By flow folicitation, feize at once
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves,
What prodigies can Pow'r Divine perform More grand than it produces year by year, And all in fight of inattentive man? Familiar with th' effect we flight the cause, And, in the constancy of nature's course, The regular return of genial months, And renovation of a faded world,
See nought to wonder at.
As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race
Of the undeviating and punctual fun,
How would the world admire! but fspeaks it less An agency divine, to make him know
His moment when to fink and when to rife,
Age after age, than to arrest his course?
All we behold is miracle; but, seen So duly, all is miracle in vain.
Where now the vital energy that mov'd, While fummer was, the pure and fubtile lymph
Through th' imperceptible meand'ring veins, Of leaf and flow'r? It fleeps; and th' icy touch Of unprolific winter has imprefs'd
A cold stagnation on th' inteftine tide.
But let the months go round, a few short months, And all shall be reftor'd. These naked shoots, Barren as lances, among which the wind Makes wintry mufic, fighing as it goes,
Shall put their graceful foliage on again,
And, more aspiring, and with ampler spread,
Shall boast new charms, and more than they have loft. Then, each in its peculiar honors clad, Shall publish, even to the distant eye, Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich In ftreaming gold; fyringa, iv'ry pure; The fcented and the fcentlefs rofe; this red, And of an humbler growth, the * other tall, And throwing up into the darkest gloom Of neighb'ring cyprefs, or more fable yew, Her filver globes, light as the foamy furf That the wind fevers from the broken wave; The lilac, various in array, now white,
Now fanguine, and her beauteous head now fet With purple spikes pyramidal, as if
Studious of ornament, yet unrefolv'd
Which hue the most approv'd, she chose them all; Copious of flow'rs, the woodbine, pale and wan, But well compenfating her fickly looks With never-cloying odours, early and late;
Hypericum, all bloom, fo thick a fwarm Of flow'rs, like flies, clothing her fiender rods, That scarce a leaf appears; mezerion, too, Though leaflefs, well attir'd, and thick befet With blufhing wreaths, investing ev'ry spray; Althea with the purple eye; the broom, Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd, Her b'offoms; and, luxuriant above all, The jafmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, The deep dark green of whofe unvarnish'd leaf Makes more confpicuous, and illumines more The bright profufion of her scatter'd stars.- These have been, and these fhall be in their day; And all this uniform, uncolour'd scene, Shall be difmantled of its fleecy load,
And flush into variety again.
From dearth to plenty, and from death to life, Is Nature's progrefs, when she lectures man In heav'nly truth; evincing, as fhe makes The grand tranfition, that there lives and works A foul in all things, and that foul is God. The beauties of the wildernefs are his, That make fo gay the folitary place
Where no eye fees them. And the fairer forms That cultivation glories in, are his. He fets the bright proceffion on its way,
And marthals all the order of the year;
He marks the bounds which winter may not pass, And blunts his pointed fury; in its cafe, Ruffet and rude, folds up the tender germ, Uninjur'd, with inimitable art;
And, ere one flow'ry feafon fades and dies, Defigns the blooming wonders of the next,
Some fay, that, in the origin of things, When all creation started into birth,
The infant elements receiv'd a law,
From which they fwerv'd not fince. That under force Of that controuling ordinance they move,
And need not his immediate hand, who first Prefcrib'd their courfe, to regulate it now. Thus dream they, and contrive to fave a God Th' incumbrance of his own concerns, and fpare The great artificer of all that moves The ftrefs of a continual act, the pain] Of unremitted vigilance and care, As too laborious and fevere a task. So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems, To fpan omnipotence, and measure might, That knows no measure, by the fcanty rule And ftandard of his own, that is to day, And is not ere to-morrow's fun go down!
But how fhould matter occupy a charge Dull as it is, and fatisfy a law
So vaft in its demands, unless impell'd To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, And under preffure of fome confcious cause? The Lord of all, himfelf through all diffus'd, Suftains, and is the life of all that lives. Nature is but a name for an effect,
By which the mighty procefs is maintain'd, Who fleeps not, is not weary; in whose fight Slow-circling ages are as tranfient days; Whose work is without labour; whofe defigns No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts; And whofe beneficence no charge exhausts. Him blind antiquity profan'd, not ferv'd, With felf-taught rites, and under various names, Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan,
And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling earth With tutelary goddeffes and gods
That were not; and commending, as they would, To cach fome province, garden, field, or grove. But all are under one,
Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows Rules univerfal nature. Not a flow'r
But fhows fome touch, in freckle, ftreak, or ftain,
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