Which Providence assigns them. One alone, The red-breast, sacred to the household gods, Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky, In joyless fields, and thorny thickets, leaves At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks, Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills, The billowy tempest whelms ; till, upward urged, The valley to a shining mountain swells, His shivering mates, and pays to trusted Tipt with a wreath, high-curling in the man His annual visit. Half afraid, he first Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er Eyes all the smiling family askance, Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs sky. As thus the snows arise; and foul and fierce, All winter drives along the darkened air ; Disastered stands; sees other hills ascend, scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain : Nor finds the river, nor the forest hid Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on hare, Though timorous of heart, and hard beset By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs, From hill to dale, still more and more astray; Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, And more unpitying men, the garden Stung with the thoughts of home; the seeks, thoughts of home Urged on by fearless want. The bleating | Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour kind forth Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glisten- | In many a vain attempt. How sinks his ing earth, soul ! With looks of dumb despair; then, sad What black despair, what horrors fill his dispersed, heart! Dig for the withered herb through heaps When for the dusky spot, which fancy feigned of snow. Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge | His tufted cottage rising through the snow. be kind, Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens With food at will; lodge them below the storm, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track, and blest abode of man; And watch them strict: for from the bil- While round him night resistless closes lowing east, In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing Sweeps up the burthen of whole wintry plains fast, And every tempest, howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild. Then throng the busy shapes into his mind, Of covered pits, unfathomably deep, Save me from folly, vanity, and vice, From every low pursuit! and feed my soul A dire descent! beyond the power of With knowledge, conscious peace, and frost ; Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge, Smoothed up with snow; and, what is land, unknown, What water, of the still unfrozen spring, In the loose marsh or solitary lake, Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mixed with the tender anguish Nature shoots virtue pure; Sacred, substantial, never-failing bliss! A HYMN. These, as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring Through the wrung bosom of the dying Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and man, His wife, his children, and his friends un seen. In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire, With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense; And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corpse, love. Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm ; Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; And every sense and every heart is joy. Then comes Thy glory in the Summer months, With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun Shoots full perfection through the swelling year: And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks, And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, By brooks and groves in hollow-whispering gales. Stretch'd out and bleaching in the north-Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfined, ern blast. [A SHORT PRAYER.] And spreads a common feast for all that lives. In Winter awful Thou! with clouds and storms Father of light and life! thou Good Around Thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest Supreme ! rolled, wing O teach me what is good! teach me Thy-Majestic darkness! On the whirlwind's self! blast. Riding sublime, Thou bidd'st the world His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye tremadore, bling rills; And humblest nature with Thy northern And let me catch it as I muse along. Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound; Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze Along the vale; and thou majestic main, A secret world of wonders in thyself, Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice Mysterious round! what skill, what force Deep-felt, in these appear! a simple train, art, Such beauty and beneficence combined; Or bids you roar, or bids your roaring fall. So roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers, In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts, But wandering oft, with rude unconscious Whose breath perfumes you, and whose gaze, pencil paints. Man marks not Thee, marks not the mighty Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave to Him: Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart, hand That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres; ing thence As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.. The fair profusion that o'erspreads the Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth spring; Flings from the sun direct the flaming day; Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth, And, as on earth this grateful change revolves, With transport touches all the springs of Nature, attend! join, every living soul Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness Oh! talk of Him in solitary glooms, Fills the brown shade with a religious awe. The impetuous song, and say from whom asleep Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams, Ye constellations, while your angels strike, Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide, round, On nature write with every beam His praise. The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world, While cloud to cloud returns the solemn Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks low, Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come. song Burst from the groves; and when the restless day, Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep, Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomela, charm The listening shades, and teach the night His praise. Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles; At once the head, the heart, the tongue of all, In the void waste as in the city full; And where He vital breathes, there must be joy. When even at ast the solemn hour shall come, And wing my mystic flight to future worlds, I cheerful will obey; there with new powers, Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go Crown the great hymn! in swarming Where universal love not smiles around, cities vast, Assembled men to the deep organ join The long resounding voice, oft breaking clear, Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns; At solemn pauses, through the swelling Myself in Him, in light ineffable! Come, then, expressive silence, muse His praise. LIBERTY. [ANCIENT GREECE.] Hail Nature's utmost boast! unrivalled Greece ! My fairest reign! where every power benign Conspir'd to blow the flower of humankind, And lavished all that genius can inspire. Mountains, and streams, where verse spontaneous flowed; Whence deemed by wondering men the seat of gods, And still the mountains and the streams of song. All that boon Nature could luxuriant pour Of high materials, and my restless arts 2 G Frame into finished life. How many states, And clustering towns, and monuments of fame, For that they lived entire, and even for that The tender mother urged her son to die. Of softer genius, but not less intent And scenes of glorious deeds, in little To seize the palm of empire, Athens rose. bounds! From the rough tract of bending mountains, beat By Ardria's here, there by Ægæan waves; To where the deep-adorning Cyclade isles In shining prospect rise, and on the shore Of farthest Crete resounds the Lybian main. O'er all two rival cities reared the brow, And balanced all. Spread on Eurotas' bank, Amid a circle of soft-rising hills, The patient Sparta one: the sober, hard, Lycurgus there built, on the solid base Where, with bright marbles big and future pomp, Hymettus spread, amid the scented sky, Of active arts, and animated arms. Of ruin, hurried by the charm of speech, grown. Solon, at last, their mild restorer rose : Aliayed the tempest; to the calm of laws Reduced the settling whole; and with the weight Which the two senates to the public lent, As with an anchor fixed the driving state. Nor was my forming care to these confined. For emulation through the whole I poured, Noble contention who should most excel In government well-poised, adjusted best To public weal: in countries cultured high; In ornamented towns, where order reigns, Free social life, and polished manners fair: In exercise, and arms; arms only drawn For common Greece, to quell the Persian pride : In moral science, and in graceful arts. Hence as for glory peacefully they strove, The prize grew greater, and the prize of all. |