th' aspiring youth beware of love,
Of the smooth glance beware; for tis too late,
When on his heart the torrent softness pours.
Then wisdom postrate lies; while the fond soul
Is wrapt in dream of ecstacy, and bliss;
Still paints th' illusive form; the kindling grace;
Th' inticing smile; the modest-seeming eye,
Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying heaven,
Lurk searchless cunning, cruelty, and death:
And still, false-warbling in his cheated ear,
Her syren voice, enchanting, draws him on,
To guileful shores, and meads of fatal joy.
$EVEN present, in the very lap of love
Inglorious laid; while musick flows around,
Perfumes, and oils, and wines, and wanton hours,
Amid the roses fierce Repentance rears
Her shaky crest: a quick-returning twinge
Shoots thro' the conscious heart; where honour still,
And great design against th' oppressive load
Of luxury, by fits, impatient heave.
But absent, what fantastic pangs arrous'd,
Rage in each thought, by restless musing fed,
Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life?
Neglected fortune flies; and sliding swift,
Prone into ruin fall his scorn'd affairs.
'Tis nought but gloom around. The darken'd sun
Loses his light. The rosy bosom'd $SPRING
To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch
Of heaven, low bends into a dusky vault.
All nature fades extinct; and she alone
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills every sense, and pants in vein.
Books are but formal dullness, tedious Friends,
And sad amids the social bands he sits,
Lonley, and inattentive. From the tongue
Th' unfinish'd period falls: while born away
On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant fair;
And leaves the resemblance of a lover, fix'd
In melancholly site, with head declin'd,
And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,
Shook his tender trance, and restless runs
To glimmering shades, and sympathetic gloom,
Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling stream
Romantic hangs; there thro' the pensive dusk
Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation lost,
Indulging all to love: or on the bank
Thrown, amid drooping lillies, swells the breeze
With sighs unceasing, and brook with tears.
Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day,
Nor quits his deep retirement, till the moon
Peeps thro' the chambers of the fleecy east,
Enlighten'd by degrees, and in her train
Leads on the gentle hours; then forth he walks,
Beneath the trembling languish of her beams,
With soften'd soul, and wooes the bird of the eve
To mingle woes with his: or while the world,
And all the sons of care, he lies hush'd in sleep,
Associates with the midnight shadows drear;
And sighing to the lonely taper, pours
His idly-tortur'd heart into the page,
Meant for the moving messenger of love;
Where rapture burns on raptures, every line
With rising frenzy fir'd. But if on bed
Delirous flung, sleep from his pillow flies.
All night he tosses, nor the balmy power
In any posture finds; till the grey morn
Lifts pale lustre on paler wretch,
Exanimate by love: then perhaps
Exhausted nature sinks a while to rest,
Still interrupted by distracted dreams,
That o'er the sick imagination rise,
And in black colours paint the mimic scene.
Oft with th' enchantress of his soul he talks;
Sometimes in crouds distrest; or if retir'd
To secret-winding, flower-enwoven bowers,
Far from the dull impertinence of man,
Just as he, credulous, his thousand cares
Begin to lose in blind oblivious love,
Snatch'd from her yielded hand, he knows not how,
Thro' forests huge, and long untravel'd heaths
With desolation brown, he wanders waste,
In night and tempest wrapt; or shrinks aghast,
Back, from the bending precipice; or wades
The turbid stream below, and strives to reach
The farther shore; where succourless, and sad
Wild as a Bacchanal she spreads her arms,
But strives in vain, borne by th' outragious flood
To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,
Or whelm'd beneath the boiling eddy sinks.
Then a weak, wailimg, lamentable cry
Is heard, and all in tears he wakes, again
To tread the circle of revolving woe.
These are the charming agonies of love,
Whose misery delights. But thro' the heart
Should jealousy its venom once deffuse,
'Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmixt, incessant rage,
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's Paradise. Ye fairy prospects then,
Ye bed of roses, and ye bowers of joy,
Farewell! Ye gleamings of departing peace,
Shine on your last! The yellow-tinging plague
Internal visions taints, and in a night
Of livid gloom imagination wraps.
Ay then instead of love-enliven'd cheeks,
Of sunny features, and of ardent eyes
With flowing rapture bright, dark looks succeed,
Suffus'd, and glaring with untender fire,
A clouded aspect, and burning cheek,
Where the whole poison'd soul, maligant, sits,
And frightens love away. Ten thousand fears,
Invented wild, ten thousand frantic views
Of horrid rivals, hanging on the charms
For which he melts in fondness, eat him up
With fervent anguish, and consuming pine.
In vain reproaches lend their idle aid,
Deceitful pride, and resolution frail,
Giving a moment's ease. Reflection pours,
Afresh, her beauties on his busy thought,
Her first endearments, twining round the soul,
With all the witchcraft of ensnaring love.
Strait the fierce storm involves his mind anew,
Flames thro' the nerves, and boils along the veins;
While anxious doubt distracts the tortur'd heart;
For even the sad assurance of his fears
Were peace to what he feels. Thus the warm youth,
Whom love deludes into his thorny wilds,
Thro' flowery-tempting paths, or leads a life
Of feavor'd rapture, or of cruel care;
His brightest aims extinguish'd all, and all
His lively moments running down to waste.
But happy they! the happiest of their kind!
Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate
Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend.
'Tis not the coarser tie of human laws,
Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind,
That binds their peace, but harmony itself,
Attuning all their passions into love;
Where friendship full-exerts his softest Power,
Perfect esteem enliven'd by desire
Ineffable, and sympathy of soul,
Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will,
With boundless confidence; for nought but love
Can answer love, and render bliss secure.
Let him, ungenerous, who, alone intent
To bless himself, from sordid parents buys
The loathing virgin, in eternal care,
Well-merited, consume his nights and days:
Let barbarous nations, whose inhuman love
Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel;
Let eastern tyrants from the light of heaven
Seclude their bosom-slaves, meanly possest
Of a meer, lifeless, violated form:
While those whom love cements, in holy faith,
And equal transport, free as nature, live,
Disdaining fear; for what's the world to them,
Its pomp, its pleasure, and its nonsense all!
Who in each other clasp whatever fair
High fancy forms, and lavish hearts can wish,
Something than beauty dearer, should they look
Or on mind, or mind-illumin'd face,
Truth, goodness, honour, harmony, and love,
The richest bounty of indulgent $HEAVEN.
Mean-time a smiling Offspring rises round,
And mingles both their graces. By degrees,
The human blossom blows; and every day,
Soft as it rolls along, shews some new charm,
The father's lustre and the mother's bloom.
Then infant reason grows apace, and calls
For the kind hand of a assidous care:
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young ldea how to shoot,
To pour the fresh instructions o'er mind,
To breathe th' inspiring spirit, and to plant
The generous purpose in the glowing breast.
Oh speak the joy! you whom the sudden tear
Surprizes often while you look around,
And nothing strikes your eye but sights of bliss,
All various nature pressing on the heart,
Obedient fortune, and approving $HEAVEN.
These are the blessing of diviner love;
And thus their moments fly. The seasons thus,
As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll.
Still find them happy; and consenting $SPRING
Shed her own rosy garland on their head:
Till evening comes at last, cool, gentle, calm;
When after the long vernal day of life,
Enamour'd more, as soul approaches soul,
Together, down they sink in social sleep.
And on the dark-green grass, beside the brink
Of haunted steam, that by the roots of oak
Rowls o'er the rocky channel, lie at large,
And sing the glories of the circling year.
Stoop to my theme, inspirit every line,
And teach me to deserve thy $BEST applause.
And, from before the lustre of her face,
White break the clouds away. With tardy step,
Brown Night retires. Young Day pours in apace,
And opens all the lawny prospect wide;
The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top
Swell on the eye, and brighten with the dawn.
Blue thro' theduck, the smoaking currents shine;
And from the bladed field the fearful hare
Limps aukward while along the forest glade
The wild deer trip, and often turning gaze
At early passenger. Musick awakes,
The native voice of undissembling joy;
And thick around the woolland hymns arise.
Rous'd by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves
His mossy cottage where with $PEACE he dwells;
And from the crowed fold, in order, drives
His flock, to taste the verdure of the morn.
To meditation due, and sacred song.
And is there ought in sleep can charm the wise?
To lie in dead oblivion, losing half
The fleeting moments of too short a life?
Total extinction of th' enlighten'd soul!
Or else to feaverish vanity alive,
Wilder'd, and tossing thro' distemper'd dreams?
Who would in such a gloomystate remain,
Longer than nature craves; when every Muse,
And every blooming Pleasure wait without,
To bless the wildly-devious morning walk?
High-gleaming from afar. Prime chearer Light!
Of all material beings first, and best!
Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe!
Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt
In unessential gloom; and thou, red Sun,
In whose wede circle worlds of radiance lie,
Exhaustless brightness, may I sing of thee!
And hence the sculptur'd palace, sumptuous, shines
With glittering silver, and resulgent gold.
A trembling variance of revolving hues,
As the site varies in the gazer's hand.
Invested deep, dwells awfully retir'd
From mortal eye, or angel's purer ken;
Whose single smile has, from the first of time,
Fill'd, over-flowing, all those lamps of heaven,
That beam for ever thro' the boundless sky:
But should he hide his fae, th' astonish'd sun,
And all th' extinguish'd stars, would loosening reel
Wide from their spheres, and chaos come again.
Pensive I muse, or with the rising day,
On Fancy's eagle-wing excursive soar.
Sad when he sets, shuts up her yellow leaves,
Weeping all night; and when he warm returns,
Points her enamour'd bosom to his ray.
$HOME, from his morning task, the swain retreats;
His flock before him stepping to the fold:
While the full-udder'd mother lows around
The chearful cottage then expecting food,
The food of innocence, and health! The daw,
The rook, and magpie, to the grey-grown oaks
(That the calm village, in their verdant arms,
Sheltering, embrace) direct their lazy flight;
Where on the mingling boughs they sit embower'd,
All the hot noon, till cooler hours arise.
Faint, underneath, the homely fowls convene;
And, in a corner of the buzzing shade,
The house dog, with th' employless grey-hound, lies,
Outstretch'd, and sleepy: in his slumbers one
Attacks the nightly thief, and one exults
O'er hill and dale; till waken'd by the wasp,
They bootless snap. Nor shall the muse disdain
To let the little noisy summer-race
Live in her lay, and flutter thro' her song,
Not mean, tho' simple; to the sun ally'd,
From him their high descent, direct, they draw.
The meads their choice, and visit every flower,
And every latent herb; but careful still
To shun the mazes of the sounding bee,
As o'er the blooms he sweeps. Some to the house,
The fold, and dairy, hungry, bend their flight;
Sip round the pail, or taste the curdling cheese:
Oft, inadvertent, by the boiling stream
They're pierc'd to death; or weltering in the bowl,
With powerless wing around them wrapt, expire.
Strides backward grimly pleas'd: the fluttering wing,
And shriller sound declare extream distress,
And ask the helping, hospitals hand.
He dares dislike the structure of the whole.
And lives the man, whose universal eye
Has swept at once th'unbounded scheme of things;
Mark'd their dependance so, and firm accord,
As with unsaultering accent to conclude
That This availeth nought? Has any seen
The mighty chain of beings, lessening down
From $INFINITE PERFECTION to the brink
Of dreary $NOTHING, desolate abyss!
Recoiling giddy thought: or with sharp glance,
Such as remotely-wafting spirits use,
Beheld the glories of the little world?
Till then alone let zealous praise ascend,
And hymns of heavenly wonder, to that $POWER,
Whose wisdom shines as lovely on our minds,
As on our smiling eyes his servant-sun.
Even so luxurious men, unheeding, pass
An idle summer-life in fortune's shine,
A season's glitter! In soft-circling robes,
Which the hard hand of $INDUSTRY has wrought,
The human insects glow; by $HUNGER fed,
And chear'd by toiling $THIRST, they rowl about
From toy to trifle, vanity to vice;
Till blown away by Death, Oblivion comes
Behind, and strikes them from the book of life.
They spread the tawny harvest to the sun,
That casts refreshful round a rural smell:
Or, as they rake the green-appearing ground,
And drive the dusky wave along the mead,
Rises the russet hay-cock thick behind,
In order gay. While heard from dale to dale,
Waking the breeze, resounds the blended voice
Of happy labour, love, and social glee.
In a cross rill, presenting to his with
A living draught: he feels before he drinks!
Echo no more returns the sandy sound
Of sharpening scythe; the mower sinking heaps
O'er him the humid hay, with flowers perfum'd;
And scarce a chirping grashopper is heard
Thro' the dump mead. Distressful nature pants.
The desart reddens; and the stubborn rock,
Split to the centre, sweats at every pore.
The very streams look languid from afar;
Or, thro' the servid glade, impetuous hurl
Into the shelter of the crackling grove.
Already darkens on the dizzy sight,
And double objects dance; unreal sounds
Sing deep around; a weight of sultry dew
Hangs deathful on the limbs; shiver the nerves;
The supple sinews sink; and on the heart,
Misgiving, horror lays his heavy hand.
Thrice happy he! that on the sunless side
Of a romantic mountain, forest-crown'd,
Beneath the whole collected shade reclines:
Or in the gelid caverns, woodbine-wrought,
And fresh bedew'd with ever-spouting streams,
Sits cooly calm; while all the world without,
Unsatisfy'd, and sick, tosses in noon.
Emblem instructive of the virtuous man,
Who keeps his temper'd mind serene, and pure,
And all his passions aptly harmoniz'd,
Amid a jarring world, with vice inflam'd.
Delicious is you shelter to the soul,
As to the hunted hart the salling spring,
Or stream full-flowing, that his swelling sides
Laves, as he floats along the herbag'd brink.
Cold thro' the nerves, your pleasing comfort glides;
The heart beats ????, the fresh-expanded eye,
And ear resume such watch; the sinews knit;
And life shoots swift thro' every lighten'd limb.
The troublous insects lashes with his tail,
Returning still. Amid his subjects safe,
Slumbers the monarch-swain; his careless arm
Thrown round his head on downy moss sustain'd;
Here laid his scrip, with wholesome viands fill'd;
And there his scepter-crook, and watchful dog.
And heart estrang'd to fear: his nervous chest,
Luxuriant, and erect, the seat of strength!
Bears down th' opposing stream: quenchless his thirst,
He takes the river at redoubled draughts;
And with wide nostrils, snorting, skims the wave.
For future tryals fated to prepare;
To prompt the Poet, who devoted gives
His muse to better themes; to sooth the pangs
Of dying Saints; and from the Patriot's breast,
(Backward to mingle in detested war,
But foremost when engag'd) to turn the death;
And numberless such offices of love,
Daily, and nightly, zealous to perform.
"This holy calm, this harmony of mind,
"Where purity and peace immingle charms.
"Then fear us not; but with responsive song,
"Oft in these dim recesses, undisturb'd
"By noisy folly, and discordant vice,
"Of nature sing with us, and nature's $GOD.
"And frequent at the middle waste of night,
"Or all day long, in desarts still, are heard,
"Now here, now there, now wheeling in mid-sky,
"Around, or underneath, aerial sounds,
"Sent from angelic harps, and voices join'd.
"A happiness bestow'd by us, alone,
"On Contemplation, or the hallow'd ear
"Of Poet, swelling to seraphic strain."
Gains on the sun; while all the feathery race,
Smote with afflictive noon, disorder'd droop,
Deep in the thicket; or, from bower to bower
Responsive, force an interrupted strain.
The stock-dove only thro' the forest cooes,
Mournfully hoarse; oft ceasing from his plaint,
Short interval of weary woe! again
The sad idea of his murder'd mate,
Struck from his side by savage fowler's guile,
Across his fancy comes; and then resounds
A louder song of sorrow thro' the' grove.
The dread of tyrants, and the sole resource
Of such as under grim Oppression groan.
So glorious, or so base, as those he prov'd,
In which he conquer'd, and in which he bled.
A $HAMBDEN thine, of unsubmitting soul;
Who stem'd the torrent of a downward age,
To slavery prone; and bad thee rise again,
In all thy native pomp of $FREEDOM fierce.
Nor can the muse the gallant $SIDNEY pass,
The plume of war! with every laurel crown'd,
The lover's myrtle, and the poet's bay.
Nor him of later name, firm ti the cause
Of $LIBERTY, her rough determin'd friend,
The $BRITISH BRUTUS; whose united blood
With $RUSSEL, thine, thou patriot wise, and calm,
Stain'd the sad annals of a giddy reign;
Aiming at lawless power, tho' meanly sunk
In loose inglorious sloth. High thy renown
In $SAGES too, far as the sacred light
Of science spreads, and wakes the muses' song.
Thine is a $BACON form'd of happy mold,
When $NATURE smil'd, deep, comprehensive, clear,
Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul,
$PLATO, the $STAGYRITE, and $TULLY join'd.
The generous $ASHLEY thine, the friend of man;
Who scan'd his nature with a brother's eye,
His weakness prompt to shade, to raise his aim,
To touch the finer movements of the mind,
And with the $MORAL BEAUTY charm the heart.
What need I name thy $BOYLE, whose pious search
Still sought the great $CREATOR in his works,
By sure experience led? and why thy $LOCKE,
Who made the whole internal world his own?
Let comprehensive $NEWTON speak thy fame,
In all philosophy. For solemn song,
Is not wild $SHAKESPEAR nature's boast, and thine?
And every greatly amiable muse
Of elder ages in thy $MILTON met?
His was the treasure of two thousand years,
Seldom indulg'd to man; a god-like mind,
Unlimited, and various, as his $THEME;
Astonishing as $CHAOS; as the bloom
Of blowing $EDEN fair; soft as the talk
Of our $GRAND PARENTS, and as $HEAVEN sublime.
Of distant nations; whose remotest shore
Can soon be shaken by thy naval arm;
Not to be shook thy self, but all assaults
Baffling, like thy hoar cliffs the loud sea-wave.
And ever musing on the common weal,
Still labours glorious with some brave design.
Intolerable day, yet in their coats
A cooling juice contain. Peaceful beneath,
Leans the huge elephant; and in his shade
A multitude of beauteous creatures play,
And birds of bolder note rejoice around.
O fruits, and flowers, and every verdure spoilt;
Barren, and bare, a joyless, weary waste;
Thin-cottag'd; and in time of trying need,
Abandon'd by the vanish'd brook; like one
Of fading fortune by his treacherous friend.
It posture fixes, and its colour keeps.
The statue-folk, within, unnumber'd crowd
The steets, in various attitudes surpriz'd
By sudden fate, and live on every face
The passions caught, beyond the sculptor's art.
Here leaning soft, the marble-lovers stand,
Delighted even in death; and each for each
Feeling alone, with that expressive look,
Which perfect $NATURE only knows to give.
And there the father agonizing bends
Fond o'er his weeping wife, and infant train
Aghast, and trembling, tho' they know not why.
The stiffen'd vulgar stretch their arms to heaven,
With horror staring; while in council deep
Assembled full, the hoary-headed fires
Sit sadly-thoughtful of the public fate.
As when old $ROME, beneath the raging $GAUL,
Sunk her proud turrets, resolute on death,
Around the $FORUM sat the grey divan
Of $SENATORS, majestic, motionless,
With ivory-staves, and in their awful robes
Dress'd like the falling fathers of mankind;
Amaz'd, and shivering, from the solemn sight
The red barbarians shrunk, and deem'd them $GODS.
Roam, licens'd by the shading hour of blood,
And soul misdeed, when the pure day has shut
His sacred eye. The rabid tyger then,
The fiery panther, and the whisker'd pard,
(Bespeckled fair, the beauty of the waste)
In dire divan, surround their $SHAGGY KING,
Majestic, stalking o'er the burning sand,
With planted step; while an obsequious crowd
Of grinning forms at humble darksome caves,
Where o'er gnaw'd bones they slumber'd out the day,
By supreme hunger smit, and thirst intense,
At once their mingling voices raise to $HEAVEN;
And, with imperious and repeated roars,
Demanding food, the wilderness resounds,
From $ATLAS eastward to the frighted $NILE.
The rowling main, that ever toils below;
Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,
Where the round ether mixes with the wave,
Ships, dim-discover'd, dropping from the clouds.
At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart
Sinks helpless; while the wonted roar is up,
And his continual thro' the tedious night.
Collects a close, incumbent night of death;
Uninterrupted by the living winds,
Forbid to blow a wholesome breeze; and stain'd
With many a mixture, by the sun suffus'd,
Of angry aspect? Princely $WISDOM then
Dejects his watchful eye; and from the hand
Of drooping $JUSTICE, ineffectual, falls
The sword, and balance. Mute the voice of Joy;
And hush'd the murmer of the busy world.
Empty the streets, with uncouth verdure clad,
And rang'd at open noon by beast of prey,
And birds of bloody beak. The sullen door
No visit knows, nor hears the wailing voice
Of servent Want. Even soul-attracted friends,
And relatives endear'd for many a year,
Savag'd by woe, forget the social tye,
The close engagement of the kindred heart;
And, sick in solitude, successive die,
Untended, and unmourn'd. While to compleat
The scence of desolation, wide around,
Denying all retreat, the grim guards stand,
And give the flying wretch a better death.
And stirs the forest-leaf without a breath.
Prone, to the lowest vale, th' aerial tribes
Descend: the tempest-loving raven scarce
Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze
The cattel stand, and on the scouling heavens
Cast a deploring eye; by man forsook,
Who to the crowded cottage hies him fast,
Or seeks the shelter of the downward cave.
Enlarging, deepening, mingling, peal on peal
Crush'd horrible, convulsing heaven and earth.
The same, distinguish'd by their sex alone:
Hers the mild lustre of the blooming morn,
And his the radiance of the risen day.
Unwonted sighs, and stealing oft a look
Of the big gloom, on $CELADON her eye
Fell tearful, wetting her disorder'd cheek.
In vain assuring love, and confidence
In heaven repress'd her fear; it grew, and shook
Her frame near dissolution. He perceiv'd
Th' unequal conflict, and as angels look
On dying saints, his eyes compassion shed,
With love illumin'd high. "Fear not, he said,
"Fair innocence! thou stranger to offence,
"And inward storm! $HE, who yon skies involves
"In frowns of darkness, ever smiles on thee,
"With full regard. O'er thee the secret shaft
"That wastes at midnight, or th' undreaded hour
"Of noon, flies hurtless; and that very voice,
"Which thunders terror thro' the conscious heart,
"With tongues of seraphs whispers peace to thine.
"'Tis safty to be near thee sure, and thus
"To clasp perfection!" From his void embrace,
(Mysterious heaven!) that moment, in a heap
Of pallid ashes fell the beauteous maid.
But who can paint the lover, as he stood,
Struck by severe amazement, hating life,
Speechless, and fix'd in all the death of woe!
So, faint resemblance, on the marble-tomb,
The well-dissembl'd mourner stooping stands,
For ever silent, and for ever sad.
$'TIS beauty all, and grateful song, around,
Joyn'd to the low of kine, and numerous bleat
Of flocks thick-nibbling thro' the clover'd vale.
And shall the hymn be marr'd by thankless man,
Most-favour'd; who with voice articulate
Should lead the chorus of this lower world?
Shall he, so soon forgetful of the hand
That hush'd the thunder, and expands the sky,
After the tempest puff his idle vows;
And a new dance of vanity begin,
Scarce ere the pant forsakes his feeble heart?
While, like the $CYPRIAN goddess, $AMORET,
Delicious dress'd in rosy-dimpled smiles,
And all one softness, melted on the sense.
Nor $PARIS panted stronger, when aside
The rival-goddess the veil divine
Cast unconfin'd, and gave him all their charms,
Than, $DAMON, thou; the stoick now no more,
But man deep-felt, as from the snowy leg,
And slender foot, th' inverted silk they drew;
As the soft touch dissolv'd the the virgin-zone;
And, thro' the parting robe, th' alternate breast,
With youth wild-throbbing, on thy lawless gaze
Luxuriant rose. Yet more enamour'd still,
When from their naked limbs, of glowing white,
In folds loose-floating fell the fainter lawn;
And fair expos'd they stood, shrunk from themselves;
With fancy blushing; at the doubtful breeze
Arrous'd, and starting, like the fearful fawn.
So stands the statue that enchants the world,
Her full proportions such, and bashful so
Bends ineffectual from the roving eye.
Then to the flood they rush'd; the plunging fair
The parted flood with closing waves receiv'd;
And, every beauty softening, every grace
Flushing afresh, a mellow lustre shed:
As shines the lily thro' the crystal mild;
Or as the rose amid the morning-dew
Puts on a warmer glow. In various play,
While thus they wanton'd; now beneath the wave,
But ill conceal'd; and now with steaming locks
That half-embrac'd them in a humid veil,
Rising again; the latent $DAMON drew
Such draughts of love and beauty to the soul,
As put his harsh philosophy to flight,
The joyless search of long-deluded years;
And $MUSIDORA fixing in his heart,
Inform'd, and humaniz'd him into man.
Nor when, the brook pellucid, Winter keens,
Would I weak-shivering linger on the brink.
Thus life redoubles, and is oft preserv'd
By the bold swimmer, in the swift illapse
Of accident disasterous. Hence the limbs
Knit into force; and the same $ROMAN arm,
That rose victorious o'er the conquer'd earth,
First learn'd, while tender, to subdue the wave.
Even from the body's purity the mind
Receives a secret, sympathetic aid.
She sends on earth; then $THAT of deeper die
Steals soft behind; and then a $DEEPER still,
In circle following circle, gathers round,
To close the face of things. A fresher breeze
Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream,
Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn:
While the quail clamours for his running mate.
Of him, whom his ungentle fortune urg'd
Against himself to lift the hated hand
Of violence; by men cast out from life,
And after death, to which they drove his hope,
Into the broad way side. The ruin'd tower
Is also shun'd; whose hoary chambers hold,
So night-struck fancy dreams, the yelling ghost.
Shines eminent; and from her genial rise,
When day-light sickens, till it springs afresh,
Sheds influence on earth, to love, and life,
And every form of vegetation kind.
As thus th' effulgence tremulous I drink,
With glad peruse, the lambent lightnings shoot
A-cross the sky; or horizontal dart
O'er half the nations, in a minute's space,
Conglob'd, or long. Astonishment succeeds,
And silence, ere the various talk begin.
Whose mild vibrations sooth the parted soul,
New to the dawning of coelestial day.
Hence thro' her nourish'd powers, enlarg'd by thee,
She soaring spurns, with elevated pride,
The tangling mass of cares, and low desires,
That bind the fluttering crowd; and, angel-wing'd,
The heights of Science, and of Virtue gains,
Where all is calm and clear; with Nature round
Or in the starry regions, or th' abyss,
To Reason's, and to Fancy's eye display'd:
The $FIRST up-tracing from the vast inane,
The chain of causes and effects to $HIM,
Who, all-sustaining, in himself, alone
Possesses $BEING; while the $LAST receives
The whole magnificence of heaven and earth,
And every beauty, delicate or bold,
Obvious or more remote, with livelier sense,
A world swift-painted on th' attentive mind.
With musick, image, sentiment, and thought,
Never to die! the treasure of mankind,
Their highest honour, and their truest joy!
Embellish life. While thus laborious crouds
Ply the tough oar, $PHILOSOPHY directs,
Star-led, the helm; or like the liberal breath
Or urgent heaven, invisible, the sails
Swells out, and bears th' inferior world along.
So wills $ETERNAL PROVIDENCE, sits deep.
Enough for us we know that this dark state,
In wayward passions lost, and vain pursuits,
This infancy of being, cannot prove
The final issue of the works of $GOD;
By $LOVE and $WISDOM inexpressive form'd,
And ever rising with the rising Mind.
Would from the $PUBLIC VOICE thy gentle ear
A while engage. Thy noble cares she knows,
The patriot-virtues that distend thy thought,
Spread on thy front, and in thy conduct glow;
While listening senates hang upon thy tongue,
Devolving thro' the maze of eloquence
A rowl of periods, sweeter than her song.
But she too pants for publick virtue, she,
Tho' weak of power, yet strong in ardent will,
Whene'er her country rushes on her heart,
Assumes a bolder note, and fondly tries
To mix the patriots with the poet's flame.
Unbounded harvests hang the heavy head.
Rich, silent, deep, they stand; for not a gale
Rolls its light billows o'er the bending plain;
A calm of plenty! till the ruffled air
Falls from its poise, and gives the breeze to blow.
Rent is the fleecy mantle of the sky;
The clouds fly different; and the sudden sun
By fits effulgent gilds th'illumin'd field,
And black by fits the shadows sweep along.
A gayly checker'd, wide-extended view,
Far as the circling eye can shoot around,
Convolv'd, and tossing in a flood of corn.
Implanted, and profusely pour'd around
Materials infinite; but idle all.
Still unexerted, in th'unconscious breast,
Slept the lethargic powers; Corruption still,
Voracious, swallow'd what the liberal hand
Of $BOUNTY scatter'd o'er the savage year.
And still the sad barbarian, roving, mix'd
With beasts of prey; or for his acorn-meal
Fought the fierce tusky boar: a shivering wretch!
Aghast, and comfortless, when the red north,
With winter charg'd, let the mixt tempest fly,
Hail, rain, and snow, and bitter-breathing frost.
Then to the shelter of the hut he fled;
and the wild season, fordid, pin'd away.
For home he had not; home is the resort
Of love, of joy, of peace, and plenty, where,
Supporting and supported, polish'd friends,
And dear relations minge into bliss.
But this the rugged savage never felt,
Even desolate in crouds; and thus his days
Roll'd heavy, dark, and unenjoy'd along;
A waste of time! till $INDUSTRY approach'd,
And rous'd him from his miserable sloth;
His faculties unfolded; pointed out,
Where lavish $NATURE the directing hand
Of $ART demanded; shew'd him how to raise
His feeble force by the mechanic powers,
To dig the mineral from the vaulted earth,
On what to turn the piercing rage of fire,
On what the torrent, and the gather'd blast;
Gave the tall antient forest to his ax;
Taught him to chip the wood, and hew the stone,
Till by degrees the finish'd fabrick rose;
Tore from his limbs the blood-polluted fur,
And wrapt them in the woolly vestment warm,
Or bright in glossy silk, and flowing lawn;
With wholesome viands fill'd his table, pour'd
The generous glass around, inspir'd, to wake
The life-refining soul of decent wit:
Nor stopp'd at barren, bare necessity;
But still advancing bolder, led him on,
By hardy patience, and experience flow,
To pomp, to pleasure, elegance, and grace;
And breathing high ambition thro' his soul,
Set science, wisdom, glory in his view,
And bad him be the $LORD of all below.
Into perfection wrought. Uniting all,
Society grew numerous, high, polite,
And happy. Nurse of art! the city rose;
And stretching street on street by thousands led,
From twining woody haunts, and the tough yew
To bows strong-straining, her aspiring sons.
'Twas nought but labour, the whole dusky groupe
Of clustering houses, and of mingling men,
Restless design, and execution strong.
In every street the founding hammer ply'd
His massy task; while the corrosive file,
In flying touches, form'd the fine machine.
Shot up their spires; the bellying sheet between
Possess'd the breezy void; the sooty hulk
steer'd sluggish on; the splendid barge along
Row'd, regular, to harmony; around,
The boat, light-skimming, stretch'd its oary wings;
While deep the various voice of servent toil
From bank to bank increas'd; whence ribb'd with oak,
To bear the $BRITISH thunder, black, and bold,
The roaring vessel rush'd into the main.
Sits at the social fire, and happy hears
Th'excluded tempest idly rave along.
His harden'd fingers deck the gaudy $SPRING.
Without him $SUMMER were an arid waste;
Not to th' $AUTUMNAL months could thus transmit
These full, mature, immeasurable stores,
That, waving round, recal my wandering song.
His fated eye, feels his heart heave with joy.
The gleaners spread around, and here and there,
Spike after spike, their sparing harvest pick.
Be not too narrow, husband-men! but fling
From the full sheaf, with charitable stealth,
The liberal handful. Think, oh grateful think!
How good the $GOD of harvest is to you;
Who pours abundance o'er your flowing fields;
While these unhappy partners of your kind
Wide-hover round you, like the fowls of heaven,
And ask their humble dole. The various turns
Of fortune ponder; that your sons may want
What now, with hard reluctance, saint, ye give.
Safe from the cruel, blasting arts of man;
Almost on $NATURE'S common bounty fed,
Like the gay birds that sung them to repose,
Content, and careless of to-morrow's fare.
Her form was fresher than the morning-rose,
When the dew wets its leaves; unstain'd, and pure,
As is the lily, or the mountain snow.
The modest virtues mingled in her eyes,
Still on the ground deject, and darting all
Their humid beams into the blooming flowers:
Or when the stories that her mother told,
Of what her faithless fortune flatter'd once,
Thrill'd in her thought, they, like the dewy star
Of evening, shone in tears. A native grace
Sat fair-proportion'd on her polish'd limbs,
Veil'd in a simple robe; for lovelines
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is when unadorn'd adorn'd he most.
Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
Recluse among the woods; if city-dames
Will deign their faith. And thus she went compell'd
By strong necessity, with as serene,
And pleas'd a look as patience can put on,
To glean $PALAEMON'S fields. The pride of swains
$PALEMON was, the generous, and the rich,
Who led the rural life in all its joy,
And elegance, such as $ARCADIAN song
Transmits from antient, incorrupted times;
When tyrant custom had not shackled man,
And free to follow nature was the mode.
He then, his fancy with autumnal scenes
Amusing, chanc'd beside his reaper-train
To walk, when poor $LAVINIA drew his eye;
Unconscious of her power, and turning quick
With unaffected blushes from his gaze.
He saw her charming, but he saw not half
The charms her downcast modestly conceal'd.
That very moment love and chast desire
Sprung in his bosom, to himself unknown;
For still the world prevail'd, and its dread laugh,
Which fearce the firm philosopher can scorn,
Should his heart own a gleaner in the field:
And thus in secret to his foul he figh'd.
In what unsmiling desart, hast thou drawn
The kindest aspect of delighted heaven?
Into such beauty spread? and blown so white?
Tho' poverty's cold wind, and crushing rain,
Beat keen, and heavy, on thy tender years.
O let me now, into a richer soil,
Transplant thee safe! where vernal suns, and showers,
Diffuse their warmest, largest influence;
And of my garden be the pride, and joy!
It ill befits thee, oh it ill befits
$ACASTO'S daughter, his, whose open stores,
Tho' vast, were little to his ampler heart,
The father o a country, thus to pick
The very refuse of those harvest-fields,
His bounty taught to gain, and right enjoy.
Then throw that shameful pittance from thy hand,
But ill apply'd to such a rugged task;
With harvest shining all these fields are thine;
And, if my wishes may presume so far,
Their master, who then indeed were blest,
To make the daughter of $ACASTO so.
Their trembling tops; and a still murmur runs
Along the soft-inclining fields of corn.
But as th'aereal tempest fuller swells;
And in one mighty stream, invisible,
Immense, the whole excited atmosphere,
Impetuous rushes o'er the sounding world;
Strain'd to the root, the stooping forest pours
A rustling shower of yet untimely leaves.
High-beat, the circling mountains eddy in,
From the bare wild, the dissipated storm,
And send it in a torrent down the vale.
Expos'd, and naked, to its utmost rage,
Thro' all the sea of harvest rolling round,
The billowy plain boils wide; nor can evade,
Tho7 plyant to the blast, its seizing force;
Or whirl'd in air, or into vacant chaff
Shook waste. And sometimes too a burst of rain,
Swept from the black horizon, broad, descends
In one continuous flood. Still over head
The glomerating tempest grows, and still
The deluge deepens; till the fields around
Ly sunk, and flatted, in the sordid wave.
Sudden, the ditches swell; the meadows swim.
Red, from the hills, innumerable streams
Tumultuous roar; and high above its banks
The river list; before whose weighty rush,
Herds, flocks, and harvests, cottages, and swains,
Roll mingled down; all that the winds had spar'd,
In one wild moment ruin'd, the big hopes,
And well-earn'd treasures of the painful year.
Fled to some eminence, the husbandman,
Helpless beholds the miserable wreck
Driving along; his drowning ox at once
Descending, with his labours scatter'd round,
He sees; and instant o'er his shivering thought
Comes winter unprovided, and a train
Of clamant children dear. Ye masters, then
Be mindful of the rough laborious hand,
That sinks you soft in elegance, and ease;
Be mindful of those limbs, in russet clad,
WHose toil to yours is warmth, and graceful pride;
And O be mindful of that sparing board.
Which covers your's with luxury profuse,
Makes your glass sparkle, and your sense rejoice!
Nor cruelly demand what the deep rains,
And all-involving winds have swept away.
Immediate, brings them from the towering wing,
Dead to the ground; or drives them else disperst,
Wounded, and wheeling various, down the wind.
Upbraid us not, ye wolves! ye tygers fell!
for hunger kindles you, and lawless want;
But lavish fed, in Nature(
But lavish fed, in Nature's bounty roll'd,
To laugh at anguish, and rejoice in blood,
Is what your horrid bosoms never knew.
In scatter'd, sullen openings, far behind,
With every breeze she hears the coming storm.
But nearer, and more frequent, as it loads
The fighting gale, she springs amaz'd, and all
The savage soul of game is up at once:
The pack full-opening, various; the shrill horn,
Refounded from the hills; the neighboring steed,
Wild for the chace; and the loud hunter's shout;
O'er a weak, harmless, flying creature, all
Mix'd in mad tumult, and discordant joy.
And plunges deep into the wildest wood.
If slow, yet sure, adhesive to the tract
Hot-steaming, up behind him comes again
Th'inhuman rout, and from the shady depth
Expel him, circling thro' his every shift.
He sweeps the forest oft; and sobbing sees
The glades, mild-opening to the golden day;
Where, in kind contest, with his butting friends
He went to struggle, or his loves enjoy.
Oft in the full-descending flood he tries
To lose the scent, and lave his burning sides;
Oft seeks the herd; the watchful herd, alarm'd,
With quick consent, avoid th'infectious maze.
What shall he do> His once so vivid nerves,
So full of buoyant soul, inspire no more
The fainting course; but wrenching, breathless toil,
Sick, seizes on his heart: he stands at bay;
And puts his last, weak refuge in despair.
The big round tears run down his dappled face;
He groans in anguish; while the growling pack,
Blood-happy, hang at his fair, jutting chast,
And mark his beauteous, checquer'd sides with gore.
Throw the broad ditch behind you; o'er the hedge
High-bound, resistless; nor the deep morass
Refuse, but thro' the shaking wilderness
Pick your nice way; into the perilous flood
Bear fearless, of the raging instinct full;
And as you ride the torrent, to the banks
Your triumph sound sonorous, running round,
From rock to rock, in circling echo soft;
Then snatch the mountains by their woody tops;
Rush down the dangerous steep; and o'er the lawn,
In fancy swallowing up the space between,
Pour all your speed into the rapid game.
For happy he! Who tops the wheeling chace;
Has every maze evolv'd, and every guile
Disclos'd; who knows the merits of the pack;
Who saw the villain seiz'd, and dying hard,
Without complaint, tho' by an hundred mouths
At once tore, mercyless. Thrice happy he!
At hour of dusk, while the retreating horn
Calls them to ghostly halls of grey renown,
With woodland honours grac'd; the fox's fur,
Depending decent from the roof; and spread
Round the drear walls, with antick figures fierce,
The stag's large front: he then is loudest heard,
When the night staggers with severer toils;
And their repeated wonders shake the dome.
On violets diffus'd, while soft she hears
Her panting shepherd stealing to her arms.
Nor wanting is the brown october, drawn,
Mature, and perfect, from his dark retreat
Of thirty years; and now his honest front
Flames in the light refulgent, not asham'd
To vie it with the vineyard's best produce.
Perhaps a while, amusive, thoughtful whisk
Walks gentle round, beneath a cloud of smoak,
Wreath'd, fragrant, from the pipe; or the quick dice,
In thunder leaping from the box, awake
The sounding gammon: while romp-loving miss
Is haul'd about, in gallantry robust.
And pavement, faithless to the fuddled foot.
Thus as they swim in mutual swill, the talk,
Vociferate at once by twenty tongues,
Reels fast from theme to theme; from horses, hounds,
To church, or mistress, politicks, or ghost,
In endless mazes, intricate, perplext.
Mean-time, with sudden interruption, loud,
Th'impatient catch bursts from the joyous heart.
That moment touch'd is every kindred soul;
And, opening in a full-mouth'd $CRY of joy,
The laugh, the slap, the jocund curse goes round;
While, from their slumbers shook, the kennel'd hounds
Mix in the musick of the day again.
As when the tempest, that has vex'd the deep
The dark night long, falls murmuring towards morn;
So their mirth gradual sinks. Their feeble tongues,
Unable to take up the cumbrous word,
Ly quite dissolv'd. Before their maudlin eyes,
Seen dim, and blue, the double tapers dance,
Like the sun wading thro' the misty sky.
Then, sliding sweet, they drop. O'erturn'd above
Lies the wet, broken scene; and stretch'd below,
Each way, the drunken slaughter; where astride
The lubber Power himself triumphant sits,
Slumbrous, inclining still from side to side,
And steeps them, silent all, in sleep till morn.
And by this silent adulation, soft,
To their protection more engaging man.
O may their eyes no miserable sight,
Save weeping lovers, see! a nobler game,
Thro' love's enchanting wiles pursu'd, yet fled,
In chace ambiguous. May their tender limbs
Float in the loose simplicity of dress!
And fashion'd all to harmony, alone,
Know they to seize the captivated soul,
In rapture warbled from the radiant lip;
To teach the lute to languish; with smooth step,
Disclosing motion in its every charm,
To swim along, and swell the mazy dance;
To train the foliage o'er the snowy lawn;
To play the pencil, turn th' instructive page;
To give new flavour to the fruitful year,
And heighten Nature's dainties; in their race
To rear their graces into second life;
To give society its highest taste;
Well-order'd home man's best delight to make;
And by submissive wisdom, modest skill,
With every kinder, care-elusive art,
To raise the glory, animate the joys,
And sweeten all the toils of human life;
This be the female dignity, and praise.
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse,
With $BRITISH freedom sing the $BRITISH song;
How, from $SILURIAN vats, high-sparkling wines
Foam in transparent floods; some strong, to chear
The wintry revels of the labouring hind;
And tasteful some, to cool the summer-hours.
Where in the secret bower, and winding walk
They twine the bay for thee. Here oft alone,
Fir'd by the thirst of thy applause, I court
Th'inspiring breeze; and meditate the book
Of $NATURE, ever-open; aiming thence,
Heart-taught like this, to learn the moral song,
And, as I steal along, the sunny wall,
Where $AUTUMN basks, with fruit empurpled deep,
My theme still urges in my vagrant thought;
Presents the downy peach; the purple plumb,
With a fine blueish mist of animals
Clouded; the ruddy nectarine; and dark,
Beneath his ample leaf, the luscious fig.
The vine too here her curling tendrils shoots;
Hangs out her clusters, swelling to the south;
And scarcely wishes for a warmer sky,
Spreads o'er the vale; or up the mountain climbs,
Profuse; and drinks amid the sunny rocks,
From cliff to cliff encreas'd, the heighten'd blaze.
Low bend the gravid boughs. The clusters clear,
Half thro' the foliage seen, or ardent flame,
Or shine transparent; while perfection breathes
White o'er the turgent film the living dew.
As thus they brighten with exalted juice,
Touch'd into flavour by the mingling ray;
The rural youth and virgins o'er the field,
Each fond for each to cull th'autumnal prime,
Exulting rove, and speak the vintage nigh.
Then comes the crushing swain; the country floats,
And foams unbounded with the mashy flood;
That by degrees fermented, and refin'd,
Round the rais'd nations pours the cup of joy:
The Claret smooth, deep as the lip we press,
In sparkling fancy, while we drain the bowl;
The mellow-tasted Burgundy; and quick,
As is the wit it gives, the bright Champaign.
Now by the cool, declining year condens'd,
Descend the copious exhalations, check'd
As up the middle sky unseen they stole,
And roll the doubling fogs around the hill.
No more the mountain, horrid, vast, sublime,
Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides;
And deep betwixt contending kingdoms lays
The rocky, long division; while aloft,
His piny top is, lessening, lost in air:
No more his thousand prospects fill the view
With great variety; but in a night
Of gathering vapour, from the baffled sense,
Sink dark, and total. Nor alone immerst;
The huge dusk, gradual, swallows up the plain.
Vanish the woods. The dim-seen river seems
Sullen, and slow, to rowl the misty wave.
Even in the height of noon opprest, the sun
Sheds weak, and blunt, his wide-refracted ray;
Whence glaring oft with many a broaden'd orb
He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth,
Seen thro' the turbid air, beyond the life,
Objects appear; and, wilder'd, o'er the waste
The shepherd stalks gigantick. Till at last
Wreath'd close around, in deeper circles still
Successive floating, sits the general fog
Unbounded o'er the world; and mingling thick,
A formless, gray confusion covers all.
As when of old (so sung the $HEBREW bard)
Light, uncollected, thro' the Chaos urg'd
Its infant way; nor Order yet had drawn
His endless train forth from the dubious gloom.
That large refresh the fair-divided earth;
And, in the rage of summer, never cease
To send a thundering torrent to the main?
They leave each saline particle behind,
And clear, and sweeten, as they soak along.
Nor stops the restless fluid, mounting still,
Tho' here and there in lowly plains it springs,
But to the mountain courted by the sand,
That leads it darkling on in faithful maze,
Far from the parent-main, it boils again
Fresh into day; and all the glittering hill
Is bright with spouting rills. The vital stream
Hence, in its subterranean passage, gains,
From the wash'd mineral, that restoring power,
And salutary virtue, which anew
Strings every nerve, calls up the kindling soul
Into the healthful cheek, and joyous eye:
And whence, the royal maid, $AMELIA blooms
With new-flush'd graces; yet reserv'd to bless,
Beyond a crown, some happy prince; and shine,
In all her mother's matchless virtues drest,
The $CAROLINA of another land.
And now their rout design'd, their leaders chose,
Their tribes adjusted, clean'd their vigorous wings;
And many a circle, many a short essay
Wheel'd round and round, in congregation full,
The figur'd flight ascends; and riding high
Th'aerial billows, mixes with the clouds.
Dire-clinging, gathers his ovarious food;
Or sweeps the fishy shore; or treasures up
The plumage, rising full, to form the bed
Of luxury. And here a while the muse,
High-hovering o'er the broad cerulean scene,
Sees $CALEDONIA, in romantic view:
Her airy mountains, from the gelid main,
Invested with a keen, diffusive sky,
Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge,
Incult, robust, and tall, by $NATURE'S hand
Planted of old; her azure lakes between,
Pour'd out extensive, and of watry wealth
Full; winding deep, and green, her fertile vales;
With many a cool, translucent, brimming flood
Wash'd lovely, from the $TWEED, pure parent-stream,
To where the north-inflated tempest foams
O'er $ORCA, or $BETUBIUM'S highest peak.
Nurse of a people, in misfortune's school
Train'd up to hardy deeds; soon visited
By $LEARNING, when before the $GOTHIC rage
She took her western flight. A generous race,
Of unsubmitting spirit, wise, and brave,
Who still thro' bleeding ages struggled hard,
To hold a hapless, undiminish'd state;
Too much in vain! Hence of ignoble bounds
Impatient, and by tempting glory borne
O'er every land, for every land their life
Has flow'd profuse, their piercing genius plan'd,
And swell'd the pomp of peace their faithful toil.
As from their own clear north, in radiant streams,
Bright over $EUROPE bursts the $BOREAL $MORN.
How to dash wide the billow; nor look on,
Shamefully passive, while $BATAVIAN fleets
Defraud us of the glittering, finny swarms,
That heave our friths, and croud upon our shores;
How all-enlivening trade to rouse, and wing
The prosperous sail, from every growing port,
Unchalleng'd, round the sea-incircled globe;
And thus united $BRITAIN $BRITAIN make
Intire, th'imperial $MISTRESS of the deep.
To sooty dark. These now the lonesome muse,
Low-whispering, lead into their leaf-strown walks,
And give the $SEASON in its latest view.
One dying strain, to chear the woodman's toil.
Haply some widow'd songster pours his plaint
Far, in faint warblings, thro' the tawny copse.
While congregated thrushes, linnets, larks,
And each wild throat, whose artless strains so late
Swell'd all the music of the swarming shades,
Robb'd of their tuneful souls, now shivering sit
On the dead tree, a dull, despondent flock!
With not a brightness waving o'er their plumes,
And nought save chattering discord in their note.
O let not, aim'd from some inhuman eye,
The gun the music of the coming year
Destroy; and harmless, unsuspecting harm,
Lay the weak tribes, a miserable prey!
In mingled murder, fluttering on the ground.
But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs
Sob, o'er the sky the leafy ruin streams;
Till choak'd, and matted with the dreary shower,
The forest-walks, at every rising gale,
Roll wide the wither'd waste, and whistle bleak.
Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields;
And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race
Their sunny robes resign. Even what remain'd
Of bolder fruit falls from the naked tree;
And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around
The desolated prospect thrills the soul.
Infuses every tenderness; and far
Beyond dim earth exalts the swelling thought.
Ten thousand fleet ideas, such
As never mingled with the Vulgar's dream,
Crowd fast into the mind's creative eye.
As varied, and as high: devotion rais'd
To rapture, and divine astonishment.
The love of Nature unconfin'd, and chief
Of humankind; the large, ambitious wish,
To make them blest; the sigh for suffering worth,
Lost in obscurity; th'indignant scorn
Of mighty pride; the fearless, great resolve;
The wonder that the dying patriot draws,
Inspiring glory thro' remotest time;
Th'arrousing pant for virtue, and for fame;
The sympathies of love, and friendship dear;
With all the social offspring of the heart.
To weeping grottoes, and prophetic glooms!
Where angel-forms athwart the solemn dusk,
Tremendous sweep, or seem to sweep along;
And voices more than human, thro' the void
Deep-sounding, seize th'enthusiastic ear.
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.
Wide the pale deluge floats; and streaming mild
O'er the sky'd mountain to the shadowy vale,
While rocks, and floods reflect the quivering gleam,
The whole air whitens with a boundless tide
Of silver radiance, trembling round the world.
And inspect sage; the waving brightness he
Curious surveys, inquisitive to know
The causes, and materials, yet unfix'd,
Of this appearance beautiful, and new.
Whither decoy'd by the fantastic blaze,
Now sunk and now renew'd, he's quite absorpt,
Rider and horse, into the miry gulph:
While still, from day to day, his pining wife,
And plaintive children his return await,
In wild conjecture lost. At other times,
Sent by the better Genius of the night,
Innoxious, gleaming on the horse's mane,
The meteor sits; and shews the narrow path,
That winding leads thro' pits of death, or else
Instructs him how to take the dangerous ford.
Can you not borrow? and in just return,
Afford them shelter from the wintry winds;
Or, as the sharp year pinches, with their own
Again regale them on some smiling day?
Hard by, the stony bottom of their town
Looks desolate, and wild; with here and there
A helpless number, who the ruin'd state
Survive, lamenting weak, cast out to death.
Thus a proud city, populous, and rich,
Full of the works of peace, and high in joy,
At theatre, or feast, or sunk in sleep,
(As late, $PALERMO, was thy fate) is seiz'd
By some dread earthquake, and convulsive hurl'd,
Sheer from the black foundation, stench-involv'd,
Into a gulph of blue, sulphureous flame.
How clear the cloudless sky! how deeply ting'd
With a peculiar blue! th'aethereal arch
How swell'd immense! amid whose azure thron'd
The radiant sun how gay! how calm below
The gilded earth! the harvest-treasures all
Now gather'd in, beyond the rage of storms,
Sure to the swain; the circling fence shut up;
And instant $WINTER bid to do his worst.
While loose to festive joy, the country round
Laughs with the loud sincerity of mirth,
Care shook away. The toil-invigorate youth,
Not needing the melodious impulse much,
Leaps, wildly graceful, in the lively dance.
Her every charm abroad, the village-toast,
Young, buxom, warm, in native beauty rich,
Darts not-unmeaning looks; and, where her eye
Points an approving smile, with double force,
The cudgel rattles, and the struggle twists.
Age too shines out; and, garrulous, recounts
The feats of youth. Thus they rejoyce; nor think
That, with to-morrow's sun, their annual toil
Begins again the never-ceasing round.
What tho' depriv'd of these fantastic joys,
That still amuse the wanton, still deceive;
A face of pleasure, but a heart of pain;
Their hollow moments undelighted all.
Sure peace is his; a solid life, estrang'd
To disappointment, and fallacious hope;
Rich in content, in Nature's bounty rich,
In herbs, and fruits? whatever greens the $SPRING,
When heaven descends in showers; or bends the bough,
When $SUMMER reddens, and when $AUTUMN beams;
Or in the $WINTRY glebe whatever lies
Conceal'd, and fattens with the richest sap;
These are not wanting; nor the milky drove,
Luxuriant, spread o'er all the lowing vale;
Nor bleating mountains; nor the chide of streams,
And hum of bees, inviting sleep sincere
Into the guiltless breast, beneath the shade,
Or thrown at large amid the fragrant hay:
Nor aught beside of prospect, grove, or song,
Dim grottoes, gleaming lakes, and fountain clear.
Here too lives simple truth; plain innocence;
Unfully'd beauty; sound, unbroken youth,
Patient of labour, with a little pleas'd;
Health ever-blooming; unambitious toil;
Calm contemplation, and Poetic ease.
Fomenting discord, and perplexing right,
An iron race! and Those of fairer front,
But equal inhumanity, in courts,
And slippery pomp delight, in dark cabals;
Wreathe the deep bow, diffuse the lying smile,
And tread the weary labyrinth of state.
While He, from all the stormy passions free,
That restless men involve, hears, and but hears,
At distance safe, the human tempest roar,
Wrapt close in conscious peace. The fall of kings,
The rage of nations, and the crush of states
Move not the man, who, from the world escap'd,
In still retreats, and flowery solitudes,
To $NATURE'S voice attends, from day to day,
And month to month, thro' the revolving $YEAR;
Admiring, sees her in her every shape;
Feels all her fine emotions at his heart;
Takes what the liberal gives, nor thinks of more.
He, when young $SRING protrudes the bursting gems,
Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale
Into his freshen'd soul; her genial hours
He quite enjoys; and not a beauty blows,
And not an opening blossom breathes in vain.
In $SUMMER he, beneath the living shade,
Such as from frigid $TEMPE wont to fall,
Or $HAEMUS cool, reads what the muse, of these
Perhaps, has in immortal numbers sung;
Or what she dictates writes; and, oft an eye
Shot round, rejoyces in the vigorous year.
When $AUTUMN'S yellow lustre gilds the world,
And tempts the sickled swain into the field,
Seized by the general joy, his heart distends
With gentle throws; and thro' the tepid gleams
Deep-musing, then the best exerts his song.
Even $WINTER wild to him is full of bliss.
The mighty tempest, and the hoary waste,
Arupt, and deep, stretch'd o'er the bury'd earth,
Awake to solemn thought. At night the skies,
Disclos'd, and kindled, by refining frost,
Pour every lustre on th'astonish'd eye.
A friend, a book, the stealing hours secure,
And mark them down for wisdom. With swift wing,
O'er land, and sea, imagination roams;
Or truth, divinely breaking in his mind,
Elates his being, and unfolds his powers;
Or in his breast heroic virtue burns.
The touch of love, and kindred too he feels,
The modest eye, whose beams on his alone
Extatic shine; the little, strong embrace
Of prattling children, twin'd around his neck,
And emulous to please him, calling forth
The fond parental soul. Nor purpose gay.
Amusement, dance, or song, he sternly scorns;
For happiness, and true philosophy
Still are, and have been of the smiling kind.
This is the life which those who fret in guilt,
And guilty cities, never knew; the life,
Led by primaeval ages, incorrupt,
When $GOD himself, and $ANGELS dwelt with men!
World beyond world, in infinite extent,
Profusely scatter'd o'er the void immense,
Shew me; their motions, periods, and their laws,
Give me to scan; thro' the disclosing deep
Light my blind way: the mineral $STRATA there;
Thrust, blooming, thence the vegetable world;
O'er that the rising system, more complex,
Of animals; and higher still, the mind,
The varied scene of quick-compounded thought,
And where the mixing passions endless shift;
These ever open to my ravish'd eye;
A search, the flight of time can ne'er exhaust!
But if to that unequal; if the blood,
In sluggish streams about my heart, forbids
That best ambition; under closing shades,
Inglorious, lay me by the lowly brook,
And whisper to my dreams. From $THEE begin,
Dwell all on $THEE, with $THEE conclude my song;
And let me never, never stray from $THEE!
Trod the pure virgin-snows, my self as pure;
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst;
Or seen the deep, fermenting tempest brew'd
In the red evening-sky. Thus pass'd the time,
Till thro' the lucid chambers of the south
Look'd out the joyous $SPRING, look'd out, and smil'd.
The Muses tune; nor art thou skill'd alone
In awful schemes, the management of states,
And how to make a mighty people thrive:
But equal goodness; sound integrity;
A firm, unshaken, uncorrupted soul,
Amid a sliding age; and burning strong,
Not vainly blazing, for thy country's weal,
A steady spirit, regularly free;
These, each exalting each, the statesman light
Into the patriot; and, the publick hope
And eye to thee converting, bid the muse
Record what envy dares not flatery call.
And, soon descending, to the long dark night,
Wide-shading all, the prostrate world resigns.
Nor is the night unwish'd; while vital heat,
Light, life, and joy the dubious day forsake.
Mean-time, in sable cincture, shadows vast,
Deep-ting'd, and damp, and congregated clouds,
And all the vapoury turbulence of heaven
Involve the face of things. Thus $WINTER falls,
A heavy gloom oppressive o'er the world,
Thro' nature shedding influence malign,
And rouzes all the seeds of dark disease.
The soul of man dies in him, loathing life,
And black with horrid views. The cattle droop,
The conscious head; and o'er the furrow'd land,
Red from the plow, the dun discolour'd flocks,
Untended spreading, crop the wholesome root.
Along the woods, along the moorish fens,
Sighs the sad genious of the coming storm;
And up among the loose, disjointed cliffs,
And fractur'd mountains wild, the brawling brook,
And cave, presageful, send a hollow moan,
Resounding long in listening Fancy's ear.
Hangs o'er th' enlivening blaze, and taleful there
Recounts his simple frolick: much he talks,
And much he laughs, nor recks the storm that blows
Without, and rattles on his humble roof.