THE
S E A SONS 0 N'A POEM,
BY
JA.MES THOMSONo
COMPARED WITH THE
LONDON AN'D EDINBURGH EDITIONS.
IMPROVED EDITION.
WVITH NOTES AND AN INDEX,
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY CLARK, AUSTIN & COo
S PARK ROW AND 3 ANN-STREE'T,
1854,




Fntered according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1840,
By JOHm  2i  BRowrf,
Ill tb.o Clc-rk's Office of the District Court of New Ilampshire.




L I FE
OF
JAMES THOMSON.
IT is related of a lover of poetry and of nature, that,
on being asked which of the Seasons he liked best, he
replied, " If you mean the natural seasons, I prefer the
Spring —but if Thomson's, all." This production. now
republished, of one of the best standard British poets,
is so complete as a whole, although written at different times and under different circumstances, that one
is greatly at a loss which portion to prefer, and is very
certain that no part could be omitted, without marring
the symmetry of a most perfect work. Some passages
are, indeed, more highly wrought than others-somle
descriptions more true than others to nature and to
life; but, as a whole, the united poem, " The Seasons,"
is so chaste and beautiful, that it may be said of the
author and the work, with as much truth as in almost
any case whatever, that there is in it " no line which,
dying, he might wish to blot." What is not a little
remarkable, such was the character of Thomson, that
the bathing scene, and the exhortation to this duty and




IaV           LIFE  OF THOISON.
privilege, in his Summer, was written by one who is
said never himself to have ventured into the water,
and the exhortation in the same, to the " falsely luxurious," to awake and spring from the bed of sloth, by
one who was himself so indolent as often not to rise
until mid-day. So true it is, that we can all preach
much better than we practise.
The Author of the Seasons was born in 1700, at
Ednam, near Kelso, in Scotland, being one of nine
children of the minister of that place. He was sent
to the school of Jedburgh, where he early discovered
a propensity to poetry, which drew the attention of
the neighboring gentry. He was removed to the uni
versity of Edinburgh, and induced, by the wishes of
his friends, to study divinity; but he soon gave up
theological studies, and paid an exclusive attention to
literature. After acting for some time as a private
tutor to Lord Binning, he quitted the university, and
went to London, where his Winter was purchased by
Millar for a very trifling' consideration, and published
in 1726, with a dedication to Sir Spencer Compton.
Its merits, however, were not discovered until it accidentally caught the eye of Mr. Whately, who brought
it into general notice. It led to the author's introduction to Pope. In 1727, he published his Summer,
which he addressed to Bubb Doddington, his poem
to the memory of Sir Isaac Newton, his Britannia,
and, in 1728, his Spring, and in 1730, his Autumn
He had previously brought on the stage his tragedy
of Sophonisba; and, not long after, he was selected
as the travelling associate of Mr. Talbot, with whorn




LIFE  OF THOMSON.                V
he visited the continent.  On his return, lie was
rewarded with the post of secretary of briefs by the
Lord Chancellor Talbot, which was merely a sinecure. About this time, he published his poem of Lib
erty, with the cool reception, of which he was niuch
disappointed.
Soon after, the death of Lord Chancellor Talbot
vacated Thomson's office, and Lord Hardwick, who
succeeded to the seals, gave it to another. An introduction to Frederic, prince of Wales, produced him a
pension from that prince of ~100 per annum. In
1738, he produced a second tragedy, entitled Agamemnon, which was coldly received, and a third,
entitled Edward and Eleonora. In 1740, he composed
the masque of Alfred, in conjunction with Mallet;
but which of them wrote the song, since become national, of "Rule Britannia," has not been ascertained.
In 1745, his most successful tragedy, entitled Tancred
and Sigismunda, was brought out, and warmly applauded. The following year produced his Castle of
Indolence.
He now obtained the place of surveyor-general of
the Leeward Islands, but soon after (1748) died of a
cold caught on the Thames, in the forty-eighth year
of his age. He was buried at Richmond, and a monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey, in
1762, with the profits of an edition of his works  Hp
left a tragedy entitled Coriolanus, which was acted for
the benefit of his family.
Thomson was large and ungainly in person, and
somewhat heavy in deportment, except among inti
1*




V1i           [LIFE  OF THOMISON.
mate friends, by whom he was much beloved for the
kindness of his heart. His Seasons abounds in sensibility and beauty of natural description. His diction,
although occasionally cumbrous and labored, is always
energetic and expressive. His Castle of Indolence is
the most spirited and beautiful of all the imitations
of Spenser, both for moral, poetical, and descriptive
power. His tragedies possess little dramatic interest.
This edition of The Seasons, with an accurate index,
and prefatory argument to each of the boolks, will, it is
believed, commend itself to the general reader and to
those particularly engaged in literary instruction.
Concord,.1.  Ja. Jn. 1840.




SPRING.
The subject proposed. Inscribed to the Countess of Hertford.
The Season is described as it affects the various parts of Nature,
ascending from the lower to the higher; with digressions arising
from the subject. Its influence on inanimate Matter, on Vegetables, on brute animals, and, last,'on Man; concluding with a
dissuasive from the wild and irregular passion of Love, opposed
to that of a pure and happy kind.
CoME, gentle SPRING, ethereal Mildness, come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts            &
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
With innocence and meditation joined
In soft assemblage, listen to my song,
Which thy own Season paints; when Nature all
Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.               10
And see where surly WINTER passes off,
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shattered forest, and the ravaged vale 
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,  15
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets   20
Deform the day delightless: so that scarce
The bittern knows his time, with bill ingulfed,
X o shake the sounding marsh; or from the shore
The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.  2 5




8                   SPRING.
At last from Aries rolls the bounteous sun,
And the bright Bull receives him. Then no more
Th' expansive atmosphere is cramped 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.    31
Forth fly the tepid airs; and unconfined,
Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays.
Joyous, th' impatient husbandman perceives
Relenting Nature, and his lusty steers         35
Drives from their stalls, to where the well-used plough
Lies in the furrow, loosened from the frost.
There unrefusing, to the harnessed yoke,
They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil,
Cheered by the simple song and soaring lark.   40
Meanwhile incumbent o'er the shining share
The master leans, removes th' obstructing clay,
Winds the whole work, and sidelong lays the glebe.
While thro' the neighboring fields the sower stalks,
With measured step; and liberal throws the grain 45
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 part. Ye fostering breezes, blow;
Ye softening dews, ye tender showers, descend!  50
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 ea.r:
Such themes as these the rural Maro sung  (a)   55
To wide-imperial Rome, in the full height
Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined.
In ancient times, the sacred plough employed
The kings and awful fathers of mankind:
And some, with whom compared your insect tribes 60
Are but the beings of a summer's day,
Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm
Of mighty war; then, with unwearied hand,




SPRING.                     9
Disdaining little delicacies, seized
The plough, and greatly independent lived.     65
Ye generous Britons, venerate the plough:!
And o'er your hills and long-withdrawing vales
Let Autumn spread his treasures to the sun,
Luxuriant and unbounded: as the sea,
Far through his azure, turbulent domain,       70
Your empire owns, and from a thousand shores
Wafts all the pomp *cf life into your ports;
So with superior boon may your rich soil,
Exuberant, Nature's better blessings pour
O'er every land, the naked nations clothe,     75
And be th' exhaustless granary of a world!
Nor only through thle lenient air this change,
Delicious, breathes; the penetrative sun,
His force deep darting to the dark retreat
Of vegetation, sets the steaming Power         80
At large, to wander o'er the verdant 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.    85
From the moist meadow to the wither'd hill,
LIed by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs,
And swells and deepens to the cherished eye.
The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy groves
Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees,    90
Till the whole leafy forest stands displayed,
In full luxuriance, to the sighing gales:
Where the deer rustle through the twining brake,
And the birds sing concealed.kAt once arrayed
In all the colors of the flushing year,        95
By Nature's swift and secret-working hand,
The garden flows, and fills the liberal air'
With lavish fragrance; while the promised fruit
Lies yet a little embryo, unperceived,
Within its crimson folds. Now from the town,  100
Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps,




10                  SPRING.
Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops
From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweetbriar hedges I pursue my walk;        105
Or taste the sllell of dairy, or ascend
Some eminence, Augusta, in thy plains,
And see the country, far diffused around,
One boundless blush, one white-empurpled shower
Of mingled blossoms; where the raptured eye    1 10
Hurries from joy to joy, and, hid beneath
The fair profusion, yellow Autumn spies.
If, brushed from Russian wilds, a cutting gale
Rise not, and scatter from his hnlmid wings
The clammy mildew; or, dry blowing, breathe   115
Untimely frost; before whose baleful blast
The full-blown Spring through all her foliage shrinks,
Joyless and dead, a wide, dejected waste.:,
For oft, engendered by the hazy north,
Myriads on myriads, insect armies waft        120
Keen in the poisoned breeze; and wasteful eat,
Through buds and bark, into the blackened core,
Their eager way. A feeble race! yet oft
The sacred sons of vengeance; on whose course
Corrosive Famine waits, and kills the year.   125
To check this plague the skilful farmer chaff
And blazing straw before his orchard burns;
Till, all involved in smoke, the latent foe
From every cranny suffocated falls:
Or scatters o'er the blooms the pungent dust  130
Of pepper, fatal to the frosty tribe:
Or, when th' envenomed leaf begins to curl,
With sprinked water drowns them in their nest:
Nor; while they pick them up with busy bill,
The little trooping birds unwisely scares.    135
Be patient, swains; these cruel-seeming winds
Blow not in vain. Far hence they keep repress'd
Those deepening clouds on clouds,surcharg'd with rain,
That o'er the vast Atlantic hither borne,




SPRING.                    11
In endless train, would quench the summer blaze, 140
And, cheerless, drown the crude, unripen'd year.
The north-east spends his rage; lie now shut up
Within his iron cave, th' effusive south
Warins the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven
Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.
As first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,     116
Scarce staining ether; but, by swift degrees,
In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapor sails
Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep
Sits on thl' horizon round a settled gloom:    150
Not such as wintry storms on mortals 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        155
Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves
Of aspen tall. Th' uncurling floods, diffused
In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse
Forgetful of their course.'Tis silence all,   160
And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks
Drop the dry sprig, and mute imploring eye
The fhlling verdure. Hushed in short suspense,
The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
To throw the lucid moisture trickling off:     165
And wait th' approaching sign to strike, at once,
Into the general choir. Even mountains, vales,
And forests seem impatient to demand
The promised sweetness./ Man superior walks
Amid the glad creation, musing praise,         170
And looking lively gratitude. At last,
The clouds consign their treasures to the fields;
And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool
Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow,
In large effusion, o'er the freshened world.   175
The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard,
By such as wander through the forest walks,




12                SPRING.
Beneath th' umbrageous multitude of leaven.
But who can hold the shade while Heaven descends
In universal bounty, shedding herbs          180
And fiuits and flowers on Nature's ample lap!
Swift Fancy fired anticipates their growth,;
And, while the milky nutriment distils,
Beholds the kindling country color round.
Thus all day long the full-distended clouds    185
Indulge their genial stores, and well-showered earth
Is deep enriched with vegetable life;
Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.  190
The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes
Th' illumined mountain, through the forest streams,
Shakes on the floods, and.in a yellow mist,
Far smoking o'er th' interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.   195
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape lauglhs around;
Full swell the woods; their very music wakes,
Mixed in wild concert with the warbling brooks
Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
And hollow lows responsive from the vales,  200
Whence blending, all the sweetened zephyr springs.
Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion running from the red      205
To where the violet fades into the sky.
Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism; (b)
And to the sage-instructed eye unfold
The various twine of light, by thee disclosed  21C
From the white mingling mlaze. Not so the boy:
He wondering views the bright enchantment bena,
Delightful, o'er the radiant fields, and runs
To catch the falling glory; but amazed
Beholds th' amusive arch before him fly,    215




SPRING.                    13
Then vanish quite away. Still night succeeds,
A softened shade, and saturated earth
Awaits the morning beam, to give to light,
Raised through ten thousand different plastic tubes,
The balmy treasures of the former day.,       220
Then spring the living herbs, profusely wild,
O'er all the deep-green earth, beyond the power
Of botanists to number up their tribes:
Whether he steals along the lonely dale,
In silent search; or, through the forest, rank  225
With what the dull, incuriouslweeds account,
Bursts his blind way; or climls the mountain rock,
Fired by the nodding verdure of its brow.
With such a liberal hand has Nature flung
Their seeds abroad, blown them about in winds,  230
Innumerous mixed them with the nursing mould,
The moistening current, and prolific rain.
But who their virtues can declare? who pierce,
With vision pure, into these secret stores
Of health, and life, and joy? the food of Man,   235
While yet he lived in innocence, and told
A length of golden years; unfleshed in blood,
A stranger to the savage arts of life,
Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease;
The lord, and not the tyrant, of the world.   240
The first fresh dawn then waked the gladdened race
Of uncorrupted Man, nor blushed to see
The sluggard sleep beneath its sacred beam,
For their light slumbers gently fumed away;
And up they rose as vigorous as the sun,      245
Or to the culture of the willing glebe,
Or to the cheerful tendance of the flock.,
Meantime the song went round; and dance and sport,
Wisdom and friendly talk, snccessive, stole
Their hours away: while in the rosy vale      250
Love breathed his infant sighs, from anguish free,
And full replete with bliss; save the sweet pain,
Thlat, inly thrilling, but exalts it more,




14                 SPRING.
Nor yet injurious act, nor surly deed,
Was known among those happy sons of heaven; 255
For reason and benevolence were law.
Harmonious Nature, too, looked smiling on.
Clear shone the skies, cooled with eternal gales,
And balmy spirit all. The youthful sun
Shot his best rays, and still the gracious clouds   260
Dropped fatness down; as o'er the swelling mead,
The herds and flocks, commixing, played secure.
This when, emergent from the gloomy wood,
The glaring lion saw, his horrid heart
Was meekened, and he joined his sullen joy,    265
For music held the whole in perfect peace:
Soft sighed the flute; the tender voice was heard,
Warbling the varied heart; the woodlands round
Applied their choir; and winds and waters flowed
In consonance. Such were those prime of:lays. 270
But now those white, unblemished manners, whence
The fabling poets took their golden age,
Are found no more amid these iron times,
These dregs of' life! now the distempered mind
Has lost that concord of harmonious powers,  275
Which forms the soul of happiness; and all
Is off the poise within: the passions ail
Have burst their bounds; and reason, half extinct,
Or impotent, 6r else approving, sees
The foul disorder. Senseless, and deformed,    280
Convulsive anger storms at large; or, pale
And silent, settles into fell revenge.
Base envy withers at another's joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach.
Desponding fear, of feeble fancies full,     285
WVeak and unmanly, loosens every power;
E'en love itself ismbitterness of soul,
A pensive anguish pining at the heart;
Or, sunk to sordid interest, feels no more
That noble wish.lthat never cloyed desire,    290
Which, selfish joy disdaining, seeks alone




SPRING(.                   15
To bless the dearer object of its flame.
Hope sickens with extravagance; and grief,
Of life impatient, into madness swells;
Or in dead silence wastes the weeping hours.    295
These, and a thousand mixed. emotions more,
From ever-changing views of good and ill
Formed infinitely various, vex the mind
With endless storm; whence, deeply rankling, grows
The partial thought, a listless unconcern,    300
Cold, and averting from our neighbor's good;
Then dark disgust, and hatred, winding wiles,
Coward deceit, and ruffian violence:
At last,,extinct each social feeling, fell
And joyless inhumanity pervades               30.
And petrifies the heart. Nature disturbed
Is deemed, vindictive, to have changu.her course.
Hence, in old dusky time, a deluge came:
When the deep-cleft disporting orb, that arched
The central waters round, impetuous rushed,    310
With universal burst, into the gulf,
And o'er the high-piled hills of fractured earth
Wide dashed the waves, in undulation vast;
Till, from the centre to the streaming clouds,
A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe.    311',
The Seasons since have, with severer sway,
Oppressed a broken world: the Winter keen
Shook forth his waste of' snows: and Summer shot
His pestilential heats. Great Spring, before,
Greened all the year; and fruits and blossoms blushed,
In social sweetness, on the self-same bough.'   321
Pure was the temperate air; an even calm
Perpetual reigned, save what the zephyrs bland
Breathed o'er the blue expanse: for then nor storn-ms
Were taught to blow, nor hurricanes to rage;    3%i'
Sound slept the waters; no sulphureous glooms
Swelled in the sky, and sent the lightning forth;
While sickly damps, and cold autumnal fogs,
Hung not, relaxing, on the springs of life.




16                  SPRING.
But now, of turbid elements the sport,         330
From clear to cloudy tossed, from hot to cold,
And dry to moist, with inward-eating change,
Our drooping days are dwindled down to nought,
Their period finished ere'tis well begun.;And yet the wholesome herb neglected dies;   335
Though with the pure exhilarating soul
Of nutriment and health and vital powers,
Beyond the search of art,'tis copious blessed.
For, with hot ravine fired, ensanguined Man
Is now become the lion of the plain,           340
And worse. The wolf, who from the nightly fold
Fierce drags the bleating prey, ne'er drunk her milk,
Nor wore her warmring fleece: nor has the steer,
At whose strong chest the deadly tiger hangs,
E'er ploughed for him.  They too are tempered high,
With hunger stung and wild necessity,          346
Nor lodges pity in their shaggy breast.
But Man, whom Nature formed of milder clay,
With every kind emrnoton in his heart,
And taught alone to weep; while from her lap.50
She pours ten thousand delicacies, herbs,
And fruits, as numerous as the drops of rain,
Or beams that gave them birth: shall he, fair form!
Who wears sweet smiles, and looks erect on heaven,
E'er storop to mingle with the prowling herd,  355
And dip his tongue in gore? The beast of prey,
Blood-stained, deserves to bleed; but yoiS, ye flocks,
What have you done; ye peaceful people, what,
To merit death? you, who have given us milk
In luscious streams, and lent us your own coat   350
Against the Winter's cold? and the plain ox,
That harmless, honest, guileless animal,
In what has he offended&? he, whose toil,
Patient, and ever ready,'clothes the land
With all the pomp of harvest; shall he bleed,    35
And struggling groan beneath the cruel hands
E'en of the clown he feeds? and that, perhaps,




SPRING.                   17
To swell the riot of th' autumnal feast,
Won by his labor? Thus the feeling heart
Would tenderly suggest: but'tis enough,:70
In this late age, adventurous, to have touched
Light on the numbers of the Samian sage.  (c)
High Heaven forbids the bold, presumptuousstrailn,
Whose wisest will has fixed us in a state
That must not yet to pure perfection rise.   3W75
Now when the first foul torrent of the brooks,
Swelled with the vernal rains, is ebbed away,
And, whitening, down their mossy-tinctured streamk
Descends the billowy foam: now is the time,
While yet the dark-bxown water aids the guile,:380
To tempt the trout. The well-dissembled fly,
The rod fine-tapering with elastic spring,
Snatched from the hoary steed the floating line,
And all thy slender watery stores prepare.
But let not on thy hook the tortured wornm    385
Convulsive twist in agonizing folds;
Which, by rapacious hunger swallowed deep,
Gives, as you tear it from the bleeding breast
Of the weak, helpless, uncomplaining wretch,
Harsh pain and horror to the tender hand.     3490
When with his lively ray the potent sun
Has pierced the streams, and roused the finny race,
Then, issuing cheerful, to thy sport repair;
Chief should the western breezes curling play,
And light o'er ether bear the shadowy clouds.    395
High to their fount, this day, amid the hills,
And woodlands warbling round, trace up the brooks;
The next, pursue their rocky-chaneled maze
Down to the river, in whose ample wave
Their little naiads love to sport at large.   400
Just in the dubious point, where with.the pool
Is mixed the trembling stream, or where it boils
Around the stone, or from the hollowed bank
Reverted plays in undulating flow,
There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly;  405




158                SPRING
And, as you lead it round in arttul curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing gamre.
Straight as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leap,
Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook:   410
Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank,
And to the shelving shore slow dragging somie,
With various hand proportioned to their force.
If yet too young, and easily deceived,
A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,   415
Him, piteous of his youth and the short space
He has enjoyed the vital light of heaven,
Soft disengage, and back into the stream
The speckled captive throw., But should you lure
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots  420
Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,
Behoves you then to ply your finest art.
Long time he, following cautious, scans the fly 
And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft
The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear.   425
At last, while haply o'er the shaded sun
Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death,
With sullen plunge. At once he darts along
Deep-struck, and runs out all the lengthened line:
Then seeks the furthest ooze, the sheltering weed, 430
The caverned bank, his old secure abode;
And flies al3ft, and flounces round the pool,
Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand,
That feels him still, yet to his furious course
Gives way, you, now retiring, following now  435
Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage:
Till, floating broad upon his breathless side,
And to his fate abandoned, to the shore
You gaily drag your unresisting prize.>      439
Thus pass the temperate hours; but when the sun
Shakes from his noonday throne the scattering clouds,
E'en shooting listless languor through the deeps;
Then seek the bank where flowering elders crowd,




SPRING.                    9
Where seattered wild the lily of the vale
Its balmy essence breathes, where cowslips hang 445
The dewy head, where purple violets lurk,
With all the lowly children of the shade:
Or lie reclined beneath yon spreading ash,
Hung o'er the steep; whence, borne on liquid wing,
The sounding culver shoots; or where the hawk, 450
High in the beetling cliff, his eyry builds.
There let the classic page thy fancy lead
Through rural scenes; such as the Mantuan swain
Paints in the matchless harmony of song,
Or catch thyself the landscape, gliding swift    455
Athwart imagination's vivid eye:
Or by the vocal woods and waters lulled,
And lost in lonely musing, in the dream,
Confused, of careless solitude, where mix
Ten thousand wandering images of things,    460
Sooth every gust of passion into peace;
All but the swellings of the softened heart,
That weaken, not disturb, the tranquil mind.
Behold yon breathing prospect bids the Muse
Throw all her beauty forth. But who can paint 465
Like Nature? Can imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
Or can it mix them with that matchless skill,
And lose them in each other, as appears
In every bud that blows?' If fancy then    470
Unequal fails beneath the pleasing task,
Ah, what shall language do? Ah, where find words
Tinged with so many colors; and whose power,
To life approaching, may perfume my lays
With that fine oil, those aromatic gales,   475
That inexhaustive flow continual round?
Yet, though successless, will the toil delight.
Comne then, ye virgins and ye youths, whose hearts
Have felt the raptures of refining love;
And thou, Amanda, come, pride of my song!    48!2
Formed by the Graces, loveliness itself 




20                 SPRING.
Come with those downcast eyes, sedate and sweet,
Those looks demure, that deeply pierce the soul,
Where, with the light of thoughtful reason mixed,
Shines lively fancy and the feeling heart;  485
O, come! and while the rosy-footed May
Steals blushing on, together let us tread
The morning dews, and gather in their prime
Fresh-blooming flowers, to grace thy braided hair,
And thy loved bosom that improves their sweets. 490
See, where the winding vale its lavish stores,
Irriguous, spreads. See, how the lily drinks
The latent rill, scarce oozing through the grass,
Of growth luxuriant; or the humid bank,
In fair profusion, decks. Long let us walk,  495
Where the breeze blows from yon extended field
Of blossomed beans. Arabia cannot boast
A fuller gale of joy, than, liberal, thence
Breathes through the sense, and takes the ravished soul.
Nor is the mead unworthy of thy foot,       500
Full of fresh verdure and unnumbered flowers,
The negligence of Nature, wide and wild;
Where, undisguised by mimic Art, she spreads
Unbounded beauty to the roving eye.
Here their delicious task the fervent bees,  50O
In swarming millions, tend: around, athwart,
Through the soft air, the busy nations fly,
Cling to the bud, and, with inserted tube,
Suck its pure essence, its ethereal soul;
And oft, with bolder wing, they soaring dare  510
The purple heath, or where the wild thyme grows,
And yellow load them with the luscious spoil.
/At length the finished garden to the view
Its vistas opens, and its alleys green.
Snatched through the verdant maze, the hurried eye
Distracted wanders; now the bowery walk     516
Of covert close, where scarce a speck of day
Faills on the lengthened gloom, protracted sweeps.;
Now meets the bending sky; the river now




SPRING.                    21
Dimpling along, the breezy ruffled lake,      520
The forest darkening round, the glittering spire,
Th' ethereal mountain, and the distant main.
But why so far excursive, when at hand,
Along'these blushing borders, bright with dew,
And in yon mingled wilderness of flowers,     525
Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace;
Throws out the snowdrop and the crocus first;
The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue,
And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes;
The yellow wallflower, stained with iron brown; 530
And lavish stock that'scents the garden round:
From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
Anemones; auriculas, enriched
With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves;
And full ranunculas of glowing red.           535
Then comes the tulip race, where Beauty plays
Her idle freaks; from family diffused
To fimnily, as flies the father dust,
The varied colors run; and, while they break
On the charmed eye, thi' exulting florist marks,  540
With secret pride, the wonders of his hand.
No gradual bloom is wanting; from the bud,
First-born of Spring, to Summer's musky tribes,:
Nor hyacinths, of purest virgin white,
Low-bent, and blushing inward; nor jonquilles,  545
Of potent fragrance; nor narcissus fair,
As o'er the fabled fountain hanging still;
Nor broad carnations, nor gay-spotted pinks;
Nor, showered from every bush, the damask rose,
Infinite numbers, delicacies, smells,         550
With hues on hues expression cannot paint,
The breath of Nature, and her endless bloom.
Hail, Source of Being! Universal Soul
Of heaven and earth! Essential Presence, hail!
To Thee I bend the knee; to Thee my thoughts,  555
Continual, climb; who, with a master hand,
Hast the great whole into perfection touched.




SPRING.
By Thee the various vegetative tribes,
Wrapped in a filmy net and clad with leaves,
Draw the live ether and imbibe the dew;    560
By Thee disposed 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       565
By wintry winds; that now, in fluent dance,
And lively fermentation mounting, spreads
All this innumerous-colored scene of things.
As rising from the vegetable world
My theme ascends, with equal wing ascend,  570
My panting Muse; and hark, how loud the woods
Invite you forth in all your gayest trim.
Lend me your song, ye nightingales! O, pour
The mazy-running soul of melody
Into my varied verse! while I deduce,      575
From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings,
The symphony of Spring, and touch a theme
Unknown to fame,-the Passion of the Groves.
When first the soul of love is sent abroad,
Warm through the vital air, and on the heart    580
Harmonious seizes, the gay troops begin,
In gallant thought, to plume the painted wing,
And try again the long-forgotten strain,
At first faint warbled. But no sooner grows
The soft infusion prevalent and wide,      585
Than, all alive, at once their joy o'erflows
In music unconfined. 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 590
Calls up the tuneful nations. Every copse
Deep tangled, tree irregular, and bush
Bending with dewy moisture, o'er the heads
Of the coy quiristers that lodge within,
Are prodigal of harmony. The thrush        595




SPRING.                   23
And woodlark, o'er the kind, contending throng
Superior heard, run through 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.     600
The blackbird whistles from the thorny brake;
The mellow bulfinch answers from the grove;
Nor are the linnets, o'er the flowering furze
Poured out profusely, silent. Joined to these,
Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade   605
Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix
Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw,
And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone,
Aid the full concert; while the stockdove breathes'A melancholy murmur through the whole.        610'Tis love creates their melody, and all
This waste of music is the voice of love;
That even to birds and beasts the tender arts
Of pleasing teaches. Hence the glossy kind
Try every winning way inventive love          615
Can dictate, and in courtship to their mates
Pour forth their little souls. First, wide around,
With distant awe, in airy rings they rove,
Endeavoring by a thousand tricks to catch
The cunning, conscious, half-averted glance   620
Of the regardless charmer. Should she seem,
Softening, the least approvance to bestow,
Their colors burnish, and by hope inspired,
They brisk advance; then, on a sudden struck,
Retire disordered; then again approach;       625
In fond rotation spread the spotted wing,
And shiver every feather with desire.
Connubial leagues agreed, to the deep woods
They haste away, all as their fancy leads,
Pleasure, or food, or secret safety prompts;  630
That Nature's great conrnmand may be obeyed:
Nor all the sweet sensations they perceive
Indulged in vain. Some to the holly hedge




SPRING.
Nestling repair, and to the thicket some;
Some to the rude protection of the thorn     635
Commit their feeble offspring. The cleft tree
Offers its kind concealment to a few,
Their food its insects, and its moss their nests.
Others apart, far in the grassy dale,
Or roughening waste, their humble texture weave. 640
But most in woodland solitudes delight,
In unfrequented glooms, or shaggy banks,
Steep, and divided by a babbling brook,
Whose murmurs sooth them all the livelong day,
When by kind duty fixed. Among the roots    645
Of hazel, pendent o'er the plaintive stream,
They frame the first foundation of their domes;
Dry sprigs of trees, in artful fabric laid,
And bound with clay together. Now'tis nought
But restless hurry through the busy air,      650
Beat by unnumbered wings. The swallow sweeps
The slimy pool, to build his hanging house
Intent. And often, from the careless back
Of herds and flocks, a thousand tugging bills
Pluck hair and wool; and oft, when unobserved, 655
Steal from the barn a straw: till, soft and warm,
Clean and complete, their habitation grows.
As thus the patient dam assiduous sits,
Not to be tempted from her tender task,
Or by sharp hunger or by smooth delight,      660
Though the whole loosened 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 she sudden flits   665
To pick the scanty meal. Th' appointed time
With pious toil fulfilled, the callow young,
Warmed and expanded into perfect life,
Their brittle bondage break, and come to light,
A helpless family, demanding food            670
With constant clamor: 0, what passions tLen,




SPRING.                   25
What melting sentiments of kindly care,
On the new parents seize! Away they fly
Affectionate, and undesiring bear
The most delicious morsel to their young;     675
Which equally distributed, again
The search begins. E'en so a gentle pair,
By fortune sunk, but formed of generous mould,
And charmed with cares beyond the vulgar breast,
In some lone cot amid the distant woods,      680
Sustained alone by providential Heaven,
Oft, as they weeping eye their infant train,
Check their own appetites, and give them all.
Nor toil alone they scorn: exalting love,
By the great Father of the Spring inspired,   685
Gives instant courage to the fearful race,
And, to the simple, art. With stealthy wing,
Should some rude foot their woody haunts molest,.
Amid a neighboring bush they silent drop,
And whirring thence, as if alarmed, deceive   690
Th' unfeeling schoolboy.' Hence, around the head
Of wandering swain, the white-winged plover wheels
Her sounding flight, and then directly on
In long excursion skims the level lawn
To tempt him from her nest. The wild-duck, hence,
O'er the rough moss, and o'er the trackless waste 696
The heath-hen flutters, pious fraud! to lead
The hot-pursuing spaniel far astray.
Be not the Muse ashamed here to bemoan
Her brothers of the grove, by tyrant Man      700
Inhuman caught, and in the narrow cage
From liberty confined and boundless air.
Dull are the pretty slaves, their plumage dull,
Ragged, and all its brightening lustre lost:.
Nor is that sprightly wildness in their notes,  705i
Which, clear and vigorous, warbles from the beech.
0, then, ye friends of love and love-taught song,
Spare the soft tribes, this Barbarous art forbear,
2




26                 SPRING.
If on your bosom innocence can win,
Music engage, or piety persuade.            710
But let not chief the nightingale lament
Her ruined care, too delicately framed
To brook the harsh confinement of the cage.
Oft when, returning with her loaded bill,
Th' astonished mother finds a vacant nest,  715
By the hard hands of unrelenting clowns
Robbed, to the ground the vain provision falls;
Her pinions ruffle, and low drooping scarce
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade;
Where, all. abandoned to despair, she sings  7-20
Her sorrows through the night; and, on the bough,
Sole sitting, still at every dying fall
Takes up again her lamentable strain
Of winding wo; till, wide around, the woods
Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.    725
But now the feathered youth their former bounds,
Ardent, disdain; and, weighing oft their wings,
Demand the free possession of the sky:'This one glad office more, and then dissolves
Parental love at once, now needless grown.  730
UJnlavish Wisdom never works in vain.'Tis on some evening, sunny, grateful, mild,
When nought but balm is breathing through the woods,
With yellow lustre bright, that the new tribes
Visi-t the spacious heavens, and look abroad  735
On Nature's common, far as they can 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 stretched, to trust the void  740
Trembling refuse: till down before them fly
The parent guides, and chide, exhort, command,
Or push them off. The surging air receives
Its plumy burden; and their self-taught wings
Winnow the waving element. On ground        745




SPRING.                   27
Alighted, bolder up again they lead,
Farther and farther on, the lengthening flight;
Till vanished every fear, and every power
Roused into. life and action, light in air
Th' acquitted parents see their soaring race,  750
And once rejoicing never know them more.
High from the summit of a craggy cliff,
Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frowns
On utmost Kilda's* shore, whose lonely race
Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,      755
The royal eagle draws his vigorous young,
Strong-pounced, and ardent with paternal fire.
Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own,
He drives them from his fort, the towering seat,
For ages, of his empire, which, in peace,     760
Unstained he holds, while many a league to sea
He wings his course, and preys in distant isles.
Should I my steps turn to the rural seat,
Whose lofty elms and venerable oaks
Invite the rook, who high amid the boughs,,    765
In early Spring, his airy city builds,
And ceaseless caws amusive; there, well pleased,
I might the various polity survey
Of the mixed household kind. The careful hen
Calls all her chirping family around,         770
Fed and defended by the fearless cock;
Whose breast with ardor flames, as on he walks,
Graceful, and crows defiance. In the pond,
The finely-checkered duck, before her train,
Rows garrulous. The stately-sailing swan      775
Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale;
And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet
Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier isle,
Protective of his yoang. The turkey nigh,
Loud threatening, reddens; while the peacock spreads
His every-colored glory to the sun,           781'And swims in radiant majesty along.
* The farthest of the western islands of Scotland.




28                 SPRING.
O'er the whole homely scene the cooing dove
Flies thick in amorous chase, and wanton rolls
The glancing eye, and turris the changeful neck. 785
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. Through all his lusty veins
The bull, deep scorched, the raging passion feels. 790
Of pasture sick, and negligent of food,
Scarce seen, he wades among the yellow broom,
While o'er his ample sides tie rambling sprays
Luxuriant shoot; or through the mazy wood
Dejected wanders, nor th' enticing bud       795
Crops, though it presses on his careless sense.
And oft, in jealous, maddening fancy wrapped,
He seeks the fight; and, idly butting, feigns
His rival gored in every knotty trunk.
Him should he meet, the bellowing war begins;  800
Their eyes flash fury; to the hollowed earth,
Whence the sand flies, they mutter bloody deeds,
And, groaning deep, th' impetuous battle mix:
While the fair heifer, balmy-breathing, near,
Stands kindling up their rage. The trembling steed,
With this hot impulse seized in every nerve,  806
Nor heeds the rein, nor hears the sounding thong;
Blows are not felt; but, tossing high his head,
And by the well-known joy to distant plains
Attracted strong, all wild he bursts away,    810
O'er rocks and woods and craggy mountains flies,
And, neighing, on th' aerial summit takes
Th' exciting gale; then, steep-descending, cleaves
The headlong torrents foaming down the hills,
E'en where the madness of the straitened stream 815
Turns in black eddies round: such is the force
With which his frantic heart and sinews swell.
Nor undelighted by the boundless Spring
Are the broad monsters of the foaming deep.
From the deep ooze and gelid cavern roused,    820




SPRING.                    29
They flounce and tumble in unwieldy joy.
Dire were the strain, and dissonant, to sing
The cruel raptures of the savage kind.
How by this flame their native wrath sublimed,
They roam, amid the fury of their heart,      825
The far-resounding waste in fiercer bands,
And growl their horrid loves. But this the theme
I sing, enraptured, to the British Fair,
Forbids, and leads me to the mountain brow,
Where sits the shepherd on the grassy turf,   830
Inhaling, healthful, the descending sun.
Around him feeds his many-bleating flock,
Of various cadence; and his sportive lambs,
This way and that convolved, in friskful glee,
Their frolics play. And now the sprightly race  835
Invites them forth; when swift, the signal given,
They start away, and sweep the massy mound
That runs around the hill; the rampart once
Of iron war, in ancient barbarous times,
When disunited Britain ever bled,             840
Lost in eternal broil: ere yet she grew
To this deep-laid indissoluble state,
Where Wealth and Commerce lift their golden heads;
And o'er our labors Liberty and Law,
Impartial, watch; the wonder of a world!     845
What is this mighty breath, ye sages, say,
That, in a powerful language, felt, not heard,
Instructs the fowls of heaven; and through their breast
These arts of love diffuses? What, but God?
Inspiring God! who, boundless Spirit all,     85Gb
And unremitting Energy, pervades,
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.
He ceaseless works alone; and yet alone
Seems not to work: with such perfection framed
Is this complex, stupendous scheme of things.   855:
But, though concealed, to every purer eye
Th' informing Author in his works appears:
Chief, lovely Spring, in thee, and thy soft scenes,.
3




30                 SPRING.
The smiling God is seen; while water, earth,
And air attest his bounty; which exalts      860
The brute creation to this finer thought,
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.    865
When heaven and earth, as if contending, vie
To raise his being and serene his soul,
Can he forbear to join the general smile
Of Nature? Can fierce passions vex his breast,
While every gale is peace, and every grove   870
Is melody? Hence! from the bounteous walks
Of flowing Spring, ye sordid sons of earth,
Hard, and unfeeling of another's wo,
Or only lavish to yourselves; away!
But come, ye generous minds, in whose wide thought,
Of all his works, creative Bounty burns      876
VWith warmest beam; and on your open front
And liberal eye, sits, from his dark retreat
Inviting modest Want. Nor, till invoked,
Can restless goodness wait; your active search   880
Leaves no cold, wintry corner unexplored;
Like silent-working Heaven, surprising oft
The lonely heart with unexpected good.
For you the roving Spirit of the wind
Blows Spring abroad; for you the teeming clouds 885
Descend in gladsome plenty o'er the world;
And the sun sheds his kindest rays for you,
Ye flower of humlan race! in these green days,
Reviving Sickness lifts her languid head;
Life flows afresh; and young-eyed Health exalts 890'The whole creation round. Contentment walks
The sunny glade, and feels an inward bliss
Spring o'er his mind, beyond the power of kings'To purchase. Pure serenity apace
Induces thought and contemplation still.     895
By swift degrees the love of Nature works,




SPRING.                   3
And warms the bosom; till at last, sublimed
To rapture and enthusiastic heat,
We feel the present Deity, and taste
The joy of GoD to see a happy world!         900
These are the sacred feelings of thy heart,
Thy heart informed by reason's purer ray,
O Lyttelton, the friend! thy passions thus
And meditations vary, as at large,
Courting the Muse, through Hagley Park thou strayest,
Thy British Temp6! there along the dale,     906
With woods o'erhung, and shagged with mossy rocks,
Whence on each hand the gushing waters play,
And down the rough cascade white daslhing fall,
Or gleam in lengthened vista through the trees,  910
You silent steal; or sit beneath the shade
Of solemn oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts
Thrown graceful round by Nature's careless hand,
And pensive listen to the various voice
Of rural peace: the herds, the flocks, the birds,  915
The hollow-whispering breeze, the plaint of rills,
That, purling down amid the twisted roots
Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake
On the soothed ear. From these abstracted oft,
You wander through the philosophic world;     920
VWhere in bright train continual wonders rise,
Or to the curious or the pious eye.
And oft, conducted by historic truth,
You tread the longo extent of backward time:
Planning, with warm benevolence of mind      925
And honest zeal, unwarped by party rage,
Britannia's weal; how from the venal gulf
To raise her virtue, and her arts revive.
Or, turning thence thy view, these graver thoughts
The Muses charm: while, with sure taste refined, 930
You draw th' inspiring breath of ancient song;
Till nobly rises, emulous, thy own
Perhaps thy loved Lucinda shares thy walk,
With soul to thine attuned. Then Nature all




32                  SPRING.
Wears to the lover's eye a look of love.      9'36
And all the tumult of a guilty world,
Tossed by ungenerous passions, sinks away.
The tender heart is animated peace;
And as it pours its copious treasures forth,
In varied converse, softening every theme,    940
You, frequent pausing, turn, and from her eyes,
Where meekened sense, and amiable grace,
And lively sweetness dwell, enraptured, drink
That nameless spirit of ethereal joy,
Unutterable happiness! which love             945
Alone bestows, and on a favored few.
Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow
The bursting prospect spreads immense around:
And snatched o'er hill and dale, and wood and lawn.
And verdant field, and darkening heath between, 950
And villages embosomed soft in trees,
And spiry towns by surging columns marked
Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams
Wide-stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt
The Hospitable Genius lingers still,          955
To where the broken landscape, by degrees
Ascending, roughens into rigid hills;
O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds
That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.
Flushed by the spirit of the genial year,   960
Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom
Shoots, less and less, the live carnation round;
Her lips blush deeper sweets; she breathes of youth;
The shining moisture swells into her eyes,
In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves    965
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, ecstatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment. Ah then, ye fair!  970
Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts:
Dare not th' infectious sigh; the pleading look,




SPRING.                    83
Downcast and low, in meek submission dressed,
But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue,
Prompt to deceive, with adulation smooth,     975
Gain on your purposed will. Nor in the bower,
Where woodbines flaunt, and roses shed a couch,
While Evening draws her crimson curtains round,
Trust your soft minutes with betraying Man.
And let th' aspiring youth beware of love,  980
Of the smooth glance beware; for'tis too late,
When on his heart the torrent softness pours;
Then wisdom prostrate lies, and fading fame
Dissolves in air away; while the fond soul,
Wrapped in gay visions of unreal bliss,    9   53
Still paints th' illusive form; the kindling grace;
Th' enticing smile; the modest-seemiing eye,
Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying heaven,
Lurk searchless cunning, cruelty, and death:
And still, false-warbling in his cheated ear,  990
Her siren voice, enchanting, draws him on
To guileful shores and meads of fatal joy.
E'en present, in the very lap of love
Inglorious laid; while music flows around,
Perfumes, and oils, and wine, and wahton hours; 995
Amid the roses fierce Repentance rears
Her snaky crest; a quick-returning pang
Shoo.ts through the conscious heart; where honor still
And great design, against th' oppressive load
Of luxury, by fits, impatient heave.         1000
But absent, what fantastic woes, aroused,
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 scorned affairs.   1005'Tis nought but gloom around: the darkened sun
Loses his light. The rosy-bosomed Spring
To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch,
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.
All Nature fades extinct; and she alone,     1010




34                  SPRING.
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dulness, tedious friends;
And sad amid the social band he sits,
Lonely, and inattentive. From his tongue     1015
Th' unfinished period falls: while, borne away
On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant fair;
And leaves the semblance of a lover, fixed
In melancholy site, with head declined,      1020
And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,
Shook from his tender trance, and restless runs
To glimmering shades and sympathetic glooms;
Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling stream,
Romantic, hangs: there through the pensive dusk
Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation lost,  1026
Indulging all to love: or on the bank
Thrown, amid drooping lilies, swells the breeze
With sighs unceasing, and the brook with tears.
Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day,    1030
Nor quits his deep retirement, till the Moon
Peeps through the chambers of the fleecy east,
Enlightened by degrees, and in her train
Leads on the gentle H1-ours; then forth he walks,
Beneath the trembling languish of her beam,   1035
With softened soul, and woos the bird of eve
To mingle woes with his: or, while the world
And all the sons of care lie hushed in sleep,
Associates with the midnight shadows drear;
And, sighing to the lonely taper, pours      1040
His idly-tortured heart into the page,
Meant for the moving messenger of love;
Where rapture burns on rapture, every line
With rising frenzy fired. But if on bed
Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies,  104b
All night he tosses, nor the balmy power
In any posture finds; till the gray Morn
Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch,




SPRING.                    35
Exanimate by love; and then, perhaps,
Exhausted Nature sinks awhile to rest,       1050
Still interrupted by distracted dreams,
That o'er the sick imagination rise,
And in black colors paint the mimic scene.
Oft with th' enchantress of his soul he talks;
Sometimes in crowds distressed; or if retired    1055
To secret, winding, flower-enwoven bowers,
Far from the dull impertinence of Man,
Just as he, credulous, his endless cares
Begins to lose in blind oblivious love,
Snatched from her yielded hand, he knows not how,
Through forests huge, and long untraveled heaths 1061
With desolation brown, he wanders waste,
In night and tempest wrapped; or shrinks aghast,
Back, from the bending precipice; or wades
The turbid stream below, and strives to reach   1065
The farther shore; where, succorless and sad,
She with extended arms his aid implores;
But strives in vain; borne by th' outrageous flood
To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,
Or, whelmed beneath the boiling eddy, sinks.   1070
These are the charming agonies of love,
Whose misery delights. But through the heart
Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,'Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmixed, incessant gall,           1075
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's paradise. Ye fairy prospects, then,
Ye beds of roses, and ye bowers of joy,
Farewell! ye gleamings of departed peace,
Shine out your last! the yellow-tinging plague  1080
Internal vision taints, and in a night
Of livid gloom imagination wraps.
Ah, then! instead of love-enlivened cheeks,
Of sunny features, and of ardent eyes
With flowing rapture bright, dark looks succeed, 10,5
Suffused and glaring with untender fire,




36                  SPRING.
A clouded aspect, and a burning cheek,
Where the whole poisoned soul, malignant, sits,
And frightens love away. Ten thousand fears
Invented wild, ten thousand frantic views   1090
Of horrid rivals, hanging on the charms
For which he melts in fondness, eat him up
With fervent anguish and cdnsuminog rage.
In vain reproaches lend their idle aid,
Deceitful pride, and resolution frail,       1095
Giving false peace a moment. Fancy pours,
Afresh, her beauties on his busy thought,
Her first endearments twining round the soul,
With all the witchcraft of ensnaring love.
Straight the fierce storm involves his mind anew, 1100
Flames through the nerves, and boils along the veins;
While anxious doubt distracts the tortured heart:
For e'en the sad assurance of his fears
Were ease to what he feels. Thus the warm youth,
Whom love deludes into his thorny wilds,     1105
Through flowery-tempting paths, or leads a life
Of fevered rapture or of cruel care;
His brightest aims extinguished all, and all
His lively moments running down to waste.
But happy they! the happiest of their kind!  1110
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,  1115
Attuning all their passions into love;
Where friendship full exerts her softest power,
Perfect esteem enlivened by desire
Ineffable, and sympathy of soul;
Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will,
With boundless confidence: for nought but love 1121
Can answer love, and render bliss secure.
Let him, ungenerous, who, alone intent
To bless himself, from sordid parents buys




SPRING.                   37
The loathing virgin, in eternal care,        11.25
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 possessed    1130
Of a mere lifeless, violated form;
While those whom love cements in holy faith,
And equal transport, free as Nature live,
Disdaining fear. What is the world to them,
Its pomp, its pleasure, and its nonsense all?  113,;
Who in each other clasp whatever fair
High fany forms, and lavish hearts can wislh:
Something than beauty dearer, should they lookl
Or on the mind, or mind-illumined face;.
Truth, goodness, honor, harmony,. and love%  1140
The richest bounty of indulgent Ieaven.
Meantime a smiling offspring rises round,
And mningles both their graces. By degrees,
The human blossom blows; and every day,
Soft as it rolls along, shows some new charm,   1145
The father's lustre, and the mother's bloom.
Then infant reason grows apace, and calls
For the kind hand of an assiduous care.
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,        1150
To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,
To breathe th' enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast.
O, speak the joy! ye, whom the sudden tear
Surprises often, while you look around,      1155
And nothing strikes your eye but sights of blisar
All-various Nature pressing on the heart:
An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labor, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving heaven 
3




.3.. ~            SPRING.
These are the matchless joys of virtuous love
And thus their moments fly. The Seasons thus,
As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll,
Still find them happy; and consenting SPRING   1165
Sheds her own rosy garland on their heads:
Till evening comes at last, serene and mild;
When, after the long vernal day of life,
Enamored more, as more remembrance swells
With many a proof of recollected love,        1170
Together down they sink in social sleep,
Together freed, their gentle spirits fly
To scenes where love and bliss immortal reign




SUMMER.
The subject proposed. Invocation. Address to Mr. Dodington.
An introductory reflection on the motion of the heavenly bodies;
whence the succession of the Seasons. As the face of Nature
in this season is almost uniform, the progress of the poem is a
description of a summer's day,/ The dawn. Sun-rising. Hymn
to the sun.  Forenoon. Summer insects described.  Haymaking. Sheep-shearing. Noonday. A woodland retreat.
Group of lierds and flocks. A solemn grove: how it affects a
contemplative mind. A cataract, and rude scene. View of
Summer in the torrid zone. Storm of thunder and lightning.
A tale. The stonn over, a serene afternoon. Bathing. Hour
of walking. Transition to the prospect of a rich, well-cultivated
country; which introduces a panegyric on Great Britain. Sunset. Evening. Night. Summer meteors. A comet. The
wrhole concluding with the praise of philosophy.
FROM brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,
Child of the Sun, refulgent SuMrMaER comes,
In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:
He comes attended by the sultry Hours,
And ever-fanning breezes, on his way;                   5
While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring
Averts her blushful face; and earth and skies,
All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves.
Hence, let me haste into the midwood shade,
Where scarce a sunbeam wanders through the gloom;
And on the dark-green grass, beside the brink         11
Of haunted stream, that by the roots of oak
Rolls o'er the rocky channel, lie at large,
And sing the glories of the circling year.
Come, Inspiration! fr.olh thy hermit-seat,          15
By mortal seldom found: may Fancy dare,
From thy fixed serious eye, and raptured glance
Shot on surrounding heaven, to steal one look




40                 SUMMER
Creative of the Poet, every power
Exalting to an ecstasy of soul.              20
And thou, my youthful Muse's early friend,
In whom the human graces all unite:
Pure light of mind, and tenderness of heart,
Genius, and wisdom; the gay, social sense,
By decency chastised; goodness and wit,      25
In seldom-meeting harmony combined;
Unblemished honor, and an active zeal
For Britain's glory, Liberty, and Man;
O Dodington! attend my rural song,
Stoop to nmy theme, inspirit every line,     30
And teach me to deserve thy just applause.
With what an awful, world-revolving power
Were first the unwieldy planets launched along
Th' illimitable void! thus to remain,
Amid the flux of many thousand years,        3D
That oft has swept the toiling race of men
And all their labored monuments away,
Firm, unremitting, matchless, in their course;
To the kind-tempered change of'ight and day,
And of the seasons ever stealing round,      40
Minutely faithful: such th' All-perfect Hand,
That poised, impe s, and rules the steady whole! 1
When now no more th' alternate Twins are fired,
And Cancer reddens with the solar blaze,
Short is the doubtful empire of the night;   45
And soon, observant of approaching day,
The meeledMorn ap.tp rs, mother of dews,
At first faint-gleaming in the dappled east:
Till far o'er ether spreads the widening glow;
And, from before the lustre of her face,     50
White break the clouds away. With quickened step,
Brown Night retires: young Day p ans in apace,
And opens all the lawny prospect wide.
The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top,
Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn.  55
Blue, through the dusk, the smoking currents shine;




SUMMER.                   41
And from the bladed field the fearful hare
Limps, awkward; while along the forest glade
The wild deer trip, and, often turning, gaze
At early passenger. Music awakes              60
The native voice of undissembled joy,
And thick around the woodland hymns arise.
Roused by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves
His mossy cottage, where with Peace he dwells;
And from the crowded fold, in order, drives   65
His flock, to taste the vyerdureof the morn.-'
Falsely luxurious! will not Man awake,
And, springing from the bed of sloth, enjoy
The cool the fgrgrant and the silent hour,
To meditation due and sacred song?             76
For is there aught in sleep can charm the wise?
To lie in dead oblivion, losinghalf
Te _fleeting moments of too short a life;)
Total extinction of th' enlightened soul!
Or else, to feverish vanity alive,             75,
Wildered, and tossing through distempered dreams?
Who would in such a gloomy state remain
Longer than Nature craves, when every Muse
And every blooming pleasure wait without,
To bless the wildly-devious morning walk?      89
But yonder comes the powerful King of -Day,
Rejoicingo inrthe east. The lessening cloud,
Th7le-k'ndlin'g azure, and the mountain's brow
Illumed with fluid gold, his near approach
Betoken glad. Lo-! now, apparent all,
Aslant the dew-bright earth and colored air,
Ile looks in boundless majesty abroad;
And sheds the shining day, that burnished plays
On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams.
High gleaming from afar. Primecheerer, Light! 90
Of all material beings first and best!
Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe!
Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapped
In unessential gloom! and thou, O Sun!
4*




42                 SUMMER.
Soul of sirrounding worlds! in whom, best seen, 95
Shines out thy Malker! may I sing of thee?'Tis by thy secret, strong, attractive force,
As with a chain indissoluble bound,
Thy system rolls entire: from the far bourn
Of utmost Saturn, wheeling wide his round (d) 100
Of thirty years, to Mercury, whose disk'Can scarce be caught by philosophic eye,
Lost in the near effulgence of thy blaze.
Informer of the planetary train!
Without whose quickening glance their cumbrous orbs
Were brute, unlovely mass, inert and dead,   106
And not, as now, the green abodes of life!
How many forms of being wait on thee!
Inhaling spirit; from th' unfettered mind,
By thee sublimed, down'to the daily race,     110
The mixing myriads of thy setting beam.
The vegetable world is also thine,
Parent of Seasons! who the pomp precede
That waits thy throne, as through thy vast domain,
Annual, along the bright ecliptic road,       115
In world-rejoicing state, it moves sublime.
Meantime th' expecting nations, circled gay
With all the various tribes of foodful earth,
Implore thy bounty, or send grateful up
A common hymn; while, round thy beami-ng car, 120
High seen, theSp  ea dsonsead, in sprightly dance
Harmonious knit, the..rosy-finfered Hours,
The Zephyrs floating loose, the timely Rains,
Of bloom ethereal, the light-footed Dews,
And softened into joy the surly Storms.       125
-These, in successive turn, with lavish hand,.Shower every beauty, every fragrance shower,
Herbs, flowers, and fruits; and, kindling at thy touch,
From land to land is flushed. the vernal year.
Nor to the surface of enlivened earth,     130
Graceful with hills and dales, and leafy woods,
Her liberal tresses, is thy force confined:




SUMMER.                    43
But, to the bowelled cavern darting deep,
The mineral kinds confess thy mighty power.
Effulgent, hence the veiny marble shines;     135
Hence Labor draws his tools; hence burnished War
Gleams on the day; the nobler works of Peace
Hence bless mankind, and generous Commerce binds
The round of nations in a golden chain.
Th' unfruitful rock itself, impregned by thee,  140
In dark retirement forms the lucid stone.
The lively diamond drinks thy purest rays,
Collected light, compact; that, polished bright,
And all its native lustre let abroad,
Dares, as it sparkles on the fair one's breast,  t45
With vain ambition emulate her eyes.
At thee the ruby lights its deepening glow,
And with a waving radiance inward flames.
From thee the sapphire, solid ether, takes
Its hue cerulean; and, of evening tinct,      150
The purple-streaming amethyst is thine.
With thy own smile the yellow topaz burns.
Nor deeper verdure dyes the- robe of Spring,
When first she gives it to the southern gale,  155
Than the green emerald shows. But, all comnbined,
Thick through the whitening opal play thy beams;
Or, flying several from its surface, form
A trembling variance of revolving hues,
As the site varies in the gazer's hand,
The very dead creation, from thy touch,     160
Assumes a mimic life. By thee refined,
In brighter mazes the relucent stream
Plays o'er the mead. The precipice abrupt,
Projecting horror on the blackened flood,
Softens at thy return. The desert joys,       165
Wildly, through all his melancholy bounds.
Rude ruins glitter; and the briny deep,
Seen from some pointed promontory's top,
Far to the blue horizon's utmost verge,
Restless, reflects a floating gleam. But this,    170




44                 SUMMER.
And all the much-transported Muse can sing,
Are to thy beauty, dignity, and use,
Unequal far, great delegated source
Of light, and life, and grace, and joy below!
How shall I then attempt to sing of HIM'   175
Who, Light Himself, in uncreated light
Invested deep, dwells awfully retired
From mortal eye, or angel's purer ken;
Whose single smile has, from the first of time,
Filled, overflowing, all those lamps of heaven,   180
That beam forever through the boundless sky:
But, should he hide his face, th' astonished sun
And all th' extinguished stars would loosening reel
Wide from their spheres, and Chaos come again.
And yet, was every faltering tongue of Man,  1185
ALMIGHTY FATHER! silent in thy praise,
Thy Works themselves would raise a general voice,
E'en in the depth of solitary woods
By human foot untrod 5proclaim thy power,
And to the choir celestial THrEE resound,     190
Th' eternal cause, support, and end of all!
To me be Nature's volume broad displayed;
And to peruse its all-instructing page,
Or, haply catching inspiration thence,
Some easy passage, raptured, to translate,    195
My sole delight; as through the falling glooms
Pensive I stray, or with the rising dawn    X
On Fancy's eagle-wing excursive soar.
Now, flaming up the heavens, the potent sun
Melts into limpid air the high-raised clouds,  20F
And morning fogs, that hovered round the hills
In party-colored bands; till wide unveiled
The face of Nature shines, from where earth seems,
Far stretched around, to meet the bending sphere.
Half in a blush of clustering roses lost,   205
Dew-dropping coolness to the shade retires;
There, on the verdant turf, or flowery bed,
By gelid founts and careless rills to muse;




nSUIMMER.                  45
While tyrant Heat, dispreading through the sky,
With rapid sway, his burning influence darts    210
On man, and beast, and herb, and tepid stream.
Who can, unpitying, see the flowery race,
Shed by the morn, their new-flushed bloom resign
Before the parching beam? So fadetthe fair,
When fevers revel through their azure veins.    215
But one, the lofty follower of the sun,
Sad when lie sets, shuts up her yellow leaves,
Drooping all night; and, when he warm returns,
Points her enamored bosom to his ray.
Home, from his morning task, the swain retreats;
His flock before him stepping to the fold;   221
While the full-uddered mother lows around
The cheerful cottage, then expecting food,
The food of innocence and health! The daw,
The rook, and magpie, to the gray-grown oaks   225
That the calm village in their verdant arms,
Sheltering, embrace, direct their lazy flight:
Where on the mingling boughs they sit embowered
All the hot noon, till cooler hours arise.
Faint, underneath, the household fowls convene; 230
And, in a corner of the buzzing shade,
The house-dog with the vacant greyhound lies,
Outstretched and sleepy. In his slumbers, one
Attacks the nightly thief; and:one exults
O'er hill and dale; till, wakened by the wasp,   235
They starting snap. Nor shall the Muse disdain
To let the little noisy summer-race
Live in her lay, and flutter through her song:
Not mean, though simple; to the sun allied,
From him they draw their animating fire.     240
Waked by his warmer ray, the reptile young
Come winged abroad; by the light air upborne,
Lighter, and full of soul. From every chink,
And secret corner, where they slept away
The wintry,torms; or, rising from their tombs,  245
To higher life; by myriads, forth at once,
4*




46                  SUMMER.
Swarming they pour; of all the varied hues
Their beauty-beaming parent can disclose,
Ten thousand forms, ten thousand different tribes
People the blaze. To sunny waters some        250
By fatal instinct fly; where, on the pool,
They sportive wheel; or, sailing down the stream,
Are snatched immediate by the quick-eyed trout,
Or darting salmon. Through the greenwood glade
Some love to stray; there lodged, amused, and fed,
In the fresh leaf. Luxurious, others make     256
The meads their choice, and visit every flower,
And every latent herb: for the sweet task,
To propagate their kinds, and where to wrap,
In what soft beds, their young, yet undisclosed,  260
Employs their tender care. Some to the house,
The fold, and dairy, hungry, bend their flight;
Sip round the pail, or taste the curdling cheese;
Oft, inadvertent, from the milky stream
They meet their fate; or, weltering in the bowl, 265
With powerless wings around them wrapped, expire.
But chief to heedless flies the window proves
A constant death; where, gloomily retired,
The villain spider lives, cunning and fierce,
Mixture abhorred! Amid a mangled heap         270
Of carcasses, in eager watch he sits,
O'erlooking all his wavihg snares around.
Near the dire cell the dreadless wanderer oft
Passes, as oft the ruffian shows his front.
The prey at last ensnared, he dreadful darts,  275
With rapid glide, along-the leading line;
And, fixing in the wretch his cruel fangs,
Strikes backward, grimly pleased; the fluttering wing
And shriller sound declare extreme distress,
And ask the helping hospitable hand.          280
Resounds the living surface of the ground:
Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum,
To him who muses through the woods at noon;
Or drowsy shepherd, as he lies reclined,




SUMMER.                    47
With half-shut eyes, beneath the floating shade 285
Of willows gray, close crowding o'er the brook.
Gradual, from these what numerous kinds descend,
Evading e'en the microscopic eye!
Full Nature swarms with life; one wondrous mass
Of:animals, or atoms organized,              290
Waiting the vital breath, when parent Heaven
Shall bid his spiritblow. The hoary fen,
In putrid streams, emits the living cloud
Of pestilence. Through subterranean cells,
Where searching sunbeams scarce can find a way, 295
Earth animated heaves. The flowery leaf
Wants not its soft inhabitants. Secure,
Within its winding citadel, the stone
HIolds multitudes. But chief the forest boughs,
That dance unnumbered to the playful breeze,   300
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 verdure millions stray.    305
Each liquid too, whether it pierces, sooths,
Inflames, refreshes, or exalts the taste,
With various forms abounds. Nor is the stream
Of purest crystal, nor the lucid air,
Though one transparent vacancy it seems,      310
Void'of their unseen people. These, concealed
By the kind art of forming Heaven, escape
The grosser eye of man: for, if the worlds
In worlds enclosed should on his senses burst,
From cates ambrosial and the nectared bowl    315
He would abhorrent turn; and in dead night,
When silencps o'er all, be stunned with noise.
Let no presuming, impious railer tax
CREATIVE WISDoM, as if aught was formed
In vain, or not for admirable ends.          320
Shall little, haughty Ignorance pronounce
His works unwise, of which the smallest part




483                SUMMER.
Exceeds the narrow vision of her mind?
As if upon a full-proportioned dome,
On swelling columns heaved, (the pride of art,) 325
A critic-fly, whose feeble ray scarce spreads
An inch around, with blind presumption bold,
Should dare to tax the structure of the whole.
nd lives the Man, whose universal eye
tas swept at once th' unbounded scheme of things;
Marked their dependence so, and firm accord,    3,31
As with unfaltering accent to conclude
That;this availeth nought? Has any seen
The mighty chain of beings, lessening down
From Infinite Perfection to the brink         335
Of dreary nothing,desolate abyss!
From which astonished thought, recoiling, turns?
Till then alone let zealous praise ascend,
And hymns of holy wonder, to that POWER,
Whose wisdom shines as lovely on our minds,   340
As on our smiling eyes his servant sun.
Thick in yon stream of light, a thousand ways,
Upward and downward, thwarting and convolved,
The quivering nations sport; till, tempest-winged,
Fierce Winter sweeps them from the face of day.  345
E'en so luxurious men, unheeding, pass
An idle summer life in fortune's shine,
A season's glitter; thus they flutter on
From toy to toy, from vanity to vice;
Till, blown away by death, oblivion comes     350
Behind, and strikes them. from the book of life.
Now swarms the village o'er the jovial mead;
The rustic youth, brown with meridian toil,
Healthful and strong; full as the summer rose,
Blown by prevailing suns, the ruddy maid,     355
Half naked, swelling on the sight, and all
Her kindled graces burning o'er her cheek.
E'en stooping age is here; and infant hands
Trail the long:-ake, or, with the fragrant load
O'ercharged, amid the kind oppression roll.  360




SUMMER.                    49
Wide flies the tedded grain; all in a row
Advancing broad, or wheeling round the field,
They spread the breathing harvest to the sun,
That throws refreshful round a rural smell:
Or, as they rake the green-appearing ground,    365
And drive the dusky wave along the mead,
The russet haycock rises thick behind,
In order gay. While, heard from dale to dale,
Waking the breeze, resounds the blended voice
Of happy labor, love, and social glee.        370
Or rushing thence, in one diffusive band,
They drive the troubled flocks, by many a dog
Compelled, to where the mazy-running brook
Forms a deep pool; this bank abrupt and high,
And that fair-spreading in the pebbled shore.    375
Urged to the giddy brink, much is the toil,
The clamor much, of men, and boys, and dogs,
Ere the soft fearful people to the flood
Commit their woolly sides. And oft the swain,
On some impatient seizing, hurls themn in;    380
Emboldened then, nor hesitating more,
Fast, fast they plunge amid the flashing wave,
And, panting, labor to the farthest shore.
Repeated this, till deep the well-washed fleece
Has drunk the flood, and from his lively haunt   385
The trout is banished by the sordid stream;
Heavy and dripping, to the breezy brow
Slow move the harmless race: where, as they spread
Their swelling treasures to the sunny ray,
Inly disturbed, and wondering what this wild    390
Outrageous tumult means, their loud complaints
The country fill; and, tossed from rock to rock
Incessant bleatings run around the hills.
At last, of snowy white, the gathered flocks
Are in the wattled pen innumerous pressed    395
Head above head: and ranged in lusty rows
The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears.
The housewife waits to roll her fleecy stores,
5




50                  SUMMER.
With all her gay-dressed maids attending round.
One, chief, in gracious dignity enthroned,    400
Shines o'er the rest, the pastoral queen, and rays
Her smiles, sweet beaming on her shepherd king;
While the glad circle round them yield their souls
To festive mirth, and wit that knows no gall.
Meantime, their joyous task goes on apace;    405
Some mingling stir the melted tar, and some,
Deep on the new-shorn vagrant's heaving side,
To stamp the master's cipher ready stand;
Others th' unwilling wether drag along;
And, glorying in his might, the sturdy boy    410
Holds by the twisted horns th' indignant ram.
Behold where bound, and of its robe bereft,
By needy Man, that all-depending lord,
How meek, how patient, the mild creature lies!
What softness in its melancholy face,         415
What dumb, complaining innocence appears!
Fear not, ye gentle tribes,'tis not the knife
Of horrid slaughter that is o'er you waved;
iNo,'tis the tender swain's well-guided shears,
Who having now, to pay his annual care,       420
Borrowed your fleece, to you a cumbrous load,
Will send you bounding to your hills again.
A simple scene! yet hence Britannia sees
Her solid grandeur rise: hence she commands
Th' exalted stores of every brighter clime,   425
The treasures of the Sun without his rageHence, fervent all, with culture, toil, and arts,
Wide glows her land: her dreadful thunder hence
Rides o'er the waves sublime, and now, e'en now,
Impending hangs o'er Gallia's humble coast;    430
Hence rules the circling deep, and awes the world'Tis raging noon; and, vertical, the sun
Darts on the head direct his forceful rays.
O'er heaven and earth, far as the ranging eye
Can sweep, a dazzling deluge reigns, and all  435




SUMMER.                    5'
From pole to pole is undistinguished blaze.
In vain the sight, dejected, to the ground
Stoops for relief; thence hot ascending steams
And keen reflection pain. Deep to the root
Of vegetation parched, the cleaving fields    440
And slippery lawn an arid hue disclose,
Blast fancy's bloom, and wither e'en the soul.
Echo no more returns the cheerful sound
Of sharpening scythe: the mower sinking heaps
O'er him the humid hay, with flowers perfumed; 445
And scarce a chirping grasshopper is heard
Through the dumb mead. Distressful Nature pants.
The very streams look languid from afar:
Or, through th' unsheltered glade, impatient, seem
To hurl into the covert of the grove.         450
All-conquering Heat, 0, intermit thy wrath!
And on my throbbing temples potent thus
Beam not so fierce! incessant still you flow,
And still another fervent flood succeeds,
Poured on the head profuse. In vain I sigh,   455
And restless turn, and look around for night;
Night is far off; and hotter hours approach.
Thrice happy he! who on the sunless side
Of a romantic mountain, forest-crowned,
Beneath the whole collected shade reclines;   460
Or in the gelid caverns, woodbine-wrought,
And fresh bedewed with ever-spouting streams,
Sits coolly calm; while all the world without,
Unsatisfied, and sick, tosses in noon.
Emblem instructive of the virtuous man,       465
Who keeps his tempered mind serene and pure,
And every passion aptly harmonized,
Amid a jarring world with vice inflamed.
Welcome, ye shades! ye bowery thickets hail!
Ye lofty pines! ye venerable oaks!            470
Ye ashes wild, resounding o'er the steep!
Delicious is your shelter to the soul,
As to the hunted hart the sallying spring,




SUMMER.
Or stream full flowing, that his swelling sides
Laves, as he floats along the herbaged brink.  475
Cool, through the nerves, your pleasing comfort glides;
The heart beats glad; the fresh-expanded eye
And ear resume their watch; the sinews knit;
And life shoots swift through all the lightened limbs.
Around th' adjoining brook, that purls along    480
The vocal grove, now fretting o'er a rock,
Now scarcely moving through a reedy pool,
Now starting to a sudden stream, and now
Gently diffused into a limpid plain;
A various group the herds and flocks compose,   48i5
Rural confusion! on the grassy bank
Some ruminating lie; while others stand
Half in the flood, and often bending sip
The circling surface. In the middle droops
The strong laborious ox, of honest front,     490
Which incomposed he shakes.; and from his sides
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 sustained;
Here laid his scrip, with wholesome viands filled; 496
There, listening every noise, his watchful dog.
Light fly his slumbers, if perchance a flight
Of angry gadflies fasten on the herd,
That startling scatters from the shallow brook,   500
In search of lavish stream. Tossing the foam,
They scorn the keeper's voice, and scour the plain,
Through all the bright severity of noon;
While, from their laboring breast, a hollow moan,
Proceeding, runs low-bellowing round the hills.  505
Oft in this season, too, the horse, provoked,
While his big sinews full of spirits swell,
Trembling with vigor, in the heat of blood,
Springs the high fence; and, o'er the field effused,
Darts on the gloomy flood, with steadfast eye,   510
And heart estranged to fear: his nervous chest,




SUMMER.                    53
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. 515
Still let me pierce into the midnight depth
Of yonder grove, of wildest, largest growth:
That, forming high in air a woodland choir,
Nods o'er the mount beneath. At every step,
Solemn and slow, the shadows blacker fall,    520
And all is awful listening gloom around.
These are the haunts of Meditation, these
The scenes where ancient bards th' inspiring breath,
Ecstatic, felt; and, from this world retired,
Conversed with angels and immortal forms,     525
On gracious errands bent: to save the fall
Of virtue struggling on the brink of vice;
In waking whispers, and repeated dreams,
To hint pure thought, and warn the favored soul
For future trials fated to prepare;           530
To prompt the poet, who devoted gives
His muse to better themes; to sooth the pangs
Of dying worth, and from the patriot's breast
(Backward to mingle in detested war,
But foremost when engaged,) to turn the death; 535
And numberless such offices of love,
Daily and nightly, zealous to perform.
Shook sudden from the bosom of the sky,
A thousand shapes or glide athwart the dust,
Or stalk majestic on. Deep roused, I feel     540
A sacred terror, a severe delight
Creep through my mortal frame; and thus, methinks,
A voice, than human more, th' abstracted ear
Of fancy strikes:-" Be not of us afraid,
Poor kindred man! thy fellow-creatures, we    54~
From the same Parent Power our beings drew,
The same our Lord, and laws, and great pursuit.
Once some of us, like thee, through stormy life
Toiled, tempest-beaten, ere we could attain
5*




54                 SUMMER.
This holy calm, this harmony of mind,        550
Where purity and peace immingle charms.
Then fear not us; but with responsive song,
Amid these dim recesses, undisturbed
By noisy folly and discordant vice,
Of Nature sing with us, and Nature's God.     555
Here frequent, at. the visionary hour,
When musing midnight reigns or silent noon,
Angelic harps are in full concert heard,
And voices chanting from the wood-crowned hill,
The deepening dale, or inmost silvan glade:   560
A privilege bestowed by us, alone,
On Contemplation, or the hallowed ear
Of poet, swelling to seraphic strain."
And art thou, Stanley,* of that sacred band?
Alas, for us too soon! though raised above    565
The reach of human pain, above the flight
Of human joy; yet, with a mingled ray
Of sadly pleased remembrance, must thou feel
A mother's love, a mother's tender wo:
Who seeks thee still in many a former scene;'   570
Seeks thy fair form, thy lovely beaming eyes,
Thy pleasing converse, by gay lively sense
Inspired: where mortal wisdom mildly shone,
Without the toil of art; and virtue glowed,
In all her smiles, without forbidding pride.  575
But, O thou best of parents! wipe thy tears;
Or rather to Parental Nature pay
The tears of grateful joy, who for awhile
Lent thee this younger self, this opening bloom
Of thy enlightened mind and gentle worth.     580
Believe the muse: the wintry blast of death
Kills not the buds of virtue; no, they spread,
Beneath the heavenly beam of brighter suns,
Through endless ages, into higher powers.
Thus up the mount, in airy vision wrapped,   585
* A young lady, who died at the age of eighteen, in the yeax
1738, upon whom Thomson wrote an epitaph.




SUMMER.                    55
I stray, regardless whither; till the sound
Of a near fall of water every sense
Wakes from the charm of thought: swift shrinking back,
I check my steps, and view the broken scene.
Smooth to the shelving brink a copious flood   590
Rolls fair and placid; where, collected all
In one impetuous torrent, down the steep
It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round.
At first, an azure sheet, it rushes broad;
Then whitening by degrees, as-prone it falls,  595
And from the loud-resounding rocks below
Dashed in a cloud of foam, it sends aloft
A hoary mist, and forms a ceaseless shoxwer.
Nor can the tortured wave here find repose:
But, raging still amid the shaggy rocks,      600
Now flashes o'er the scattered fragments, now
Aslant the hollow channel rapid darts;
And, falling fast from gradual slope to slope,
With wild infracted course and lessened roar,
It gains a safer bed, and steals, at last,    605
Along the.mazes of the quiet vale.
Invited from the cliff, to whose dark brow
He clings, the steep-ascending eagle soars,
With upward pinions, through the flood of day;
And, giving full his bosom to the blaze,       610
Gains on the sun; while all the tuneful race,
Smit by afflictive noon, disordered droop,
Deep in the thicket; or, from bower to bower
Responsive, force an interrupted strain.
The stockdove only through the forest coos,   615
Mournfully hoarse; oft ceasing from his plaint,
Short interval of weary wo! again
The sad idea of his murdered mate,
Struck from his side by savage fowler's guile,
Across his fancy comes; and then resounds     62C
A louder song of sorrow through the grove.
Beside the dewy border let me sit,
All in the freshness of the humid air:




SUMMER.
There in that hollowed rock, grotesque and wild.
An ample chair, moss-lined, and over head         625
By flowering umbrage shaded; where the bee
Strays diligent, and with th' extracted balm
Of fragrant woodbine loads his little thigh.
Now, while I taste the sweetness of the shade,
While Nature lies around deep lulled in noon,    630
Now come, bold Fancy, spread a daring flight,
And view the wonders of the torrid zone:
Climes unrelenting! with whose rage compared,
Yon blaze is feeble, and yon skies are cool.
See, how at once the bright, effulgent sun,     635
Rising direct, swift chases from the sky
The short-lived twilight: and with ardent blaze
Looks gaily fierce through all the dazzling air:
He mounts his throne; but kind before him sends,
Issuing from out the portals of the morn,          640
The general breeze,' to mitigate his fire,
And breathe refreshment on a fainting world.
Great are the scenes, with dreadful beauty crowned
And barbarous wealth, that see, each circling year,
Returning suns and double seasonst pass:          645
Rocks rich in gems, and mountains big with mines,
That on the high equator ridgy rise,
Whence many a bursting stream auriferous plays,
Majestic woods, of ever-vigorous green,
Stage above stage, high waving o'er the hills;    65C
Or, to the far horizon wide diffused,
A boundless deep immensity of shade.
Here lofty trees, to ancient song unknown,
The noble sons of potent heat and floods,
Prone-rushing from the clouds, rear high to heaven 655
* VWhich blows constantly between the tropics from the east,
or the collateral points, the north-east and south-east; caused by
the pressure of the rarefied'air on that before it, according to the
diurnal mot on of the sun from east to wvest.
t In all climates between the tropics, the sun, as he passes and
repasses in his annual motion, is twice a year vertical, which
produces this effect.




SUMMER.                    57
Their thorny stems, and broad around them throw
Meridian gloom. Here, in eternal prime,
Unnumbered fruits, of keen delicious taste
And vital spirit, drink amid the cliffs,
And burning sands that bank the shrubby vales,  660
Redoubled day, yet in their rugged coasts
A friendly juice to cool its rage contain.
Bear me, Pomona! to thy citron groves;
To where the lemon and the piercing lime,
With the deep orange, glowing through the green, 665
Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined
Beneath the spreading tamarind, that shakes,
Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit.
Deep in the night the massy locust sheds,
Quench my hot limbs, or lead me through the maze,
Embowering endless, of the Indian fig;        671
Or, thrown at gayer ease, on some fair brow,
Let me behold, by breezy murmurs cooled,
Broad o'er my head the verdant cedar wave,
And high palmetos lift their graceful shade.  675
Or, stretched amid these orchards of the sun,
Give me to drain the cocoa's milky bowl,
And from the palm to draw its freshening wine;
More bounteous far than all the frantic juice
Which Bacchus pours. Nor, on its slender twigs 680
Low bending, be the full pomegranate scorned;
Nor, creeping through the woods, the gelid race
Of berries. Oft in humble station dwells
Unboastful worth, above fastidious pomp.
Witness, thou best Anana, thou the pride      685
Of vegetable life, beyond whate'er
The poets imaged in the golden age:
Quick let me strip thee of thy tufty coat,
Spread thy ambrosial stores, and feast with Jove!
From these the prospect varies. Plains immense
Lie stretched below, interminable meads,     691
And vast savannals, where the wandering eye,
Unfixed, is in a verdant ocean lost.




58'.SUMMER.
Another Flora there, of bolder hues,
And richer sweets, beyond our garden's pride,   695
Plays o'er the fields, and showers with sudden hand
Exuberant spring: for oft these valleys shift
Their green-embroidered robe to fiery brown,
And swift to green again, as scorching suns,
Or streaming dews and torrent rains, prevail.    700
Along these lonely regions, where, retired
From little scenes of art, great Nature dwells
In awful solitude, and nought is seen
But the wild herds that own no master's stall,
Prodigious rivers roll their fattening seas;    705
On whose luxuriant herbage, half concealed,
Like a fallen cedar, far diffused his train,
Cased in green scales, the crocodile extends.
The flood disparts: behold! in plaited mail,
Behemoth* rears his head.  Glanced from his side, 71W
The darted steel in idle shivers flies:
He fearless walks the plain, or seeks the hills;
Where, as he crops his varied fare, the herds,
In widening circle round, forget their food,
And at the harmless stranger wondering gaze.    715
Peaceful beneath primeval trees, that cast
Their ample shade o'er Niger's yellow stream,
And where the Ganges rolls his sacred wave; (e)
Or, mid the central depth of blackening woods,
High raised in solemn theatre around,           720
Leans the huge elephant: wisest of brutes!
O truly wise! with gentle might endowed,
Though powerful, not destructive! here he sees
Revolving ages sweep the changeful earth
And empires rise and fall;' regardless he       725
Of what the never-resting race of men
Project: thrice happy! could he'scape their guile,
Who mine, from cruel avarice, his steps;
Or with his towery grandeur swell their state,
*'the Htippopotanmus, or river-horse,




SUMMER.                    59
The pride of kings! or else his strength pervert, 730
And bid him rage amid the mortal fray,
Astonished at the madness of mankind.
Wide o'er the winding umbrage of the floods,
Like vivid blossoms glowing from afar,
Thick swarm the brighter birds. For Nature's hand,
That with a qportive vanity has decked        736
The plumy nations, there her gayest hues
Profusely pours.*  But if she bids them shine,
Arrayed in all the beauteous beams of day,
Yet, frugal still, she humbles them in song.  740
Nor envy we the gaudy robes they lent
Proud Montezuma's realm, whose legions cast
A boundless radiance waving on the sun,.
While Philomel is ours; while in our shades,
Through the soft silence of the listening night,  745
The sober-suited songstress trills her lay.
But come, lIy  Muse, the desert-barrier burst,
A wild expanse of lifeless sand and sky;
And, swifter than the toiling caravan,
Shoot o'er the vale of Sennar; ardent climb   750
The Nubian mountains, and the secret bounds
Of jealous Abyssinia boldly pierce.
Thou art no ruffian, who, beneath the mask
Of social commerce, comest to rob their wealth;
No holy Fury thou, blaspheming Heaven,        755
With consecrated steel to stab their peace,
And throughl the land, yet red from civil wounds,
To spread the purple tyranny of Rome.
Thou, like the harmless bee, mayst freely range
From mead to mead bright with exalted flowers,  760
From jasmine grove to grove mayst wander gay;
Throulgh palmy shades and aromatic woods,
That grace the plains, invest the peopled hills,
And up the more than Alpine mountains wave.
* In all the regionA of the torrid zone, the birds, though more
beautiful in their plumage, are observed to be less melodious than
ours.




60                 SUMMER.
There on the breezy summit, spreading fair,   765
For many a league; or on stupendous rocks,
That from the sun-redoubling valley lift,
Cool to the middle air, their lawny tops;
Where palaces, and fanes, and villas rise;
And gardens smile around, and cultured fields' 770
And fountains gush; and careless herds and flocks
Securely stray; a world within itself,
Disdaining all assault: there let me draw
Ethereal soul, there drink reviving gales,
Profusely breathing from the spicy groves     775
And vales of fragrance; there at distance hear
The roaring floods, and cataracts, that sweep
From disembowelled earth the virgin gold;
And o'er the varied landscape, restless, rove,
Fervent with life of every fairer kind:       780
A land of wonders! which the sun still eyes
With ray direct, as of the lovely realm
Enamored, and delighting there to dwell.
How changed the scene! in blazing height of noon,
The sun, oppressed, is plunged in thickest gloom. 785
Still horror reigns, a dreary twilight round,
Of struggling night and day malignant mixed.
For to the hot equator crowding fast,
Where, highly rarefied, the yielding air
Admits their stream, incessant vapors roll,   790
Amazing clouds on clouds continual heaped;
Or whirled tempestuous by the gusty wind,
Or silent borne along, heavy and slow,
With the big stores of steaming oceans charged.
Meantime, amid these upper seas, condensed    795
Around the cold aerial mountain's brow,
And by conflicting winds together dashed,
The Thunder holds his black, tremendous throne;
From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage;
Till, in the furious elemental war            800
Dissolved, the whole precipitated mass
Unbroken floods and solid torrents pours.




SUMMER.                    61
The treasures these, hid from the bounded search
Of ancient knowledge; whence, with annual pomp,
Rich king of floods! o'erflows the swelling Nile. 805
From his two springs, in Gojam's sunny realm,
Pure-welling out, he through the lucid lake
Of fair Dambea rolls his infant stream.
There, by the naiads nursed, he sports away
His playful youth amid the fiagrant isles,    810
That with unfading verdure smile around.
Ambitious, thence the manly river breaks;
And, gathering many a flood, and copious fed
With all the mellowed treasures of the sky,
Winds in progressive majesty along:           815
Through splendid kingdoms now devolves his maze,
Now wanders wild o'er solitary tracts
Of life-deserted sand; till, glad to quit
The joyless desert, down the Nubian rocks,
From thundering steep to steep, he pours his urn, 820
And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave.
His brother Niger too, and all the floods
In which the full-formed maids of Afric lave
The'ir jetty limbs; and all that from the tract
Of woody mountains stretched through gorgeous Ind
Fall on Cormandel's coast, or Malabar;        826
From Menam's* orient stream, that nightly shines
With insect lamps, to where Aurora sheds
On Indus' smiling banks the rosy shower:
All, at this bounteous season, ope their urns,  830
And pour untoiling harvest o'er the land.
Nor less thy world, Columbus, drinks, refreshed,
The lavish moisture of the melting year.
Wide o'er his isles the branching Oronoque
Rolls a brown deluge; and the native drives   835
To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees,
* The river that runs through Siam; on whose banks a vast
multitude of those insects, called Fire Flies, make a beautiful
appearance in the night.
6




62                  SUMMER.
At once his dome, his robe, his food, and arms.
Swelled by a thousand streams, impetuous hurled
From all the roaring Andes, huge descends
The mighty Orellana.*  Scarce the muse          840
Dares stretch her wing o'er this enormous mass
Of rushing water; scarce she dares attempt
The sealike Plata; to whose dread expanse,
Continuous depth, and wondrous length of course,
Our floods are rills. With unabated force,      845
In silent dignity they sweep along,
And traverse realms unknown, and blooming wilds,
And fruitful deserts, worlds of solitude,
Where the sun smiles and seasons teem in vain,
Unseen and unenjoyed. Forsaking these,          850
O'er peopled plains they fair diffusive flow,
And many a nation feed, and circle safe,
In their soft bosom, many a happy isle;
The seat of blameless Pan, yet undisturbed
By Christian crimes and Europe's cruel sons.    855
Thus pouring on they proudly seek the deep,
Whose vanquished tide, recoiling from the shock,
Yields to the liquid weight of half the globe,
And Ocean trembles for his green domain.
But what avails this wondrous waste of wealth?
This gay profusion of luxurious bliss?         861
This pomp of Nature? what their balmy meads,
Their powerful herbs, and Ceres void of' pain?
By vagrant birds dispersed, and wafting winds,
What their unplanted fruits? what the cool draughts,
Th' ambrosial fobo(, rich gums, and spicy health   866
Their forests yield? their toiling insects what,
Their silky pride, and vegetable robes P
Ah! what avail their fatal treasures hid
Deep in the bowels of the pitying earth,        870
Golconda's gems, and sad Potosi's mines; (f)
Where dwelt the gentlest children of the sun?
* The river of the Amazons.




SUMMER                      63
What all that Afric's golden rivers roll,
Her odorous woods, and shining ivory stores?
Ill-fated race! the softening arts of Peace,   875
Whate'er the humanizing Muses teach;
The godlike wisdom of the tempered breast;
Progressive truth, the patient force of thought;
Investigation calm, whose silent powers
Command the world; the light that leads to heaven;
Kind equal rule, the government of laws,        881
And all-protecting Freedom, which alone
Sustains the name and dignity of man:
These are not theirs. The parent sun himself
Seems o'er this world of slaves to tyrannize;   885
And, with oppressive ray, the roseate bloom
Of beauty blasting, gives the gloomy hue,
And feature gross: or worse, to ruthless deeds,
Mad jealousy, blind rage, and fell revenge,
Their fervid spirit fires. Love dwells not there, 890
The soft regards, the tenderness of life,
The heart-shed tear, th' ineffable delight
Of sweet humanity: these court the beam
Of milder climes;, in selfish fierce desire,
And the wild fury of voluptuous sense,          895
There lost. The very brute creation there
This rage partakes, and burns with horrid fire.
Lo! the green serpent, from his dark abode,
Which e'en Imagination fears to tread,
At noon forth issuing, gathers up his train     900
In orbs immense, then, darting out anew,
Seeks the refreshing fount; by which diffused,
He throws his folds; and while,with threatening tongue,
And deathful jaws erect, the monster curls
His flaming crest, all other thirst appalled,   905
Or shivering flies, or checked at distance stands,
Nor dares approach. But still more direful he,
The small close-lurking minister of fate,
Whose high-concocted venom through the veins
A rapid lightning darts, arresting swift        910




64                 SUMMER.
The vital current. Formed to humble man,
This child of vengeful nature! there, sublimed
To fearless lust of blood, the savage race
Roam, licensed by the shading hour of guilt,
And foul misdeed, when the pure day has shut   915
His sacred eye. The tiger, darting fierce,
Impetuous on the prey his glance has doomed;
The lively shining leopard, speckled o'er
With many a spot, the beauty of the waste;
And, scorning all the taming arts of man,     920
The keen hyena, fellest of the fell;
These rushing from th' inhospitable woods
Of Mauritania, or the tufted isles
That verdant rise amid the Libyan wild,
Innumerous glare around their shaggy king,    925
Majestic, stalking o'er the printed sand;
And, with imperious and repeated roars,
Demand their fated food  The fearful flocks
Crowd near the guardian swain; the nobler herds,
Where round their lordly bull, in rural ease  930
They ruminating lie, with horror hear
The coming rage. Th' awakened village starts;
And to her fluttering breast the mother strains
Her thoughtless infant. From the pirate's den,
Or stern Morocco's tyrant fang escaped,       935
The wretch half wishes for his bonds again;
While, uproar all, the wilderness resounds,
From Atlas eastward to the frighted Nile.
Unhappy he! who from the first of joys,
Society, cut off, is left alone               940
Amid this world of death. Day after day,
Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,
And views the main that ever toils below;
Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,
Where the round ether mixes with the wave,    945
Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds;
At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart




SUMMER.                    65
Sinks helpless; while the wonted roar is up,
And hiss continual through the tedious night.    950
Yet here, e'en here, into these black abodes
Of monsters, unappalled, from stooping Rome,
And guilty Caesar, Liberty retired,
Her Cato following through Numidian wilds:
Disdainful of Campania's gentle plains,       955
And all the green delights Ausonia pours;
When for them she must bend the servile knee,
And fawning take the splendid robber's boon.
Nor stop the terrors of these regions here.
Commissioned demons oft, angels of wrath,     960
Let loose the raging elements. Breathed hot
From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
And the wide glittering waste of burning sand,
A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,  965
Son of the desert! even the camel feels,
Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.
Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,
Commoved around, in gathering eddies play:     970
Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;
Till, with the general all-involving storm
Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;
And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,
Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,      975
Beneath descending hills, the caravan
Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
Th' impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
And Mecca saddens at the long delay.
But chief at sea, whose every flexile wave  980
Obeys the blast, th' aerial summit swells.
In the dread ocean, undulating wide,
Beneath the radiant line that girts the globe,
The circling Typhon* whirled from point to point,
* Typhon and Ecnephia, names of particular storms or hurricanes, known only between the tropics
6*




66                   SUMMER.
Exhausting all the rage of all the sky,.           985
And dire Ecnephia reign.  Amid the heavens,
Falsely serene, deep in a cloudy speck*
Compressed, the mighty tempest brooding swells;
Of no regard, save to the skilful eye,
Fiery and foul, the small prognostic hangs         990
Aloft, or on the promontory's brow
Musters its force.  A faint, deceitful calm,
A fluttering gale, the demon sends before,
To tempt the spreading sail. Then down at once,
Precipitant, descends a mingled mass               995
Of roaring winds, and flame, and rushing floods.
In wild amazement fixed the sailor stands.
Art is too slow: by rapid fate oppressed,
His broad-winged vessel drinks the whelming tide,
Hid in the bosom of the black abyss.              1000
With such mad seas the daring Gamat fought,
For many a day, and many a dreadful night,
Incessant, laboring round the stormy Cape;
By bold ambition led, and bolder thirst
Of gold.  For then from ancient gloom emerged  1005
The rising world of trade: the Genius, then,
Of navigation, that, in hopeless sloth,
Had slumbered on the vast Atlantic deep,
For idle ages, starting, heard at last
The Lusitanian prince;t who, heaven-inspired, 1010
To love of useful glory roused mankind,
And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.
Increasing still the terrors of these storms,
His jaws horrific armed with threefold fate,
Here dwells the direful shark.  Lured by the scent
Of steaming crowds, of rank disease, and death, 101.6
* Called by sailors the Ox-eye, being in appearance at first no
bigger.
t Vasco de Gama, the first who sailed round Africa by the Cape
of Good Hobpe, to the East Indies.: Doll Henry, third son to John I. king of Portugal. His strong
genius to the discovery of new countries was the chief source of
all the modern improvements of navigation.




SUMMER.                    67
Behold! he rushing cuts the briny flood,
Swift as the gale can bear the ship along;
And, from the partners of that cruel trade
Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons, (g) 1020
Demands his share of prey-demands themselves.
The stormy fates descend: one death involves
Tyrants and slaves; when straight, their mangled limbs
Crashing at once, he dyes the purple seas
With gore, and riots in the vengeful meal.   1025
When o'er this world, by equinoctial rains
Flooded immense, looks out the joyless sun,
And draws the copious steam; from swampy fens,
Where putrefaction into life ferments,
And breathes destructive myriads; or from woods,
Impenetrable shades, recesses foul, -        1031
In vapors rank and blue corruption wrapped,
Whose gloomy horrors yet no desperate foot
Has ever dared to pierce; then, wasteful, forth
Walks the dire Power of pestilent disease.   1035
A thousand hideous fiends her course attend,
Sick Nature blasting, and to heartless wo,
And feeble desolation, casting down
The towering hopes and all the pride of Man.
Such as, of late, at Carthagena, quenched    1040
The British fire. You, gallant Vernon, saw  (h)
The miserable scene; you, pitying, saw
To infant weakness sunk the warrior's arm;
Saw the deep-racking pang, the ghastly form,
The lip pale-quivering, and the beamless eye    1045
No more with ardor bright: you heard the groans
Of agonizing ships from shore to shore;
Heard, nightly plunged amid the sullen waves,
The frequent corse; while on each other fixed,
In sad presage, the blank assistants seemed,    1050
Silent, to ask, whom fate would next demand.
What need I mention those inclement skies,
Where, frequent o'er the sickening city, Plague,
The fiercest child of Nemesis divine,




Q68                SUMMER.
Descends? From Ethiopia's poisoned woods,   1055
From stifled Cairo's filth, and fetid fields
With locust armies putrefying heaped,
This great destroyer sprung. Her awful rage
The brutes escape: Man is her destined prey,
Intemperate Man! and, o'er his guilty domes,  1060
She draws a close incumbent cloud of death;
Uninterrupted by the living winds,
Forbid to blow a wholesome breeze; and stained
With many a mixture by the sun, suffused,
Of angry aspect. Princely wisdom, then,      1065
Dejects his watchful eye; and from the hand
Of feeble justice, ineffectual, drop
The sword and balance: mute the voice of joy,
And hushed the clamor of the busy world.
Empty the streets, with uncouth verdure clad;  1070
Into the worst of deserts sudden turned
The cheerful haunt of men; unless escaped
From the doomed house, where matchless horror reigns,
Shut up by barbarous fear, the smitten wretch,
With frenzy wild, breaks loose; and, loud to Heaven
Screaming, the dreadful policy arraigns,     1076
Inhuman and unwise. The sullen door,
Yet uninfected, on its cautious hinge
Fearing to turn, abhors society:
Dependants, friends, relations, Love himself,    1080
Savaged by wo, forget the tender tie,
The sweet engagement of the feeling heart.
But vain their selfish care: the circling sky,
The wide enlivening air is full of fate;
And, struck by turns, in solitary pangs      1085
They fall, unblessed, untended, and unmourned.
Thus o'er the prostrate city black Despair
Extends her raven wing; while, to complete
The scene of desolation, stretched around,
The grim guards stand, denying all retreat,  109'0
And give the flying wretch a better death.
Much yet remains unsung: the rage intense




SUMMER.                    69
Of brazen-vaulted skies, of iron fields,
Where drought and famine starve the blasted year:
Fired by the torch of noon to tenfold rage,  1095
Th' infuriate hill that shoots the pillared flame;
And, roused within the subterranean world,
Th expanding earthquake, that resistless shakes
Aspiring cities from their solid base,
And buries mountains in the flaming gulf.    1100
But'tis enough; return, my vagrant Muse;
A nearer scene of horror calls thee home.
Behold, slow-settling o'er the lurid grove
Unusual darkness broods; and growing gains
The full possession of the sky, surcharged   1105
With wrathful vapor, from the secret beds,
Where sleep the mineral generations, drawn.
Thence nitre, sulphur, and the fiery spume
Of fat bitumen, steaming on the day,
With various tinctured trains of latent flame,  1110
Pollute the sky, and in yon baleful cloud,
A reddening gloom, a magazine of fate,
Ferment; till, by the touch ethereal roused,
The dash of clouds, or irritating war
Of fighting winds, while all is calm below,  1115
They furious spring. A boding silence reigns,
Dread through the dun expanse; save the dull sound
That from the mountain, previous to the storm,
Rolls o'er the muttering earth, disturbs the flood,
And shakes the forest-leaf without a breath.    1120
Prone, to the lowest vale, the aerial tribes
Descend: the tempest-loving raven scarce
Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze
The cattle stand, and on the scowling heavens
Cast a deploring eye; by man forsook,        1125
Who to the crowded -ottage hies him fast,
Or seeks the shelter of the downward cave.'Tis listening fear, and dumb amazement all:
When to the startled eye the sudden glance
Appears far south, eruptive through the cloud; 1130




70                 SUMMER.
And, following slower, in explosion vast,
The Thunder raises his tremendous voice.
At first, heard solemn o'er the verge of heaven,
The tempest growls; but as it nearer comes,
And rolls its awful burden on the wind,     1135
The lightnings flash a larger curve, and more
The noise astounds; till over head a sheet
Of livid flame discloses wide; then shuts,
And opens wider; shuts and opens still
Expansive, wrapping ether in a blaze.        1140
Follows the loosened aggravated roar,
Enlarging, deepening, mingling; peal on peal
Crushed horrible, convulsing heaven and earth.
Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail,.
Or prone-descending rain. Wide-rent, the clouds 1145
Pour a whole flood: and yet, its flame unquenched,
Th' unconquerable lightning struggles through,
Ragged and fierce, or in red whirling balls,
And fires the mountains with redoubled rage.   1149
Black from the stroke, above, the smouldering pine
Stands a sad shattered trunk; and, stretche4d below.
A lifeless group the blasted cattle lie.
Here the soft flocks, with that same harmless look
They wore alive, and ruminating still
In fancy's eye; and there the frowning bull,   1155
And ox half-raised  Struck on the castled cliff,
The venerable tower and spiry fane
Resign their aged pride. The gloomy woods
Start at the flash, and from their deep recess,
Wide-flaming out, their trembling inmates shake. 1160
Amid Carnarvon's mountains rages loud
The repercussive roar: with mighty crush,
Into the flashing deep, from the rude rocks
Of Penmanmaur heaped hideous to the sky, (i)
Tumble the smitten cliffs; and Snowden's peak, 1165
Dissolving, instant yields his wintry load.
Far seen, the heights of heathy Cheviot blaze,
And Thul6 bellows through her utmost isles. (j)




SUMMER.                    71
Guilt hears appalled, with deeply troubled thought)
And yet not always on the guilty head       1170
Descends the fated flash. Young Celadon
And his Amelia were a matchless pair:
With equal virtue formed, and equal grace,
The same, distinguished by their sex alone:
Hers the mild lustre of the blooming morn,  1175
And his the radiance of the risen day.
They'loved: but such their guileless passion was,
As in the dawn of time informed the heart
Of innocence, and undissembling truth.'Twas friendship heightened by the mutual wish; 1180
Th' enchanting hope and sympathetic glow
Beamed from the mutual eye. Devoting all
To love, each was to each a dearer self;
Supremely happy in th' awakened power
Of giving joy. Alone, amid the shades,       1185
Still in harmonious intercourse they lived
The rural day, and talked the flowing heart,
Or sighed and looked unutterable things.
So passed their life, a clear united stream,
By care unruffled; till, in evil hour,      1190
The tempest caught them on the tender walk,
Heedless how far and where its mazes strayed,
While, with each other blessed, creative love
Still bade eternal Eden smile around.
Presaging instant fate, her bosom heaved    1195
Unwonted sighs, and, stealing oft a look
Of the big gloom, on Celadon her eye
Fell tearful, wetting her disordered cheek.
In vain, assuring love and confidence
In Heaven repressed her fear; it grew, and shook
Her frame near dissolution. He perceived    1201
Th' unequal conflict; and as angels look
On dying saints, his eyes compassion shed,
With love illumined high. " Fear not," he said,
"Sweet innocence! thou stranger to offence,   1205
And inward storm! He, who yon skies involves




72                 SUMMER.
In frowns of darkness, ever smiles on thee
With kind regard. O'er thee the secret shaft
That wastes at midnight, or th' undreaded hour
Of noon, flies harmless: and that very voice,   1210
Which thunders terror through the guilty heart,
With tongues of seraphs whispers peace to thine.'Tis safety to be near thee, sure, and thus
To clasp perfection!" From his void embrace,  1214
(Mysterious Heaven!) that moment, to the ground,
A blackened corse, was struck the beauteous maid.
But who can paint the lover, as he stood,
Pierced by severe amazement, hating life,
Speechless, and fixed in all the death of wo!
So, faint resemblance! on the marble tomb,  1220
The well-dissembled mourner stooping stands,
Forever silent and forever sad.
As from the face of heaven the shattered clouds
Tumultuous rove, th' interminable sky
Sublimer swells, and o'er the world expands  122S
A purer azure. Through the lightened air
A higher lustre and a clearer calm,
Diffusive, tremble; while, as if in sign
Of danger past, a glittering robe of joy,
Set off abundant by the yellow ray,          1230
Invests the fields; and nature smiles revived.'Tis beauty all, and grateful song around,
Joined to the low of kine, and numerous bleat
Of flocks thick-nibbling through the clovered vale.
And shall the hymn be marred by thankless Man, 1235
MRost favored! who with voice articulate
Should lead the chorus of this lower world;
Shall he, so soon forgetful of the Hand
That hushed the thunder, and serenes the sky,
Extinguished feel that spark the tempest waked, 1240
That sense of powers exceeding far his own,
Ere yet his feeble heart has lost its fears?
Cheered by the milder beam, the sprightly youth
Speeds to the well-known pool, whose crystal depth




SUMMER.                    73
A sandy bottom shows. Awhile he stands       12915
Gazing th' inverted landscape, half afraid
To meditate the blue profound below;
Then plunges headlong down the circling flood.
His ebon tresses and his rosy cheek
Instant emerge; and, through th' obedient wave,
At each short breathing by his lip repelled,  1251
With arms and legs according well, he makes,
As humor leads, all easy-winding path;
While, from his polished sides, a dewy light
Effuses on the pleased spectators round.    1t255
This is the purest exercise of health,
The kind refresher of the summer heats;
Nor when cold Winter keens the brightening flood,
Would I weak-shivering linger on the brink.
Thus. life redoubles, and is oft preserved,  1.260
By the bold swimmer, in the swift elapse
Of accident disastrous. Hence the limbs
Knit into force; and the same Roman arm,
That rose victorious o'er the conquered earth,
First learned, while tender, to subdue the wave. 1.2G5
Even from the body's purity, the mind
Receives a secret, sympathetic aid.
Close in the covert of a hazel copse,
Where winding into pleasing solitudes
Runs out the rambling dale, young Damon sat,  1270
Pensive, and pierced with love's delightful pangs.
There to the stream that down the distant rocks
Hoarse-murmuring fell, and plaintive breeze that play'd
Among the bending willows, falsely he
Of Musidora's cruelty complained.            1275
She felt his flame; but deep within her breast,
In bashful coyness, or in maiden pride,
The soft return concealed; save when it stole
In sidelong glances from her downcast eye,
Or from her swelling soul in stifled sighs.  1280
Touched by the scene, no stranger to his vows,
He framed a melting lay, to try her heart
7




74- SUMMER.
And, if an infant passion struggled there,
To call that passion forth. Thrice happy swain!
A lucky cha.nce, that oft decides the fate   1285
Of mighty monarchs, then decided thine.
For, lo! conducted by the laughing Loves,
This cool retreat his Musidora sought:
Warm in her cheek the sultry season glowed;
And, robed in loose array, she came to bathe'1290
Her fervent limbs in the refreshing stream.
What shall he do? In sweet confusion lost,
And dubious flutterings, he awhile remained:
A pure, ingenuous elegance of soul,
A delicate refinement, known to few,         1295
Perplexed his breast, and uroed him to retire:
But love forbade. Ye prudes in virtue, say,
Say, ye severest, what would you have done?
Meantime, this fairer nymph than.ever blessed
Arcadian stream, with timid eye arounad       1300
The banks surveying, stripped her beauteous limbs,
To taste the lucid coolness of the flood.
Ah, then! not Paris on the piny top
Of Ida panted stronger, when aside
The rival-goddesses the veil divine           1305
Cast unconfined, and gave him all their charms,
Than, Damon, thou; as from the snowy leg,
And slender foot, th' inverted silk she drew;
As the soft touch dissolved the virgin zone,
And, through the parting robe, th' alternate breast,
With youth wild-throbbing, on thy lawless gaze 1311
In full luxuriance rose. But, desperate youth,
How durst thou risk the soul-distracting view;
As from her naked limbs of glowing white,
Harmonious swelled by Natures finest hand,    1315
In folds loose-floating fell the fainter lawn;
And fair-exposed she stood, shrunk from herself,:
With fancy blushing, at the doubtful breeze
Alarmed, and starting like the fearful fawn?
Then to the flood she rushed; the parted flood   1320




SUMMER                     75
Its lovely guest with closing waves received;
And every beauty softening, every grace
Flushing anew, a mellow lustre shed;
As shines the lily through the crystal mild;
Or as the rose amid the morning dew,         1325
Fresh from Aurora's hand, more sweetly glows.
While thus she wantoned, now beneath the wave
But ill concealed; and now with streaming locks,
That half embraced her in a humid veil,
Rising again, the latent Damon drew          1330
Such maddening draughts of beauty to the soul,
As for awhile o'erwhelmed his raptured thought
With luxury too daring. Checked, at last,
By love's respectful modesty, he deemed
The theft pr-faChne, if aught profane to love  1335
Call e'er be deemied; and, struggling fi'om the shade,
With headlonup hurry fled: but first these lines,
Traced by his ready pencil, on the bank
With tremblinc iland he threw:-" Bathe on, my fair,
Yet unbeheld save by the sacred eye          1340
Of faithful love: I go to guard thy haunt,
To keep from thy recess each vagrant foot,
And each licentious eye."  With wild surprise,
As if to marble struck, devoid of sense,
A stupid moment motionless she stood:        1345
So stands the statue* that enchants the world,
So bending tries to veil the matchless boast,
The mingled beauties of exulting Greece.
Recovering, swift she flew to find those robes
Which blissful Eden knew not; and, arrayed    1350
In careless haste, th' alarming paper snatched.
But, when her Damon's well-known hand she saw,
Her terrors vanished, and a softer train
Of mixed emotions, hard to be described,
Her sudden bosom seized: shame void of guilt, 1355
The charming blush of innocence, esteem,
* The Venus of Medici.




76                 SUMMER.
4And admiration of her lover's flame,
By modesty exalted; even a sense
Of self-approving beauty stole across
Her busy thought. At length, a tender calm    1360
Hushed by degrees the tumult of her soul;
And on the spreading beech, that o'er the stream
Incumbent hung, she with the sylvan pen
Of rural lovers this confession carved,
Which soon her Damon kissed with weeping joy: 1365
"Dear youth! sole judge of what these'verses mean,
By fortune too much favored, but by love,
Alas! not favored less, be stil! as now
Discreet: the time may come you need not fly."
The sun has lost his rage: his downward orb  1370
Shoots nothing now but animating warmtih,
And vital lustre; that, with various ray,
Lights up the clouds, those beauteous robes of heaven,
Incessant roiled into romantic shapes,
The dream of waking fancy! broad below,      1375
Covered with ripening fruits, and swelling fast
Into the perfect year, the pregnant earth
And all her tribes rejoice. Now the soft hour
Of walking comes, for him who lonely loves
To seek the distant hills, and there converse    1380
With Nature; there to harmonize his heart,
And in pathetic song to breathe around
The harmony to others. Social friends,
Attuned to happy unison of soul;
To whose exalting eye a fairer world,        1385
Of which the vulgar never had a glimpse,
Displays its charms; whose minds are richly fraught
With philosophic stores, superior light;
And in whose breast, enthusiastic, burns
Virtue, the sons of interest deem romance;    1P3eL
Now called abroad enjoy the falling day:
Now to the verdant portico of woods,
To Nature's vast Lyceum, forth they walk;
By that kind School where no proud master reign;,




SUMMER.                      77
The full free converse of the friendly heart,    1395
Improving and improved. Now from the world,
Sacred to sweet retirement, lovers steal,
And pour their souls in transport, which the Sire
Of love approving hears, and calls it good.
Which way, Amanda, shall we bend our course? 1400
The choice perplexes. Wherefore should we choiose?
All is the same with thee. Say, shall we wind
Along the streams? or walk the smiling mead?
Or court the forest glades? or wander wild
Among the waving harvest? or ascend,           1405
While radiant Summer opens all its pride,
Thy hill, delightful Slhene?* Here let us sweep
The boundless landscape: now the raptured eye,
Ex:ulting swift, to huge Augusta send;
Now  to the sister hillst' that skirt her plain;  1410
To lofty Harrow now, and now to where
Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow.
In lovely contrast to this glorious view,
Calmly magnificent, then will we turn
To where the silver Thames first rural grows;   1415
There let the feasted eye unwearied stray;
Luxurious, there, rove through the pendant woods,
That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat;
And, stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks,
Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retired, 1420
With her the pleasing partner of hLis heart,
The worthy Queensberry yet laments his Gay,
And polished Cornbury woos the willing Muse.
Slow let us trace the matchless Vale of Thames;
Fair winding up to where the Muses haunt        142r.
In Twit'nam's bowers, and for their Pope implore
The healing God;. to royal Hampton's pile,
To Clermont's terraced height, and Esher's groves,
Where in the sweetest solitude, embraced
* The old name of iRicrhmuond, signifying, in Saxon, Skliting or,
Splendor.
t Ifighgate and Hampstead.: In his last sickness
7*




78                  SUMMER.
By the soft windings of the silent Mole,     1430
From courts and senates Pelham finds repose.
Enchanting vale! beyond whate'er the Muse
Has of Achaia or Hesperia sung!
O vale of bliss! O softly-swelling hills!
On which the Power of Cultivation lies,      1435
And joys to see the wonders of his toil.
Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around,
Of hills, and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires,
And glittering towns, and gilded streams, till all
The stretching landscape into smoke decays!   1440
Happy Britannia! where the Queen of Arts,
Inspiring vigor, Liberty abroad
Walks, unconfined, e'en to thy farthest cots,
And scatters plenty with unsparing hand.
Rich is thy soil, and merciful thy clime;  1445
Thy streams unfailing in the Summer's drought;
Unmatched thy guardian oaks; thy valleys float
With golden waves: and on thy mountains flocks
Bleat numberless! while, roving round their sides,
Bellow the blackening herds in lusty droves.    1450
Beneath, thy meadows glow, and rise unquelled
Against the mower's scythe. On every hand
Thy villas shine. Thy country teems with wealth;
And property assures it to the swain,
Pleased and unwearied, in his guarded toil.  1455
Full are thy cities with the sons of art;
And trade and joy, in every busy street,
Mingling are heard: e'en Drudgery himself,
As at the car he sweats, or dusty hews
The palace stone, looks gay. Thy crowded ports,
Where rising masts an endless prospect yield,   1461
With labor burn, and echo to the shouts
Of hurried' silor, as he hearty waves
His last adieu, and, loosening every sheet,
Resigns the spreading vessel to the wind.    1465
Bold, firm, and graceful are thy generous youth,;By hardship sinewed, and by danger fired,




SUMMER.                    79
Scattering the nations where they go; and first
Or on the listed plain, or stormy seas.
Mild are thy glories, too, as o'er the plains  1470
Of thriving peace thy thoughtful sires preside;
In genius and substantial learning high;
For every virtue, every worth, renowned;
Sincere, plain-hearted, hospitable, kind;
Yet like the mustering thunder when provoked, 1475
The dread of tyrants, and the sole resource
Of those that under grim oppression groan.
Thy sons of glory many' Alfred thine, (k)
In whom the splendor of heroic war,
And more heroic peace, when governed well,   1480
Combine; -whose hallowed name the Virtues saint,
And his own Muses love; the best of kings [
With him thy Edwards and thy Henries shine,
Names dear to fame; the first who deep impressed
On haughty Gaul the terror of thy arms,      1485
That awes her genius still. In statesmen thou,
And patriots fertile. Thine a steady More,
Who, with a generous though mistaken zeal,
Withstood a brutal tyrant's direful rage,
Like Cato firm, like Aristides just,         1490
Like rigid Cincinnatus nobly poor,
A dauntless soul erect, who smiled on death.
Frugal and wise, a Walsingham is thine;
A Drake, who made thee mistress of the deep,
And bore thy name in thunder round the world. 1495
Then flamed thy spirit high: but who can speak
The numerous worthies of the Maiden Reign,?
In Raleigh mark their every glory mixed;
Raleigh, the scourge of Spain! whose breast with all
The sage, the patriot, and the hero burned.  1500
Nor sunk his vigor, when a coward reign (1)
The warrior fettered, and at last resigned,
To glut the vengeance of a vanquished foe.
Then, active still and unrestrained, his mind
Explored the vast extent of ages past,       1505
— ~~ —-` --- ~ —- — 1 — I  - ~t-~ r~0 -




80                 SUMMER.
And with his prison hours enriched the world;
Yet found no times, in all the long research,
So glorious or so base as those he proved,
In which lie conquered, and in which he bled.
Nor can the Muse the gallant Sidney pass,    1510
The plume of war! with early laurels crowned,
The lover's myrtle, and the poet's bay.
A Hampden too is thine, illustrious land,
WVise, strenuous, firm, of unsubmitting soul,
Who stemmed the torrent of a downward age   1515
To slavery prone, and bade thee rise again,
In all thy native pomp of freedom bold.
Bright, at his call, thy Age of Men effulged,
Of Men on whom late time a kindling eye.
Shall turn, and tyrants tremble while they read. 1520
Bring every sweetest flower, and let me strew
The grave where Russel lies, whose tempered blood,
With calmest cheerfulness for thee resigned,
Stained the sad annals of a giddy reign;
Aiming at lawless power, though meanly sunk  1.55
In loose, inglorious luxury. With him
His friend, the British Cassius,~ fearless bled;
Of high determined spirit, roughly brave,
By ancient learning to th' enlightened love
Of ancient freedom warmed. Fair thy renown  1530
In awful sages and in noble bards;
Soon as the light of dawning Science spread
Her orient ray, and waked the Muses' song:
Thine is a Bacon; hapless in his choice, (nm)
Unfit to stand the civil storm of state,     1535
And through the smooth barbarity of courts,
With firm but pliant virtue, forward still
To urge his course: him for the studious shade
Kind Nature formed, deep, comprehensive, clear,
Exact, and elegant: in one rich soul,        1540
Plato, the Stagyrite, and Tully joined.
The great deliverer he! who froim the glooin
* Algernon Sidney




SUMMER.                    81
Of cloistered monks, and jargon-teaching schools,
Led forth the true Philosophy, there long
/Held in the magic chain of words and forms,   1545
And definitions void: he led her forth,
Daughter of Heaven! that slow ascending still,
Investigating sure the chain of things,
With radiant finger points to heaven again.
The generous Ashley* thine, the friend of man; 1550
Who scanned his nature with a brother's eye,
His weakness prompt to shade, to raise his aim,'ro touch the finer movements of the mind,
And with the moral beauty charm the heart.
Why need I name thy Boyle, whose pious search, 1555
Amid the dark recesses of his works,
The great C eator sought? And why thy Locke,
Who made th-e whole internal world his own?
Let Newton, pure intelligence, whom GoD
To mortals lent, to trace his boundless works    1560
From laws sublimely simple, speak thy fame
In all philosophy. For lofty sense,
Creative fancy, and inspection keen
Through the deep windings of the human heart,
Is not wild Sllakspeare thine and Nature's boast? 1565
Is not each great, each amiable Muse
Of classic ages in thy Milton met 
A genius universal as his theme;
Astonishing as chaos, as the bloom
Of blowing Eden fair, as heaven sublime!     J N7~
Nor shall my verse that elder bard forget,
The gentle Spenser, Fancy's pleasing son;
Who, like a copious river, poured his song
O'er all the mazes of enchanted ground:
Nor thee, his ancient master, laughing sage,    1575
Chaucer, whose native manners-painting verse,
Well moralized, shines through the Gothic cloud
Of time and language o'er thy genius thrown.
a Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury




82                  SUMMER.
May mny song soften, as thy daughters I,
Britannia, hail! for beauty is their own,     1580
The feeling heart, simplicity of life,
And elegance, and taste; the faultless form,
Shaped by the hand of harmony; the cheek,
Where the live crimson, through the native white
Soft-shooting, o'er the face diffuses bloom, 1. 1585
And every nameless grace; the parted lip
Like the red rose-bud moist with morning dew,
Breathing delight; and, under flowing jet,
Or sunny ringlets, or of circling brown,
The neck slight-shaded, and the swelling breast; 1590
The look resistless, piercing to the soul,
And by the soul informed, when dressed in love,
She sits hig;h smiling in the conscious eye.
Island of bliss! amid the subject seas,
That thunder round thy rocky coasts, set up,    1595
At once the wonder, terror, and delight
Of distant nations; whose remotest shores
Can soon 1:e shaken by thy naval arm;
Not to be shook thyself, but all assaults
Baffling, as thy hoar cliffs the loud sea-wave.   1600
O thou! by whose Almighty nod the scale
Of empire rises, or alternate falls,
Send forth the saving Virtues round the land,
In bright patrol: while Peace, and social Love;
The tender-looking Charity, intent            1605
On gentle deeds, and shedding tears through smiles;
Undaunted Truth, and dignity of mind;
Courage composed and keen; sound Temperance,
Healthful in heart and looks  clear Chastity,
With blushes'reddening as she moves along,    1610
Disordered at the deep regard she draws;
Rough Industry; Activity untired,
With copious lifef informed, arnd all awake,
While in the radiant front, superior shines
That first paternal virtue, Public Zeal,     1615
WTho throws o'er all an equal wide survey;




SUMMER.                     83
And, ever musing on the common weal,
Still labors glorious with some great design.
Low walks the sun, and broadens by degrees,
Just o'er the verge of day. The shifting clouds 1620
Assembled gay, a richly gorgeous train,
In all their pomp attend his setting throne.
Air, earth, and ocean smile immense. And now,
As if his weary chariot sought the bowers
Of Amphitrit6 and her tending nymphs,          1625
(So Grecian fable sung,) he dips his orb;
Now half-immersed; and now a golden curve
Gives one bright glance, then total disappears.
Forever running an enchanted round,
Passes the day, deceitful, vain, and void;     1630
As fleets the vision o'er the formful brain,
Tlhis moment hurrying wild th' impassioned soul,
The next in nothing lost.'Tis so to him,
The dreamer of this earthl, an idle blank
A sight of horror to the cruel wretch,          1635
Who all day long in sordid pleasure rolled,
Himself a useless load, has squandered vile,
Upon his scoundrel train, what might have.cheered
A drooping family of mcdcest worth.
But to the generous still-improving mind,       1640
That gives the hopeless h,-:art to singr fcr joy,
Diffusing kind beneficence around,
Boastless, as now descends the silent dew;
To him the lono review of ordered life
Is inward rapture, only to be felt.            1645
Confessed from yonder slow-extinguished clouds,
All ether softening, sober Evening takes
Her wonted station in the middle air;
A thousand shadows at her beck. First this
She sends on earth; then that of deeper dye    1650
Steals soft behind; and then a deeper still,
In circle following circle, gathers round,
To close the face of thhings. A fresher gale
Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream,




84                 SUMMER.
Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn; 1655
While the quail clamors for his running mate.
Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze,
A whitening shower of vegetable down
Amusive floats. The kind impartial care
Of Nature nought disdains: thoughtful to feed  1660
Her lowest sons, and clothe the coming year,
From field to field the feathered seed she wings.
His folded flock secure, the shepherd home
Hies merry-hearted; and by turns relieves
The ruddy milkmaid of her briniming pail;   1665
The beauty whom perhaps his witless heart,
Unknowing what the joy-mixed anguish means,
Sincerely loves, by that best language shown
Of cordial glances and obliging deeds.
Onward they pass, o'er many a panting height,  1.67.0
And valley sunk, and unfrequented; where
At fall of eve the fairy people throng,
In various game, and revelry, to pass
The summer night, as village stories tell.
But far about they wander from the grave    1675
Of him, whom his ungentle fortune urged
Against his own sad breast to lift the hand
Of impious violence. The lonely tower
Is also shunned; whose mournful chambers hold,
So night-struck fancy dreams, the yelling ghost. 1680
Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
The glowworm lights his gem; and through the dark
A moving radiance twinkles. Evening yields
The world to Night; not in her winter robe
Of massy Stygian woof, but loose arrayed    1685
In mantle dun. A faint, erroneous ray,
Glanced from th' imperfect surfaces of things,
Flings half an image on the straining eye;
While wavering woods, and villages, and streams,
And rocks, and mountain tops, that long retained 1690
Th' ascending gleam, are all one swimming scene,
Uncertain if beheld. Sudden to heaven




SUMMER.                   85
Thence weary vision turns; where, leading soft
The silent hours of love, with purest ray
Sweet Venus shines; and from her genial rise,  1695
When daylight sickens till it springs afresh,
Unrivalled reigns, the fairest lamp of Night.
As thus th' effulgence tremulous I drink,
With cherished gaze, the lambent lightnings shoot
Across the sky, or horizontal dart           1700
In wondrous shapes; by fearful murmuring crowds
Portentous deemed. Amid the radiant orbs,
That more than deck, that animate the sky,
The life-infusing suns of other worlds;
Lo! from the dread immensity of space        1705
Returning, with accelerated course,
The rushing comet to the sun descends;
And, as he sinks below the shadihg earth,
With awful train projected o'er the heavens,
The guilty nations tremble. But, above       1710
Those superstitious horrors that enslave
The fond sequacious herd, to mystic faith
And blind amazement prone, th' enlightened few
Whose godlike minds Philosophy exalts,
The glorious stranger hail. They feel a joy  1715
Divinely great; they in their powers exult,
Thalt wondrous force of thought,which mounting spurns
This dusky spot, and measures all the sky;
While from his far excursion through the wilds
Of barren ether, faithful to his time,       1720
They see the blazing wonder rise anew,
In seeming terror clad, but kindly bent
To work the will of all-sustaining Love;
From his huge vapory train perhaps to shake
Reviving moisture on the numerous orbs,     1725
Through which his long ellipsis winds; perhaps
To lend new fuel to declining suns,'To light up worlds, and feed th' eternal fire.
With thee, serene Philosophy, with thee,
And thy bright garland, let me crown my song! 1730
8




86                 SUMMER.
Effusive source of evidence and truth!
A lustre shedding o'er th' ennobled mind,
Stronger than summer noon; and'pure as that,
Whose mild vibrations sooth the parted soul,
New to the dawning of celestial day.         1735
Hence through her nourished powers, enlarged by thee,
She springs aloft, with elevated pride,
Above the tangling mass of low desires,
That bind the fluttering crowd; and; angel-winged,
The-heights of science and of virtue gains,  1740
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 displayed:
The First uptracing, from the dreary void,
The chain of causes and effects to HIn,, 1745
The world-producing Essence, who 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,    1750
Diffusive painted on the rapid mind.
Tutored by thee, hence Poetry exalts
Her voice to ages, and informs the page.j
With music, image, sentiment, and thought,
Never to die! the treasure of mankind  1755
Their' highest honor, and their truest joy!
Without thee what were unenlightened Man?
A savage roaming through the woods and wilds;,
In quest of prey; and with th' unfashioned fur
Rough clad; devoid of every finer art        1760
And elegance of life. Nor happiness
Domestic, mixed of tenderness and care,
Nor moral excellence, nor social bliss,
Nor guardian law were his; nor various skill
To turn the furrow, or to guide the tool     1765
Mechanic.; nor the hea.ven-conducted prow
Of navigation bold, that fearless braves
The burning line, or dares the wintry pole,




SUMMER.                    87
Mother severe of'infinite delights!
Nothing, save rapine, indolence, and guile;  1770
And woes on woes, a still revolving train!
Whose horrid circle had made human life
Than non-existence worse;.but, taught by thee,
Ours are the plans of policy and peace;
To live like brothers, and conjunctive all,  1775
Embellish life.  While thus laborious crowds
Ply the tough oar, Philosophly directs
The ruling helm; or like the liberal breath
Of potent heaven, invisible, the sail
Swells out, and bears th' inferior world along.   178t0
Nor to this evanescent speck of earth
Poorly confined, the radiant tracks on high
Are her exalted range; intent to gaze
Creation through.; and, from that filll complex
Of never-ending wonders, to conceive. 1785
Of the SOLE BEING right, who spoke the word,'And Nature moved complete, With inward view,
Thence on th' ideal kingdom swift she turns
Her eye; and instant, at her powerful glance,
Th' obedient phantoms vanish or appear;      17910
Compound, divide, and into order shift,
Each to his rank, from plain perception up
To the fair forms of Fancy's fleeting train:
To reason then, deducing truth from truth,
And notion quite abstract; where first begins    1795
The world of spirits, action all, and life
Unfettered and unmixed. But here the cloud
(So wills Eternal Providence) sits deep;
Enough for us to know that this dark state,
Int wayward passions lost, and vain pursuits,    1800
This Infancy of Being, cannot prove,
The final issue of the works of GoD,
By boundless Love and perfect Wisdom formed,
And ever rising witlr-the rising mind.




AUTUMN.
The subject proposed. Addressed to Mr. Onslow. A prospect
of the fields ready for iharvest. Reflections in praise of industry,
raised by that view. Reaping. A tale relativeto it. A harvest
storm. Shooting and hunting, their barbarity. A ludicroIus
account of fox-hunting. A view of an orchard. Wall-fruit.
A vineyard. A description of fogs, frequent in the latter part
of Autumn:  wvhence a digression, inquiring into the rise of
fountains and rivers. Birds of season considered, that now
shift their habitation. The prodigious number of them that
cover the northern and western isles of Scotland; hence a
view of the country.  A preopect of thle discolored, tfading
woods. After a gentle, duskyl day, moonlight. Autumnal meteors. Morning; to which succeeds a calm, pure, sunshiny
day, such as usually shtuts up the season. The harvest being
gathered in, the country dissolved in joy. The whole concludes
with a panegyric on a philosophical country life.
CIROWNED  with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, noddiog o'er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on; the Doric reed once more,
Well pleased, I tune.  Whate'er the wintry frost
Nitrous prepared, the various-blossomed Spring           S
Put in white promise forth, and Summer suns
Concocted strong, rush boundless now to view,
Full, perfect all, and swell my glorious theme.
Onslow! the Muse, ambitious of thy name,
To grace, inspire, and dignify her song,                10
Would from the public voice thy gentle ear
A while engage.  Thy noble care she knows,
The patriot virtues that distend thy thought,
Spread on thy front, and in thy bosom glow;
While listening senates hang upon thy tongue,    15
Devolving through the maze of eloquence
A roll of periods sweeter than her song.




AUTUMN.                    89
But she, too, pants for public virtue, she,
Though weak of power, yet strong in ardent will,
Whene'er her country rushes on her heart,      20
Assumes a bolder note, and fondly tries
To mix the patriot's with the poet's flame.
When the bright Virgin gives the beauteous days,
And Libra weighs in equal scales the year;
From heaven's high cope the fierce effulgence shook
Of parting Summer, a serener blue,             26
With golden light enlivened, wide invests
The happy world. Attempered suns arise,
Sweet-beamed, and shedding oft through lucid clouds
A pleasing calm; while broad, and brown, below 30
Extensive 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. 35
Rent is the fleecy mantle of the sky;
The clouds fly different; and the sudden sun
By fits effulgent gilds th' illumined field,
And black by fits the shadows sweep along.
A gaily-checkered, heart-expafiding view,      40
Far as the circling eye can shoot around,
Unbounded tossing in a flood of corn.
These are thy blessings, Industry! rough power!
Whom labor still attends, and sweat, and pain;
Yet the kind source of every gentle art,       45
And all the soft civility of life:
Raiser of human kind! by Nature cast,
Naked and helpless, out amid the woods
And wilds, to rude inclement elements;
With various seeds of art deep in the mind     50
Implanted, and profusely poured around
Materials infinite; but idle all.
Still unexerted, in th' unconscious breast,
Slept the lethargic powers; corruption still,
Voracious, swallowed what the liberal hand     55
8*




90                  AUTUMN
Of bounty scattered o'er the savage year 
And still the sad barbarian, roving, mixed
With beasts of prey; or for his acorn-meal
Fought the fierce tusky boar; a shivering wretch!
Aghast and comfortless, when the bleak north,    60'With Winter charged, let the mixed tempest fly,
Hail, rain, and snow, and bitter-br-eathing frost:
Then to the shelter of the hut he fled;
And the wild season, sordid, pined away.,
For home he had not; home is the resort        65
Of love, of joy, of peace and plenty; where,
Supporting and supported, polished friends
And dear relations mingle into bliss.
But this the rugged savage never felt,
E'en desolate in crowds; and thus his days     70
Rolled heavy, dark, and unenjoyed along:
A waste of time! till Industry approached,
And roused him from his miserable sloth;
His faculties unfolded; pointed out
Where lavish Nature the directing hand         75
Of Art demanded; showed him how to raise
His feeble force by the mechanic powers,
To dig the mineral fiom the vaulted earth;
On what to turn the piercing rage of fire;
On what the torrent, and the gathered blast;   80
Gave the tall ancient forest to Ihis axe;
Taught him to chip the wood, and hew the stone,
Till by degrees the finished fabric rose;
Tore from his limbs the blood-polluted fur,
And wrapped them in the woolly vestment warm, 85
Or bright in glossy silk and flowing lawn;
With wholesome viands filled his table; poured
The generous glass around, inspired to wake
The life-refining soul of' decent wit;
Nor stopped at barren bare necessity:          90
But still advancing bolder, led him on
To pomp, to pleasure, elegance, and grace;
And, breathing high ambition through his soul,




AUTUMN.                    91
Set science, wisdom, glory in his view,
And bade him be the Lord of all below.         95
Then gathering men their natural powers combined,
And formed a Public; to the general good
Submitting, ailing, and conducting all.
For this the Patriot-Council met, the full,
The free, and fairly represented Whole;       100
For this they planned the holy guardian laws,
Distinguished orders, animated arts,
And with joint force Oppression chaining, set
Imperial Justice at the helm; yet still
To them accountable: nor, slavish, dreamed    105
That toiling millions must resign their weal,
And all the honey of their search, to such
As for themselves alone themselves have raised,
Hence every form of cultivated life
In order set, protected, and inspired,        110
Into perfection wrought. Uniting all,
Society grew numerous, high, polite,
And happy. Nurse of art! the city reared
In beauteous pride her tower-encircled head;
And, stretching street on street, by thousands drew,
From twining woody haunts, or the tough yew    116
To bows strong-straining, her aspiring sons.
Then commerce brought into the public walk
The busy merchant; the big warehouse built;
Raised the strong crane; choked up the loaded street
With foreign plenty; and thy stream, 0 Thames, 121
Large, gentle, deep, nmajestic, king of floods!
Chose for his grand resort. On either hand,
Like a long wintry forest, groves of masts
Shot up their spires; the bellying sheet between  125
Possessed the breezy void: the sooty hulk
Steered sluggish on; the splendid barge along
Rowed, regular, to harnlony; around,
The boat, light-skimming, stretched its oary wings;
While deep the various voice of fervent toil  130
From bank to bank increased; whence ribbed with oak,




92                  AUTUMN.
To bear the British thunder, black and bold,
The roaring vessel rushed into the main.
Then too the pillared dome, magnific, heaved
Its ample roof; and Luxury within             135
Poured out her glittering stores: the canvass smooth,
With glowing life protuberant, to the view
Embodied rose; the statue seemed to breathe,
And soften into flesh, beneath the touch
Of forming art, imagination flushed.          140
All is the gift of Industry; whate'er
Exalts, embellishes, and renders life
Delightful. Pensive Winter, cheered by him,
Sits at the social fire, and happy hears
Th' excluded tempest idly rave along;         145
His hardened fingers deck the gaudy Spring;
Without him Summer were an arid waste;
Nor to th' Autumnal months could thus transmit
Those full, mature, immeasurable stores,
That, waving round, recall my wandering song.  150
Soon as the morning trembles o'er the sky,
And, unperceived, unfolds thle spreading day,
Before the ripened field the reapers stand,
In fair array; each by the lass he loves,
To bear the rougher part, and mitigate        155
By nameless gentle offices her toil.
At once they stoop and swell the lusty sheaves;
While through their cheerful band the rural talk:
The rural scandal, and the rural jest,
Fly harmless, to deceive the tedious time,    160
And steal unfelt the sultry hours away.
Behind the master walks, builds up the shocks;
And, conscious, glancing oft on every side
His sated eye, feels his heart heave with joy.
The gleaners spread around, and here and there, 165
Spike after spike, their scanty harvest pick.
Be not too narrow, husbandmen; but fling
From the full sheaf, with charitable stealth,
The liberal handfiul.  Think, 0, grateful think 




AUTUMN.                     93
How good the God of Harvest is to you;       170
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    175
What now, with hard reluctance, faint ye give.
The lovely young Lavinia once had friends;
And Fortune smiled, deceitful, on her birth.
For, in her helpless years deprived of all,
Of every stay, save Innocence and Heaven,    180
She, with her widowed mother, feeble, old,
And poor, lived in a cottage, far retired
Among the windinigs of a woody vale;
By solitude and deep-surrounding shades,
But more by bashful modesty, conceaied.      185
Together thus they shunned the cruel scorn
Which virtue, sunk to poverty, would meet
From giddy passion and low-minded pride:
Almost on Nature's common bounty fed;
Like the gay birds that sung them to repose,  190
Content, and careless of to-morrow's fare.
Her form was fiesher than the morning rose,
When the dew wets its leaves; unstained and pure,
As is the lily or the mountain-snow.
The modest virtues mingled in her eyes,      195
Still on the ground dejected, darting all
Their humid beams into the blooming flowers:
Or when the mournful tale her mother told,
Of what her faithless fortune promised once,
Thrilled in her tholght, they, like the dewy star 200
Of evening, shone in tears. A native grace
Sat fair-proportioned on her polished limIbs,
Veiled in a simple robe, their best attire,
Beyond the pomp of dress; for loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,       205
But is, when unadorned, adorned the most.
Thoughtless of beauty, she was B.eauty's self,
Recluse amid the close-embowering woods.




94                 AUTUMN.
As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,     210
A myrtle rises, far from human eye,
And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
So flourished blooming, and unseen by all,
The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled
By strong Necessity's supreme command,       21l
With smiling patience in her looks, she went
To glean Paleron's fields. The pride of swains
Palemon was, the generous and the rich;
Who led the rural life in all its joy.knd elegance, such as Arcadian song         220
Transmits from ancient uncorrupted times,
When tyrant custom had not shackled Man,
But free to follow Nature was the mode.
He then, his fancy with autumnal scenes
Amusing, chanced beside his reaper-train     225
To walk, when poor Lavinlia 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 modesty concealed.    230
That very moment love and chaste desire
Sprung in his bosom, to himself unknown;
For still the world prevailed, and its dread laugh,
Which scarce the firm philosopher can scorn,
Should his heart own a gleaner in the field;  235
And thus in secret to his soul he sighed:"' What pity, that so delicate a form,
By beauty kindled, where enlivening sense
And more than vulgar goodness seein to dwell,
Should be devoted to the rude embrace        240
Of some indecent clown; she looks, methinks,
Of old Acasto's line; and to my mind
Recals that patron of my happy life,
From whom my liberal fortune took its rise.
Now to the dust gone down; his houses, lands,  245
And once fair-spreading family, dissolved.'Tis said, that in some lone, obscure retreat,




AUTUMN.                    95
Urged by remembrance sad, and decent pride,
Far from those scenes which knew their better days,
His aged widow and his daughter live,         250
Whom yet my fruitless search could never find.
Romantic wish! would this the daughter were!"
When, strict inquiring, from herself he found
She was the same, the daughter of his friend,
Of bountiful Acasto; who can speak           255
The mingled passions that surprised his heart,
And through his nerves in shivering transport ran?
Then blazed his smothered flame, avowed, and bold;
And as he viewed her, ardent, o'er and o'er,
Love, gratitude, and pity wept at once.      260
Confused, and frightened at his sudden tears,
Her rising beauties flushed a higher bloom,
As thus Palemon, passionate and just,
Poured out the pious rapture of his soul:
"' And art thou then Acasto's dear remains?    265
She, whom my restless gratitude has sought
So longc in vain? O heavens! the very same,
The softened image of my noble friend,
Alive his every look, his every feature,
More elegantly touched. Sweeter than Spring!  270
Thou sole surviving blossom from the root
That nourished up my fortune! say, ah, where,
In what sequestered desert, hast thou drawn
The kindest aspect of delighted heaven?
Into such beauty spread, and blown so fair;  275
Though 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;    280
And of my garden be the pride and joy!
Ill it befits thee, 0, it ill befits
Acasto's daughter, his, whose open stores,
Though vast, were little to his ampler heart,
The father of a country, thus to pick        285
The very refuse of those harvest-fields,




96                 AUTUMN.
Which from his bounteous friendship I elljoy.
Then throw that shameful pittance fiom thy hand,
But ill applied to such a rugged task;
The fields, the master, all, my fair, are thine,    290
If to the various blessings which thy house
Has on me lavished, thou wilt add that bliss,
That dearest bliss, the power of blessing thee!'
Here ceased the youth: yet still his speaking eye
Expressed the sacred triumph of his soul,     29r5
With conscious virtue, gratitude, and love,
Above the vulgar joy divinely raised.
Nor waited he reply   Won by the charm
Of goodness irresistible, and all
In sweet disorder lost, she blushed consent.  300
The news immediate to her mother brought,
While, pierced with anxious thought, she pined away
The lonely moments for Lavinia's fate:
Amazed, and scarce believing what she heard,
Joy seized her withered veins, and one bright gleraml
Of setting life shone on her evening hours:   306
Not less enraptured than the happy pair;
Who flourished long in tender bliss, and reared
A numerous offspring, lovely like themselves,
And good, the grace of all the country round.    310
Defeating oft the labors of the year,
The sultry south collects a potent blast.
At first, the groves are scarcely seen to stir
Their tremblinig tops; and a still murmur runs
Along the soft-inclining fields of corn:      315
But as the aerial tempest fuller swells,
And in one mighty stream, invisible,
Immense, the whole excited atmosphere
Impetuous rushes o'er the sounding world;
Strained to the root, the stooping forest pours    320
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.
Exposed and naked to its utmost rage,         325




AUTUMN.                    97
Through all the sea of harvest rolling round.
The billowy plain floats wide; nor can evade,
Though pliant to t-lhe blast, its seizing force;
Or whirled in air, or into vacant chaff
Shook waste. And sometimes too a burst of rain, 330
Swept from the black horizon, broad, descends
In one continuous flood. Still overhead
The mingling tempest weaves its gloom, and still
The deluge deepens; till the fields around
Lie sunk and flatted in the sordid wave.      335
Sudden, the ditches swell; the meadows swim.
Red, from the hills, innumerable streams
Tumultuous roar; and high above its banks
The river lift; before whose rushing tide,
Herds, flocks, and harvests, cottages, and swains, 340
Roll mingled down; all that the winds had spared
In one wild moment ruined; the big hopes
And well-earned treasures of the painful year
Fled to some eminence, the husbandman
Helpless beholds the miserable wreck          345
Driving along; his drowning ox at once
Descending, with his labors scattered round,
He sees; and instant o'er his shivering thought
Comes Winter unprovided, and a train
Of claimant children dear. Ye masters, then,   350
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,    355
Which covers yours with luxury profuse,
Makes your glass sparkle, and your sense rejoice!
Nor cruelly demand what the deep rains
And all-involving winds have swert away.
Here the rude clamor of the sportsman's joy,  360
The gun fast thundering, and the winded htrn,
Would tempt the Muse to sing the rural game:
How in his mid career the spaniel struck,
9




98                 AUTUMN.
Stiff, by the tainted gale, with open nose,
Outstretched, and finely sensible, draws fall,    3~5
Fearful, and cautious, on the latent prey;
As in the sun the circling covey bask
Their varied plumes, and, watchful every way,
Through the rough stubble turn the secret eye.
Caught in the imeshy snare, in vain they beat    370
Their idle wings,'entangled more and more:
Nor on the surges of the boundless air,
Though borne triumphant, are they safe; the gun,
Glanced just and sudden from the fowler's eye,
O'ertakes their sounding pinions; and again,    375
Immediate, brings them from the towering wing,
Dead to the ground; or drives them wide dispersed,
Wounded, and wheeling various, down the wind.
These are not subjects for the peaceful Muse,
Nor will she stain with such her spotless song;   380
Then most delighted, when she social sees
The whole mixed animal creation round
Alive and happy.'Tis not joy tc her,
This falsely cheerful, barbarous game of death,
This rage of pleasure, which the restless youth   385
Awakes, impatient, with the gleaming morn;
When beasts of prey retire, that all night long,
Urged by necessity, had ranged the dark,
As if their conscious ravage shunned the light,
Ashamed. Not so the steady tyrant Man,        390
Who, with the thoughtless insolence of power
Inflamed, beyond the most infuriate wrath
Of the worst monster that e'er roamed the waste,
For sport alone pursues the cruel chase,
Amid the beamings of the gentle days.         395
Upbraid, ye ravening tribes, our wanton rage,
For hunger kindles you, and lawless want;
But lavish fed, in Nature's bounty rolled,
To joy at anguish, and delight in blood,
Is what your horrid bosoms never knew.        400
Poor is the triumph o'er the timid hare'




AUTUMN.                    99
Scared from the corn, and now to some lone seat
Retired; the rushy fen; the ragged furze,
Stretched o'er the stony heath; the stubble chapt;
The thistly lawn; the thick entangled broom;   405
Of the same friendly hue, the withered fern;
The fallow ground laid open to the sun,
Concoctive; and the nodding sandy bank,
Hung o'er the mazes of the mountain brook.
Vain is her best precaution; though she sits  411,
Concealed, with folded ears; unsleeping eyes,
By Nature raised to take th' horizon in;
And head couch'd close betwixt her hairy feet,
In act to spring away. The scented dew
Betrays her early labyrinth; and deep,        415
In scattered sullen openings, far behind,
With every breeze she hears the coming storm.
But nearer, and more frequent, as it loads
The sighing gale, she springs amazed, and all
The savage soul of game is up at once:        420
The pack full-opening, various; the shrill horn,
Resounded from the hills; the neighing steed,
Wild for the chase; and the loud hunter's shout;
O'er a weak, harmless, flying creature, all
Mixed in mad tumult and discordant joy.  -    425
The stag, too, singled from the herd, where long
Hle ranged the branching monarch of the shades,
Before the tempest drives. At first, in speed
He, sprightly, puts his faith; and, roused by fear,
Gives all his swift aerial soul to flight:    430
Against the breeze he darts, that way the more
To leave the lessening murderous cry behind:
Deception short! though fleeter than the winds
Blown o'er the keen-aired mountain by the north,
He bursts the thickets, glances through the glades, 435
And plunges deep into the wildest wood;
If slow, yet sure, adhesive to the track
Hot-steaming,, up behind him come again
Th' inhuman rout, and from the shady depth




le4>m               AUTUMN.
Expel him, circling through his every shift,     410
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 wont to) struggle, or his loves enjoy.
Oft in the full-descending flood he tries        445
To iose the scent, and hlve his burning sides:
Oft seeks the herd; the watchful herd, alarmled,
With selfish care avoid a brother's wo.
What sheli he do? His once so vivid nerves,
So fill of' buoyant spirit, now no more          450
Inspire the course; but fainting breathless toil,
Sick, seizes on his heart: lie stands at bay;
And puts his last weak refuge in despair.'The big round tears run dovwn his dappled Tface;
He groans in anguish: while the growling packL, 4,5
Blood-happy, hang at:his fair jutting chest,
Anld mark hi.s beauteous checkered sides with gore.
Of' this enough; but if the sylvan youth,
Whose fervent blood boils into violence,
Must have the chase; behold, despising flight,   460
The roused-up lion, resolute and slow,
Advancing fill on the pretended spear
And coward-.band, that circling wheel aloof.
Slunk from the cavern and the troubled wood,
See the grim wolf; on him his shaggy foe         465
Vindictive fixc, and let the ruffian die:
Or, growl ing  horrid, as the brindled boar
Grins fell destruction, to the monster's heart
Let the dart lighten from the nervous arm.
These Britain knows not; give, ye Britons, then
Your sportive fury, pitiless, to pour            471]
Loose on the nightly robber of the fold;
Him, from his craggy, winding haunts unearthed,
Let all the thunder of the chase pursue.
Throw the broad ditch behind you; o'er the hedge
Higrh bound, resistless; nor the deep morass     476
Refuse, but through the shaking wilderness




AUTUMN.                   101
Pick your nice way; into the perilous flood
Bear fearless, of the raging instinct full;
And as you ride the torrent, to the banks    480
Your triumph sound sonorous, running round
From rock to rock, in circling echoes tost;
Then scale the mountains to their woody tops;
Rush down the dangerous steep; and o'er the lawn,
In fancy swallowing up the space between,     485
Pour all your speed into the rapid game.
For happy he! who tops the wheeling chase,
Has every maze evolved, and every guile
Disclosed; who knows the merits of the pack;
Who saw the villain seized, and dying hard,   490
Without complaint, though by an hundred mouths
Relentless torn. O glorious he, beyond
His daring peers! when the retreating horn
Calls them to ghostly halls of gray renown,
With woodland honors graced; the fox's fur,    495
Depending decent from the roof; and spread
Round the drear walls, with antic figures fierce,
The stag's large front. He then is loudest heard,
When the night staggers with severer toils,
With feats Thessalian Centaurs never knew,    500
And their repeated wonders shake the dome.,
But first the fueled chimney blazes wide;
The tankards foam; and the strong table groans
Beneath' the smoking sirloin, stretched immense
From side to side, in which, with desperate knife} 505
They deep incision make, and talk the while
Of England's glory, ne'er to be defaced
While hence they borrow vigor: or amain
Into the pastry plunged, at intervals,
If stomach keen can intervals allow,         510
Relating all the glories of the chase.
Then sated Hunger bids his brother Thirst
Produce the mighty bowl; the mighty bowl,
Swelled high with fiery juice, steams liberal round
A potent gale, delicious as the breath        515
9*




102                AUTUMN.
Of Maia to the lovesick shepherdess,
On violets diffused, 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     520
Of thirty years; and now his honest front
Flames in the light refulgent, not afraid
E'en with the vineyard's best produce to vie.
To cheat the thirsty moments, Whist awhile
Walks his dull round, beneath a cloud of smoke, 525
Wreathed, fragrant, from the pipe; or the quick dice,
In thunder leaping from the box, awake
The sounding gammon: while romp-loving miss
Is hauled about in gallantry robust.
At last these puling idlenesses laid        530
Aside, frequent and full, the dry divan
Close in firm circle; and set, ardent, in
For serious drinking. Nor evasion sly
Nor sober shift is to the puking wretch
Indulged apart; but earnest, brimming bowls    535
Lave every soul, the table floating round,
And pavement, faithless to the fuddled foot.
Thus as they swim in mutual swill, the talk,
Vociferous at once from twenty tongues,
Reels fast from theme to theme; from horses, hounds,
To church or mistress, politics or ghost,      541
In endless mazes, intricate, perplexed.
Meantime, with sudden interruption, loud,
Th' impatient catch bursts from the joyous heart;
That moment touched is every kindred soul;    545
And, opening in a full-mouthed cry of joy,
The laugh, the slap, the jocund curse go round;
While, from their slumbers shook, the kenneled hounds
Mix in the music of the day again.
As when the tempest, that has ve xed the deep    550
The dark night long, with fainter murmurs falls;
So gradual sinks their mirth. Their feeble tongues
Unable to take up the cumbrous word,




AUTUMN.                    103
Lie quite dissolved. Before their maudlin eyes,
Seen dim and blue, the double tapers dance,    555
Like the sun wading through the misty sky.
Then, slidingo soft, they drop. Confused above,
Glasses and bottles, pipes and gazetteers,
As if the table e'en itself was drunk,
Lie a wet broken scene; and wide, below,       560
Is heaped the social slaughter: where astride
The lubber Power in filthy triumph sits,
Slumnberous, inclining still from side to side,
And steeps them drenched in potent sleep till morn.
Perhaps some doctor, of tremendous paunch,     565
Awful and deep, a black abyss of drink,
Outlives them all; and from his buried flock
Retiring, full of rumination sad,
Laments the weakness of these latter times.
But if the rougher sex by this fierce sport  570
Is hurried wild, let not such horrid joy
E'er stain the bosom of the British Fair.
Far be the spirit of the chase from them!
Uncomely courage, unbeseeming skill;
To spring the fence, to rein the prancing steed;  575
The cap, the whip, the masculine attire;
In which they roughen to the sense, and all
The winning softness of their sex is lost.
In them'tis graceful to dissolve at wo;
With every motion, every word to wave          580
Quick o'er the kindling cheek the ready blush;
And fiom the smallest violence to shrink
Unequal, then the loveliest in their fears;
And by this silent adulation, soft,
To their protection more engaging Man.         585
0, may their eyes no miserable sight,
Save weeping lovers, see! a nobler game,
Through love's enchanting wiles pursued, yet fled,
In chase ambiguous. May their tender limbs
Float in the loose simplicity of dress!       590
And, fashioned all to harmony, alone




104                AUTUMN.
Know they to seize the captivated soul,
In rapture warbled from love-breathing lips;
To teach the lute to languish; with smooth step,
Disclosing motion in its every charm,         595
To swim along, and swell the mazy dance;
To train the foliage o'er the snowy lawn;
To guide the pencil, turn the tuneful page;
To lend new flavor to the fruitful year,
And heighten Nature's dainties: in their race    600
To rear their graces into second life;
To give society its highest taste;
Well-ordered home man's best delight to make;
And by submissive wisdom, modest skill,
With every gentle care-eluding art,           605
To raise the virtues, animate the bliss,
And sweeten all the toils of human life.
This be the female dignity and praise.
Ye swains, now hasten to the hazel-bank;
Where, down yon dale, the wildly winding brook 610
Falls hoarse from steep to steep. In close array,
Fit for the thickets and the tangling shrub,
Ye virgins, come. For you their latest song
The woodlands raise; the clustering nuts for you
T'he lover finds amid the secret shade;      615
And where they burnish on the topmost bough,
With active vigor crushes down the tree;
Or shakes them ripe from the resigning husk,
A glossy shower, and of an ardent brown,
As are the ringlets of Melinda's hair:        620
Melinda! formed with every grace complete,
Yet these neglecting, above beauty wise,
And far transcending such a vulgar praise.
Hence from. the busy joy-resounding fields,
In cheerful error, let us tread the maze      625
Of Autumn unconfined; and taste, revived,
The breath of orchard big with bending fruit.
Obedient to the breeze and beating ray,
From the deep-loaded bough a mellow shower




AUTUMN.-  105
Incessant melts away. The juicy pear          G30
Lies in a soft profusion scattered round.
A various sweetness swells the gentle race,
By Nature's all-refining hand prepared;
Of tempered sun, and water, earth, and air,
In ever-changing composition mixed.: 
Such, falling frequent through the chiller night,
The fragrant stores, the wide-projected heaps
Of apples, which the lusty-handed year,
Innumerous o'er the blushing orchard shakes.
A various spirit, fresh, delicious, keen,     640
Dwells in their gelid pores; and, active, points
The piercing cider for the thirsty tongue:
Thy native theme, and boon inspirer too,
Phillips, Pomona's b r4-,J the second thou
Who nobly durst, in r7hyme-unfettered verse,  645
With British freedomn sing the British song:
How, from Silurian vats, high-sparkling wines
Foam in transparent floods; some strong to cheer
The wintry revels of the laboring hind;
And tasteful some, to cool the summer hours.    650
In this glad season, while his sweetest beams
The sun sheds equal o'er the meekened day;
0, lose me in the green delightful walks
Of Dodington, thy seat, serene and plain;
Where simple Nature reigns; and every view,   655
Diffusive, spreads the pure Dorsetian downs,
In boundless prospect; yonder shagged with wood,
Here rich with harvest, and there white with flocks'
Meantime the grandeur of thy lofty dome,
Far splendid,, seizes on the ravished eye.    560
New beauties rise with each revolving day;
New columns swell; and still the fresh Spring finds
New plants to quicken, and new groves to green.
Full of thy genius all! the Muses' seat;
Where, in the secret bower and winding walk,   665
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.
Here wandering oft, fired with the restless thirst




106                AUTUMN.
Of thy applause, I solitary court
Th' inspiring breeze; and meditate the book>i:,
Of Nature ever open j) aiming thence,         670
Warm from the heart, to learn the moral song.
Here, as I steal along the sunny wall,
Where Autumn basks, with fruit empurpled deep,
My pleasing theme continual prompts my thought;
Presents the downy peach; the shining plum;   675
The ruddy, fragrant nectarine; and dark,
Beneath his ample leaf, the luscious fig.
The vine too here her curling tendrils shoots;
Hangs out her clusters, glowing to the south,
And scarcely wishes for a warmer sky.         680
Turn we a moment Fancy's rapid flight
To vigorous soils and climes of fair extent;
Where, by the potent sun elated high,
The vineyard swells refulgent on the day;
Spreads o'er the vale; or up the mountain climbs, 685Di
Profuse; and drinks amid the sunny rocks,
From cliff to cliff increased, the heightened blaze.
Low bend the weighty boughs. The clusters cleas,
Half through the foliage seen, or ardent flame,
Or shine transparent; while perfection breathes  6'90
White o'er the turgent film the living dew.
As thus they brighten with exalted juice,
Touched into flavor by the mingling ray;
The rural youth and virgins o'er the field,
Each fond for each to cull th' autumnal prime,   695
Exulting rove, and speak the vintage nigh.
Then comes the crushing swain; the country floats
And foams unbounded with the marshy flood;
That by degrees fermented and refined,
Round the raised nations pours the cup of joy:  700
The claret smooth, red as the lip we press
In sparkling fancy, while we drain the bowl;
The mellow-tasted burgundy; and, quick
As is tile wit it gives, the gay champagne.
Now, by the cool declining year condensed,    70b




AUTUMN.                  107
Descend the copious exhalations, checked
As up the middle sky unseen they stole,
And roll the doubling fogs around the hill.
No more the mountn, riorrid, vast, sublime,
Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides,  710
And high between contending kingdoms rears
The rocky long division, fills the view
With great variety; but in a night
Of gathering vapor, from the baffled sense
Sinks dark and dreary. Thence expanding far,  715
The huge dusk, gradual, swallows up the plain'
Vanish the woods: the dim-seen river seenms
Sullen and slow to roll the misty wave.
E'en in the height of noon oppressed, the sun
Sheds weak and blunt his wide-refracted ray;    7520
Whence glaring oft, with many a broadened orb
He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth,
Seen through the turbid air, beyond the life
Objects appear; and, wildered, o'er the waste
The shepherd stalks gigantic. Till at last  7n5
Wreathed dun around, in deeper circles still
Successive closing, 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)    730
Light, uncollected, through the chaos urged
Its infant way; nor Order yet had drawn
His lovely train from out the dubious gloom.
These roving mists, that constant now begin
To smoke along the hilly country, these     735
With weighty rains, and melted Alpine snows,
The mountain cisterns fill, those ample stores
Of water, scooped among the hollow rocks;
Whence gush the streams, the ceaseless fountains play,
And their unfailing wealth the rivers draw.  740
Some sages say, that, where the numerous wave
Forever lashes the resounding shore,
Drilled through the sandy stratum, every way.




108                AUTUMN.
T'h  waters with the sandy stratum rise;
Amid whose angles infinitely strained,        745
They joyful leave their jaggy salts behind,
And clear and sweeten as they soak along.
Nor stops the restless fluid, mounting still,
Though oft amidst th' irriguous vale it springs;
But to the mountain courted by the sand,       750
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. But hence this vain
Amusive dream! why should the waters love    755
To take so far a journey to the hills,
When the sweet valleys offer to their toil,
Inviting quiet, and a nearer bed?
Or, if by blind ambition led astray,
They must aspire; why should they sudden stop  760
Among the broken monuntain's rushy dells,
And, ere they gain its highest peak, desert
Th' attractive sand that charmed their course so long?
Besides, the hard, agglomerating salts,
The spoil of ages, would impervious choke      765
Their secret channels; or, by slow degrees,
High as the hills protrude the swelling vales:
Old Ocean too, sucked through the porous globe,
Had long ere now forsook his horrid bed,
And brought Deucalion's watery times again. (n) 770
Say then, where lurk the vast eternal springs,
That, like creating Nature, lie concealed
From mortal eye, yet with their lavish stores
Refresh the globe and all its joyous tribes!
O thou pervading Genius, given to Man',        775
To trace the secrets of the dark abyss,
O, lay tle: mountains bare; and wide display
Their hidden structure to th' astonished view!
Strip from the branching Alps their piny load,
The huge incumbrance of horrific woods        780
From Asian Taurus, from Imaus stretched




AUTUMN.                     109
Athwart the roving Tartar's sullen bounds!
Give opening Hemus to my searching eye,
And high Olympus, pouring many a stream!
O, from the sounding summits of the north,       735
The Dofrine hills, through Scandivania rolled
To farthest Lapland and the frozen main;
From lofty Caucasus, far seen by those
Who in the Caspian and black Euxine toil;
From cold Riphean rocks, which the wild Russ   790
Believes the stony girdle* of the world:
And all the dreadful mountains, wrapped in-storm,
Whence wide Siberia draws her lonely floods;
O, sweep th' eternal snows! flung o'er the deep,
That ever works beneath his sounding base,       795
Bid Atlas, propping IIeaven, as poets feign,
His subterranean wonders spread! unveil
The miny caverns, blazing on the day,
Of Abyssinia's cloud-compelling cliffs,
And of the bending Mountainst of the Moon!   800
O'ertopping all these giant sons of earth,
Let the dire Andes, from the radiant line
Stretched to the stormy seas that thunder round
The southern pole, their hideous deeps unfold!
Amazing scene! behold! the glooms disclose;    805
I see the rivers in their infant beds!
Deep, deep I hear them laboring to get free;
I see the leaning strata, artful ranged;
The gaping fissures to receive the rains,
The melting snows, and ever-dripping fogs.       810
Strowed bibulous above, I see the sands,
The pebbly gravel next, the layers then
Of mingled moulds, of more retentive earths,
The guttered rocks and mazy-running clefts;
That, while the stealing moisture they transmit,  814
* The Muscovites call the Riphean Mountains VFeliki Caimeny!oys; that is, the great stoiy Girdle: because they suppose themn
to encompass the whole earth.
t A range of mountains in Africa, that surround almost all Mi oBomotapa.
10




110                AUTUMN.
Retard its motion, and forbid its waste.
Beneath th' incessant weeping of these drains,
I see the rocky siphons stretched immense,
The mighty reservoirs, of hardened chalk,
Or stiff-compacted clay, capacious formed:    820
O'erflowing thence, the congregated stores,
The crystal treasures of the liquid world,
Through the stirred sands a bubbling passage burst;
And, welling out, around the middle steep,
Or from the bottoms of the bosomed hills,     825
In pure effusion flow. United, thus,
Th' exhaling sun, the vapor-burdened air,
The gelid mountains, that to rain condensed
These vapors in continual current draw,
And send them, o'er the fair-divided earth,   830
In bounteous rivers to the deep again,
A social commerce hold, and firm support
The full-adjusted harmony of things.
When Autumn scatters his departing gleams,
Warned of approaching Winter, gathered, play   835
The swallow-people; and, tossed wide around,
O'er the calm sky, in convolution swift,
The feathered eddy floats: rejoicing once,
Ere to their wintry slumbers they retire;
In clusters clung, beneath the mouldering bank, 840
And where, unpierced by frost, the cavern sweats;
Or rather into warmer climes conveyed,
With other kindred birds of season, there
They twitter cheerful, till the vernal months
Invite them welcome back: for, thronging, now   845
Innumerous wings are in commotion all.
Where the Rhine loses his majestic force
In Belgian plains, won from the raging deep,
By diligence amazing, and the strong
Unconquerable hand of Liberty,              80
The stork-assembly meets; for many a day,
Consulting deep, and various, ere they take
Their arduous voyage through the liquid sky.




AUTUMN.
And now theiu rout desigiled, their leaders chose,
Their tribes adjusted, cleaned their vigorous wings,
And many a circle, many a short essay,        856
Wheeled round and round, in congregation full
The figured flight ascends; and, riding high
Th' aerial billows, mixes with the clouds.
Or where the Northern ocean, in vast whirls   860
Boils round the naked melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule, and th' Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides;
Who can recount what transmigrations there
Are annual made? what nations come and go?   865
And how the living clouds on clouds arise?
Infinite wings! till all the plume-dark air
And rude resounding shore are one wild cry.
Here the plain, harmless native, his small flock,.And herd diminutive of many hues,             870
Tends on the little island's verdant swell,
The shepherd's sea-girt reign; or, to the rocks
Dire-clinging, gathers his ovarious food;
Or sweeps the fishy shore; or treasures up
The plumage, rising full, to form the bed     875
Of luxury. And here awhile the Muse.
High hovering o'er the broad cerulean scene,
Sees Caledonia, in romantic view:
Her airy mountains from the waving main,
invested with a keen diffusive sky            880
Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge,
incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand
P'lanted of old; her azure lakes between,
Poured out extensive, and of watery wealth
Full; winding deep, and green- her fertile vales; 885
With many a cool:. translucent. brimming flood
Washed lovely, from the Tweed (pure parent stream,
Whose pastoral banks first heard my l)oric reed,
With, silvan Jed, thy tributary brook)
To where the north-inflated tempest foams     890
O'er Orca's or Betubium's highest peak:




112                 AUTUMN.
Nurse of a people, in misfortune's school
Trained up to hardy deeds; soon visited
By Learning, when before the Gothic'rage
She took her western flight. A manly race,    893
Of unsubmitting spirit, wise and brave;
Who still through bleeding ages struggled hard,
(As well unhappy Wallace can attest,
Great patriot-hero! ill-requited chief!)
To hold a generous undiminished state;        900
Too much ill vain! Hence of unequal bounds
Impatient, and by tempting glory borne
O'er every land, for every land their life
Has flowed profuse, their piercing genius planned,
And swelled the pomp of peace their faithfiul toil, 905
As from their own clear north, in radiant streams,
Bright over Europe bursts the boreal morn.
O! is there not some patriot, in whose power
That best, that godlike luxury is placed,
Of blessing thousands, thousands yet unborn,    910
Through late posterity? some, large of soul,
To cheer dejected industry? to give
A double harvest to the pining swain?
And teach the laboring hand the sweets o.f toil?
How, by the finest art, the native robe       915
To weave; how, white as hyperborean snow,
To form the lucid lawn; with venturous oar
How to dash wide the billow; nor look on,
Shamefully passive, while Batavian fleets
Defraud us of the'glittering finny swarms,    920
That heave our friths, and crowd upon our shores?
How all-enlivening trade to rouse, and wing
The prosperous sail, from every growing port,
Uninjured, round the sea-encircled globe;
And thus, in soul united as in name,          9255
Bid Britain reign the niistress of the deep?
Yes, there are such. And full on thee, Argyle,
Her hope, her stay, her darling, and her boast,
From her first patriots and her heroes sprung,




AUTUMN.                   113
Thy fond imploring country turns her eye,    930
In thee, with all a mother's triumph, sees
Her every virtue, every grace combined,
Her genius, wisdom, her engaging turn,
Her pride of honor, and her courage tried,
Calm, and intrepid, in the very throat        935
Of sulphurous war, on Tenier's dreadful field.
Nor less the palm of peace inwreathes thy brow;
For, powerful as thy sword, from thy rich tongue
Persuasion flows, and wins the high debate;
While mixed in thee combine the charln of youth, 940
The force of manhood, and the depth of age.
Thee, Forbes, too, whom every worth attends,'
As truth sincere, as weeping friendship kind,
Thee, truly generous, and in silence great,
Thy country feels through her reviving arts,  945
Planned by thy wisdom, by thy soul informed;
And seldom has she known a friend like thee.
But see the fading many-colored woods,
Shade deepening over shade, the country round
Imbrown; a crowded umbrage, dusk, and dun,   950
Of every hue, from wan-declining green
To sooty dark. These n.ow the lonesome Muse,
Low whispering, lead into their leaf-struwn walks,
And give the Season in its latest view.
Meantime, light-shadowing all, a sober calm   9)55
Fleeces unbounded ether: whose least wave
Stands tremulous, uncertain where to turn
The gentle current; while illumined wide,
The dewy-skirted clouds imbibe the sunl,
And through their lucid veil his softened force   96G0
Shed o'er the peaceful world. Then is the time,
For those whom Wisdom and whom Nature charm,
To steal themselves from the degenerate crowd,
And soar above this little scene of thing's;
To tread low-thoughted Vice beneath their feet;  96F
To sooth the throbbing passions into peace
And woo lone Quiet in her silent walks.




114                AUTUMN.
Thus solitary, and in pensive guise,
Oft let me wander o'er the russet mead,
And through the saddened grove, where scarce is heard
One dying strain, to cheer the woodman's toil,   971
Haply some widowed songster pours his plaint,
Far in faint warblings, through the tawny copse;
While congregated thrushes, linnets, larks,
And each wild throat, whose artless strains so late
Swelled all the music of the swarming shades,   976
Robbed 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. 98IO
O, let not, aimed from some inhuman eye,
The gun the -nusic of the coming year
Destroy; and harmless, unsuspecting harm,
Lay the weak tribes a miserable prey,
In mingled murder fluttering on the ground!    985
The pale-descending year, yet pleasing still,
A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf
Incessant rustles from the mournful grove;
Oft startling such as, studious, walk below,
And slowly circles through the waving air.    990
But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs
Sob, o'er the sky the leafy deluge streams;'Till, choked and matted with the dreary shower,
The forest-walks, at every rising gale,
Roll wide the withered waste, and whistle bleak. 995
Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields;
And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race
Their sunny robes resign. E'en what remained
Of stronger fruits falls from the naked tree;
And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around 1000
The desolated prospect thrills the soul.
He comes! he comes! in every breeze the Power
iOf philosophic Melancholy comes!
His near approach the sudden-starting tear,
The glowing cheek, the mild, dejected air,    1005




AUTUMN.                   1 15
The softened feature, and the beating heart,
Pierced deep with many a virtuous pang, declare.
O'er all the soul his sacred influence breathes;
Inflames imagination; through the breast
Infuses every tenderness; and far            1010
Beyond dim earth exalts the swelling thought.
Ten thousand thousand fleet ideas, such
As never mingled with the vulgar dream,
Crowd fast into the mind's creative eye.
As fast the correspondent passions rise,     1015
As varied, and as high: Devotion raised
To rapture and divine astonishment;
The love of Nature, unconfined, and, chief,
Of human race; the large ambitious wish,
To make them blessed; the sigh for suffering worth
Lost in obscurity; the noble scorn           1021.
Of tyrant pride; the fearless great resolve;
The wonuer wnln the aying patriot draws,
Inspiring glory through remotest time;
Th' awakened throb for virtue and for fame;    1025
The sympathies of love and friendship dear;
With all the social offspring of thi heart.
O  bear me then to vast embowering shades,
To twilight groves, and visionary vales;
To weeping grottoes, and prophetic glooms;    1030
Where angel forms athwart the solemn dusk
Tremenldous sweep, or seem to sweep along;
And voices more than human, through the void
Deep sounding, seize th' enthusiastic ear.
Or is this gloom too much? Then lead, ye powers,
That o'er the garden and the rural seat      1036
Preside, which shining through the cheerful land
In countless numbers blessed Britannia sees;
O, lead me to the wide extended walks,
The fair majestic paradise of Stowe!*       1040
Not Persian Cyrus on Ionia's shore
E'er saw such silvan scenes; such various art
* The seat of Lord Cobham




116                AUTUMN.
By genius fired, sucn ardent genius tamed
By cool judicious art; that, in the strife
All-beauteous Nature fears to be outdone.     1045
And there, 0 Pitt, thy country's early boast,
There let me sit beneath the sheltered slopes,
Or in that Temple* where, in future times,
Thou well shalt merit a distinguished name;
And, with thy converse blessed, catch the last smiles
Of Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods.    1051
While there with thee th' enchanted round I walk,
The regulated wild, gay Fancy then
Will tread in thought the groves of attic land;
Will from thy standard taste refine her own,    1055
Correct her pencil to the purest truth
Of Nature, or, the unimpassioned shades
Forsaking, raise it to the human mind.
Or if hereafter she, with juster hand,
Shall draw the tragic scene, instruct her thou,  1060
To mark the varied movements of the heart,
What every decent character requires,
And every passion speaks: 0, through her strain
Breathe thy pathetic eloquence! that moulds
Th' attentive senate, charms, persuades, exalts, 1065
Of honest Zeal th' indignant lightning throws,
And shakes Corruption on her venal throne.
While thus we talk, and through Elysian vales
Delighted rove, perhaps a sigh escapes
What pity, Cobham, thou thy verdant files    1070
Of ordered trees shouldst here inglorious range,
Instead of squadrons flaming o'er the field,
And long ermbattled hosts! when the proud foe,
The faithless, vain disturber of mankind,
Insulting Gaul, has roused the world to war;   1075
When keen, once more, within their bounds to press
Those polished robbers, those ambitious slaves,
The British youth would hail thy wise command,
Thy temlpered ardor, and thy veteran skill.
* The Temple of Virtue in Stowe Gardens.




AUTUMN.                   117
The western sun withdraws the shortened day;
And humid Evening, gliding o'er the sky,     101S
In her chill progress,-to the ground condensed
The vapors throws.  Where creeping waters ooze,
Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind,
Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along     1085
The dusky-imantled lawn. Meanwhile the Moon
Full-orbed, and breaking through the scattered clouds,
Shows her broad visage in the crimson east;
Turned to the sun direct, her spotted disk,
Where mountains rise, umbrageous vales descend,
And caverns deep, as optic tube descries,    1091
A smaller earth, gives us his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.      1095
Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild
O'er the skied 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. -1100
But when, half blotted from the sky, her light,
Fainting, permits the starry fires to burn
With keener lustre through the depth of heaven;
Or, near extinct, her deadened orb appears,
And scarce appears, of sickly beamless white;  1105
Oft in this season, silent from the north
A blaze of meteors shoots; ensweeping first
The lower skies, they all at once converge
High to the crown of heaven, and all at once
Relapsing quick, as quickly reascend,        1110
And mix and thwart, extinguish and renew,
All ether coursing in a maze of light.
Fromn look to look, contagious through the crowd,
The panic runs, and into wondrous shapes
Th' appearance throws: armies in meet array,   1115
Thronged with aerial spears and steeds of fire,
Till the long lines of full-extended war
In bleeding fight cormnixed, the sanguine flood




u118               AUTUMN.
Rolls a broad slaughter o'er the plains of heaven.
As thus they scan the visionary scene,       1120
On all sides swells the superstitious din,
Incontinent; and busy frenzy talks
Of blood and battle; cities overturned,
And late at night in swallowing earthquake sunk,
Or hideous wrapped in fierce ascending flame;  11225
Of sallow famine-, inundation, storm;
Of pestilence, and every great distress;
Empires subversed, when ruling fate has struck
Th' unalterable hour: e'en Nature's self
Is deemed to totter on the brink of time.    1130
Not so the man of philosophic eye,
And inspect sage; the waving brightness he
Curious surveys, inquisitive to know
The causes and materials, yet unfixed,
Of this appearance beautiful and new..       1135
Now black and deep the night begins to fall,
A shade immense. Sunk in the quenching gloom,
Magnificent and vast, are heaven and earth.
Order confounded lies; all beauty void,
Distinction lost; and gay variety            1140
One universal blot: such the fair power
Of light, to kindle and create the whole.
Drear is the state of the benighted wretch,
Who then, bewildered, wanders through the dark,
Full of pale fancies and chimeras huge;      1145
Nor visited by one directive ray,
From cottage streaming or from airy hall.
Perhaps impatient as he stumbles on,
Struck from the root of slimy rushes, blue,
The wildfire scatters round, or gathered trails   1150
A length of flame, deceitful o'er the moss;
Whither decoyed by the fantastic blaze,
Now lost and now renewed, he sinks absorbed,
Rider and horse, amid the miry gulf:
While still, from day to day, his pining wife    1155
And plaintive children his return await,




AUTUMN.                   119
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 shows the narrow path,   1160
That winding leads through pits of death, ci else
Instructs him how to take the dangerous ford.
The lengthened night elapsed, the Morninig shines
Serene, in all her dewy beauty bright,
Uniolding fair the last autumnal day.        1165
Ana now the. mounting sun dispels the fog;
The rigid hoar-frost melts before his beam;
And hung on every spray, on every blade
Of grass, the myriad dew-drops twinkle round.  1169
Ah, see where, robbed alid murdered, in that pit
Lies the still heaving hive! at evening snatched,
Beneath the cloud of guiIt-concealing night,
And fixed o'er sulphur: while, not dreaming ill,
The happy people, in their waxen cells,
Sat tending public cares, and planning schemes 1175
Of' temperance, for Winter poor; rejoiced
To mark, full flowing round, their copious stores,
Sudden the dark oppressive steam ascends;
And, used to n;ilder scents, the tender race,
By thousands, tumble from their honeyed domes, 1180
Convolved, and agonizing in the dust.
And was it then for this you roamed the Spring,
Intent from flower to flower? for this you toiled
Ceaseless the burning Summer heats away?
For this in Autumn searched the blooming waste,
Nor lost one sunny gleam? for this sad fate?    1186
O Man! tyrannic lord! how long, how long
Shall prostrate Nature groan beneath your rage,
Awaiting renovation.- when obliged,
Must you destroy? of their ambrosial food   1190
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




120                AUTUMN
See where the stony bottom of their town     11.93
Looks desolate and wild; with here and there
A helpless number, who the ruined 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,    1200
At thea*re or feast, or slink in sleep,
(As late, Palermo, was thy fate,) is seized
By some dread earthquake, and convulsive hurled
Sheer from the black foundation, stench-involved,
Into a gulf of blue sulphureous flame.       1205
Hence, every harsher sight! for now the day,
O'er heaven and earth diffused, grows warm and high,
Infinite splendor! wide investing all.
H-low still the breeze! save what the filmy threads
Of dew evaporate brushes from the plain.     121.0
How clear the cloudless sky! how deeply tinged
With a peculiar blue! th' ethereal arch
How swelled immense! amid whose azure throned,
The radiant sun how gay'! how calm below
The gilded earth! the harvest treasures all  1215
Now gathered in, beyond the rage of storms,
Sure to the swain; the circling fence shut up;
And instant Winter's utmost rage defied.
While, loose to festive joy, the country round
Laughs with the loud sincerity of mirth,     1220
Shook to the wind their cares. The toil-strung youth,
By the quick sense of music taught alone,
Leaps wildly graceful in the lively dance.
Her every charm abroad, the village toast,
Young, buxom, warm, in native beauty rich,    1225
Darts not unmeaning looks; and where her eye
Points an approving smile, with double force,
The cudgel rattles, and the wrestler twines.
Age'too shines out; and, garrulous, recounts
The feats of youth. Thus they rejoice, nor think
That, with to-morrow's sun, their annual toil   1231
Begins again the never-ceasing round.




AUTUMN.                    121
0, knew he but his happiness, of men
The happiest he! who far from public rage,
Deep in the vale, with a choice few retired,  1235
Drinks the pure pleasures of the Ru'ral Life.
What though the dome be wanting, whose proud gate,
Each morning, vomits out the sneaking crowd
Of flatterers false, and in their turn abused?
Vile intercourse  what though the glittering robe
Of every hue reflected light can give,       1241
Or floating loose, or stiff with mazy gold,
The pride and gaze of fools! oppress him not?
What though, from utmost land and sea purveyed,
For him each rarer tributary life            1245
Bleeds not, and his insatiate table heaps
With luxury and death? What though his bowl
Flames not with costly juice; nor sunk in beds,
Oft of gay care, he tosses out the night,
Or melts the thoughtless hours in idle state?    1250
What though he knows not those 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, estranged   1255
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         1261
Concealed, and fattens with the richest sap:
These are not wanting; nor the milky drove,
Luxuriant, spread o'er all the lowing Yale;
Nor bleating mountains; nor the chide of streams,
And hum of bees, inviting sleep sincere      126.
Into the guiltless breast, beneath the shade,
Or thrown at large amid the fragrant hay;
Nor aught besides of prospect, grove, or song,
Dim grottoes, gleaming lakes, and f'ountain clear.
11




122                AUTUMN
Here too dwells simple Truth; plain Innocence; 1.271
Unsullied Beauty; sound unbroken Youth,
Patient of labor, with a little pleased;
Health ever blooming; unambitious Toil,
Calm Contemplation, and poetic Ease.         1275
Let others brave the flood in quest of gain,
And beat, for joyless months, the gloomy wave.
Let such as deem it glory to destroy,
Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek;
Unpierced, exulting in the widow's wail,     1280
The virgin's shriek, and infant's trembling cry.
Let some, far distant from their native soil,
Urged or by want or hardened avarice,
Find other lands beneath another sun.
Let this through cities work his eager way,  1285
By legal outrage and established guile,
The social sense extinct; and that ferment
Mad into tumult the seditious herd,
Or melt them down to slavery. Let these
Insnare the wretched in the toils of law,    1290
Fomenting discord, and perplexing right,
An iron race! and those of fairer front,
But equal inhumanity, in courts,
Delusive pomp and dark cabals, delight;
Wreathe the deep bow, diffuse the lying smile,  1295
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,
Wrapped close in conscious peace. The fall of lungs,
The rage of nations, and the crush of states,    1301
Move not the man who, from the world escaped,
In still retreats, and flowery solitudes,
To Nature's voice attends, from month to month
And day to day, through the revolving year:   1305
Admiring, sees her in her every shape:
Feels all her sweet emotions at his Iheart;
Takes what she liberal gives, nor thinks of more.




AUTUMN.                    123
lie, when young Spring protrudes the bursting gems,
Marks the first bud, and sucks the hlealilful gale 1310
Into his freshened soul; her genial hours
He full enjoys; and not a beauty blows,
And not an opening blossom breathes in vain.
In Summer lie, beneath the living shlade,
Such as o'er frigid Tempe wont to wave,       1315
Or Hemus cool, reads what the Muse, of these,
Perhaps, has in immortal numbers sung;
Or what she dictates writes; and, oft an eye
Shot round, rejoices in the vigorous year.
When Autumn's yellow lustre gilds the world,  132C
And tempts the sickled swain into the fi -ld,
Seized by tile general jcy, his heart distenclds
With gentle throees; and, through the tepid gleams
Deep musing, then lie best exerts his; s )ng.
E'en Winter wild to himn is full of blis,.    13'2
The mighty tempest, and the hoary waste,
Abrupt, and deep, stretched o'er the buried earth,
Awake to solemn thought. At night thle skies,
Disclosed, and kindled, by refining frost,
Pour every lustre on th' exalted eye.         1330
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 on his mind,
Elates his being, and unfolds his powers;     13'35
Or in his breast heroic virtue burns;
The touch of kindred too and love he feels;
The modest eye, whose beams on his alone
Ecstatic shine; the little strong embrace
Of prattling children twined around his neck,   1310
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
Are of the social, still, and smiling kind.   1343
This is the life which those who fret in guilt,




124                AUTUMN.
And guilty cities, never knew; the life,
Led by primeval ages, uncorrupt,
When Angels dwelt, and God hitniself, with Man!
0 Nature! all sufficient! over all  1350
Enrich me with the knowledge of thy works;
Snatch me, to heaven; thy rolling wonders there,
World beyond world, in infinite extent,
Profusely scattered o'er the blue immense,
Show  une; their motions, periods, and their laws:
Give me to scan; through the disdlosing deep   1356
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,      1360
The varied scene of quick-compounded thought;
And where the mixing passions endless shift;
These ever open to my ravished eye;
A search, the flight of time can ne'er exhaust!
But if to that unequal; if the blood,        135 
In sluggish streams about my heart, forbid
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!       I31I




WI NT ER.
rhe subject proposed. Address to thc-Earl of  ilmington. First
approach of Winter. According to the nat.lal course of the
seasols, various storms described. gain. Wl ind. Snow. The
driving of the snows; a man perishil. almoing them; whence
reflections op the wants-.ard r.iserise,  of human life. The
wolves descending from the Alps and Apcnlinies. A winter
evening described; as spent by plhilosophecrs; by the country
people; in the city. Frost. A view of XVintlr within the
polar circle. A thaw. The whole concluding with moral reflections on a future state.
SEE, WINTER comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train —Vapors, and Clouds, and Storms.  Be these my theme,
These! that exalt the soul to solemn tho,'-ht,
And heavenly musing.  Welcome, kindred glooms, 5
Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,
Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nursed by careless Solitude I livo:l,
And sung of' Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleased have I wandered through your rough domain;
Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;           11
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst;
Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brewed,
In the grim evening sky. Thus passed the time,
Till through the lucid chambers of the south          15
Looked out the joyous Spring, looked out, and smiled.
To thee, the patron of her first essay,
The Mu-se, 0 Wilmington! renews her song.
Since has she rounded the revolving year;
Skiimmed the gay Spring; on eagle pinions borne, 20
Attempted throug'h the summer blaze to rise;
Then swept o'er Autumun with the shadowy gale;
And now amonglst the wintry clouds again,




126                WINTER.
Rolled in the doubling storm, she tries to soar,
To swell her note with all the rushing winds;  -'
To suit her sounding cadence to the floods;
As is her theme, her numbers wildly great:
Thrice happy! could she fill thy judging ear
With bold description and with manly thought.
Nor art thou skilled in awful schemes alone,   30
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,    35
A steady spirit, regularly fiee;
These, each exalting each, the statesman light
Into the patriot; these, the public hope
And eye to thee converting, bid the Muse
Record what envy dares not flattery call.      40
Now when the cheerless empire of the sky
To Capricorn the Centaur Archer yields,
And fierce Aquarius stains th' inverted year;
Hung o'er the furthest verge of heaven, the sun
Scarce spreads througlh ether the dejected day.    45
Faint are his gleams, and ineffectual shoot
His struggling rays, in horizontal lines,
Through the thick air; as clothed in cloudy storm,
Weak, wan, and broad, he skirts the southern sky;
And, soon descending, to the long, dark night,    50
Wide-shading all, the prostrate world resigns.
Nor is the night unwished; while vital heat,
Light, life, and joy the dubious day forsake.
Meantime, in sable cincture, shadows vast,
Deep-tinged and damp, and congregated clouds,   55
And all the vapory turbulence of heaven,
Involve the face of things. Thus Winter falls,
A heavy gloom oppressive o'er the world,
Through Nature shedding influence malign,
And rouses up the seeds of dark disease.       GE
The soul of man dies in him, loathing life,




WINTER                  127
And black with more than melancholy views.
The cattle droop; and o'er the furrowed land,
Fresh from the plough, the dun-discolored flocks,
Untended spreading, crop the wholesome root.    65
Along the woods, along the moorish fens,
Sighs the sad Genius of the coming storm:
And up among the loose disjointed cliffs,
And fractured mountains wild, the brawling brook
And cave presageful, send a hollow moan,     70
Resounding long in listening Fancy's ear.
Then comes the father of the tempest forth,
Wrapped in black glooms. First joyless rains obscure
Drive through the mingling skies with vapor foul,
Dash on the mountain's brow, and shake the woods, 75
That grumbling wave below. Th' unsightly plain
Lies a brown deluge; as the low-bent clouds
Pour flood on flood, yet unexhausted still
Combine, and deepening into night shut up
The day's fair face. The wanderers of heaven    s0
Each to his home retire; save those that love
To take their pastime in the troubled air,
Or skimming flutter round the dimply pool.
The cattle from th' untasted fields return,
And ask, with meaning low, their wonted stalls,  85
Or ruminate in the contiguous shade.
Thither the household feathery people crowd,
The crested cock, with all his female train,
Pensive and dripping; while the cottage hind
Hangs o'er th' enlivening blaze, and taleful there  90
Recounts his simple frolic, much he talks,
And much he laughs, nor recks the storm that blows
Without, and rattles on his humble roof.
Wide o'er the brim, with many a torrent swelled,
And the mixed ruin of its banks o'erspread,  95
At last the roused-up river pours along:
Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes,
From the rude mountain, and the mossy wild,
Tumbling through rocks abrupt, and sounding far;




128                WINTER.
Then o'er the sanded valley floating spreads,  100
Calm, sluggish, silent; till again, constrained
Between two meeting hills, it bursts away,
Where rocks and woods o'erhang the turbid stream i;
There gathering triple force, rapid and deep,
It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders through.
Nature! great parent! whose unceasing hand  106
Rolls round the Seasons of the changeful year,
How mighty, how majestic are thy works!
With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul,
That sees astonished! and astonished sings!   110
Ye too, ye winds! that now begin to blow
With boisterous sweep, I raise my voice to you.
Where are your stores, ye powerful beings! say
Where your aerial magazines reserved,
To swell the brooding terrors of the storm?   115
In what far distant region of the sky,
Hushed in deep silence, sleep ye when'tis calm?
When firom the pallid sky the sun descends,
Withmnmany a spot, t hat o'er his glaring orb
Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks    120
Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds
Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet
Which master to obey: while rising slow,
Blank, in the leaden-colored east, the moon
Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns.    125
Seen through the turbid, fluctuating air,
The stars obtuse emit a shivered ray;
Or frequent seem to shoot athwart the gloom,
And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.
Snatched in short eddies, plays the withered leaf; 113
And on the flood the dancing feather floats.
With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned,
The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale.
E'en as the matron, at her nightly task,
With pensive labor draws the flaxen thread,    135
The wasted taper and the crackling flame
Foretel the blast. But chief the plumy race,




WINTER.                   123
The tenants of the sky, its changes speak.
Retiring from the downs, where all day long
They picked their scanty fare, a blackening train 140
Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight,
And seek the closing shelter of the grove;
Assiduous, in his bower, the wailing owl
Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high
Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land. 145
Loud shrieks the soaring hern; and with wild wing
The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky clouds.
Ocean, unequal pressed, with broken tide
And blind comrnmotion heaves; while from the shore,
Eat into caverns by the restless wave,        150
And forest-rustling mountain, comes a voice,
That solemn sounding bids the world prepare.
Then issues forth the storm with sudden burst,
And hurls the whole precipitated air
Down, in a torrent. On the passive main        155
Descends th' etherial force, and with strong gust
Turns from its bottom the discolored deep.
Through the black night that sits immense around,
Lashed into foam, the fierce conflicting brine
Seems o'er a thousand raging waves to burn:    160
Meantime, the mountain billows, to the clouds
In dreadful tumult swelled, surge above surge,
Burst into chaos with tremendous roar,
And anchored navies from their stations drive,
Wild as the winds, across the howling waste   165
Of mighty waters: now th' inflated wave
Straining they scale, and now impetuous shoot
Into the secret chambers of the deep,
The wintry Baltic thundering o'er their head.
Emerging thence again, before the breath      170
Of full-exerted heaven they wing their course,
And dart on distant coasts; if some sharp rock
Or shoal insidious break not their career,
And in loose fragments fling them floating round.
Nor less at land the loosened tempest reigns.   175




130                WINTER.
The mountain thunders; and its sturdy sons
Stoop to the bottom of the rocks they shade.
Lone on the midnight steep, and all aghast,
The dark wayfaring stranger breathless toils,
And, often falling, climbs against the blast.  1SO
Low waves the rooted forest, vexed, and sheds
What of its tarnished honors yet remain;
Dashed down, and scattered, by the tearing wind's
Assiduous fury, its gigantic limbs.
Thus struggling through the dissipated grove,    185
The whirling tempest raves along the plain;
And on the cottage thatched, or lordly roof,
Keen-fastening, shakes them to the solid base.
Sleep fiighted flies; and round the rockinsg dome,
For entrance eager, howls the savw ge boust.   199
Then too, they say, through all the birldened air,
Long groans are heard, shrill sounds, and( distant sighs,
That, uttered by the Demon of the night,
Warn the devoted wretch of wo and death.
Huge uproar lords it wide. The clouds commixed
With stars swift gliding sweep along the sky.    196
All Nature reels. Till Nature's King, who oft
Amid tempestuous darkness dwells alone,
And on the wings of the careering wind
Walks dreadfully serene, commands a calm;     200
Then, straight, air, sea, and earth are hushed at once.
As yet'tis midnight deep. The weary clouds,
Slow-meeting, mingle into solid gloom.
Now, while the drowsy world lies lost in sleep,
Let me associate with the serious Night,      205
And Contemplation, her sedate compeer;
Let me shake off th' intrusive cares of day,
And lay the meddling senses all aside.
Where now, ye lying vanities of life!
Ye ever-tempting, ever-cheating train!        210
Where are you now? and what is your amount?
Vexation, disappointment, and remorse:
Sad, sickening thought! and yet, deluded man,




WINTER.                   131
A scene of crude disjointed visions past,
And broken slumbers, rises still resolved,     215
With new-flushed hopes, to run the giddy round.
Father of light and life! Thou Good Supreme!
0, teach me what is good! teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit! and feed my soul       220
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure;
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!
The keener tenipests rise: and fuming dun
Froin all the livid east, or piercing north,
Thick clouds ascend; in whose capacious wonlb 225
A vapory deiuge lies, to snow congealed.
Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;
And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.
Thrnugh the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes  230
Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white.'Tis brig'l-tness all; save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods          235
Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,
Faint from the wvest, emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill,
Is one wild dazzlin:g waste, that buries wide
The works of mrnan.. Drooping, the laborer-ox    240
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
Tie frnit of all hs toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,    245
The red-breast. sacred to the household gods,
Wisely reeI'rdfill of th' embroiling sky,
In joyles: fields and thorny thickets, leaves
His shivering  mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit  Half afraid, he first        250
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights




132                WINTER.
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is;
Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs   255
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
Anl more unpitying men, the garden seeks,      260
Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.
Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge be-kind;
Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens    266
With food at will; lodge them below the storm,
And watch them strict: for from the bellowing east,
In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing
Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains    2'70
At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks,
Hid in the hollow of two neighboring hills,
The billowy tempest whelms; till, upward urged,
The valley to a shining mountain swells,
Tipped with a wreath high-c-ulling in the sky.    275
As thus the snows arise; and foul, and fierce,
All Winter drives along the darkened air;
In his own loose revolving fields, the swain
Disastered stands, sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes, 
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain:
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,   285
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!
What black despair, what horror fills his heart!




WINTER.                  133'When for the dusky spot, which fancy feigned   290
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
Hie meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and blessed abode of mlan.'While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest, howling o'er his head,     295
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind
Of covered pits, unfathomlably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost  
Of faithless bogs: of precipices huge,        300
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,   306
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mixed with. the tender anguish Nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
Hiis wife, his children, and his friends unseen.    310
In vain for him th' 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!        315
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 corse,  320
Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast.~
Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround;
They who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;          325
Ahll little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death,
12




134                WINTER.
And all the sad variety of pain.
How many sink in the devouring flood,
Or -more devouring flame. How many bleed,    330
By shameful variance betwixt man and man.
How many pine in want, and dungeon glooms;
Shut from the common air, and commonr use
Of their own limbs. How many drink the cup
Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread     33b
Of misery. Sore pierced by wintry winds,
How many shrink into the sordid hut
Of cheerless poverty. How many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,
Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse;    340
Whence tumbled headlong from the height of life,
They furnish matter for the tragic Muse.
E'en in the vale, where Wisdom loves to dwell,
With friendship, peace, and contemplation joined,
How many, racked with honest passions, droop   345
In deep retired distress. How many stand
Around the de th-bed of their dearest friends,
And point the parting anguish. Thought fond Man
Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills,
That one incessant struggle render life,      350
One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate,
Vice in his high career would stand appalled,
And heedless rambling Impulse learn to think;
The conscious heart of Charity would warm,
And her wide wish Benevolence dilate;         355
The social tear would rise, the social sigh:
And into clear perfection, gradual bliss,
Refining still, the social passions work.
And here can I forget the generous band,*
Who, touched with human wo, redressive searched
Into the horrors of the gloomy jail?         361
Unpitied, and unheard, where misery moans;
Where sickness pines; where thirst and hunger burn,
And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice.
* The Jail Committee, in the year 1729.




WINTER.                   135
While in the land of liberty, the land        365
Whose every street and public meeting glow
With open freedom, little tyrants raged;
Snatched the lean morsel from the starving mouth;
Tore from cold wintry limbs the tattered weed;
E'en robbed them of the last of'comforts, sleep; 370
The freeborn Briton to the dungeon chained,
Or, as the lust of cruelty prevailed,
At pleasure marked him with inglorious stripes;
And crushed out lives, by secret barbarous ways,
That for their country would have toiled or bled. 375
O great design! if executed well,
With patient care, and wisdom-tempered zeal.
Ye sons of Mercy! yet resume the search;
Drag forth the legal monsters into light,
Wrench from their hands Oppression's iron rod,  380
And bid the cruel feel the pains they give.
Much still untouched remains; in this rank age,
Much is the patriot's weeding hand required.
The toils of law, (what dark insidious men
Have cumbrous added to perplex the truth,     385
And lengthen simple justice into trade,)
How glorious were the day that'saw these broke,
And every man within the reach of right!
By wintry famine roused, from all the tract
Of horrid mountains which the shining Alps,    390
And wavy Apennine, and Pyrennees,
Branch out stupendous into distant lands;
Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave!
Burning for blood! bony, and gaunt, and grim!
Assembling wolves in raging troops descend;    3q5
And, pouring o'er the country, bear along,
Keen as the north-wind sweeps the glossy snowy
All is their prize. They fasten on the steed,
Press him to earth, and pierce his mighty heart.
Nor can the bull his awful front defend,      400
Or shake the murdering savages away.
Rapacious at the mother's throat they fly,




136,               WINTER.
And tear the screaming infant from her breast.
The godlike face of man avails him nought.
E'en beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance 405
The generous lion stands in softened gaze,
Here bleeds, a hapless, undistinguished prey.
But if, apprised of the severe attack,
The country be shut up, lured by the scent,
On church-yards drear (inhuman to relate!)   410
The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig
The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which,
Mixed with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl.
Among those hilly regions, where embraced
in peaceful vales the happy Grisons dwell;    4t5
Oft, rushing sudden from the loaded cliffs,
Moun1t..in,. ~of snow their gathering terrors roll,
From steep t-o steep, lolud-thunderingv down they coiec,
A wintry waste in dire commotion all;
And herds, and flocks, and travellers, and swains, 420
And sometirnes. whole brigades of marching troops,
Or hamlets sleeping in the dead of night,
Are deep beneath the smothering ruin whelmed.
Now, all amid the rigors of the year,
In the wild depth of Winter, while without    425
The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat,
Between the groaning forest and the shore
Beat by the boundless multitude of waves,
A rural, sheltered, solitary scene;
Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join,     430
To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit,
And hold high converse with the mighty Dead;
Sages of ancient time, as gods revered,
As gods beneficent, who blessed mankind
With arts, with arms, and humanized a world.   435
Roused at th' inspiring thought, I throw aside
The long-lived volume; and, deep-musing, hail
The sacred shades, that slowly rising pass
Before my wondering eyes. First Socrates,
Who, firllly good in a corrupted state,       440




WINTER.                   137
Against the rage of tyrants single stood,
Invincible! calm Reason's holy law,
That Voice of God within th' attentive mind,
Obeying, fearless, or in life or death:
Great moral teacher! Wisest of mankind!      445
Solon the next, who built his commonweal
On equity's wide base; by tender laws
A lively people curbing, yet undamped
Preserving still that quick peculiar fire,
Whence in the laurelled field of finer arts,  450
And of bold freedom, they unequalled shone,
The pride of smiling Greece and human kind.
Lycurgus then, who bowed beneath the force (o)
Of strictest discipline, severely wise,
All human passions. Following him, I see,     455
As at Thermopyle he glorious fell, (p)
The firm devoted Chief,* who proved by deeds
The hardest lesson which the other taught.
Then Aristides lifts his honest front;
Spotless of heart, to whom th' unflattering voice 460
Of freedom gave the noblest name of Just;
In pure majestic poverty revered;
Who e'en his glory to his country's weal
Submitting, swelled a haughty Rival'st fame.
Reared by his-care, of softer ray appears     465
Cimon, sweet-souled; whose genius, rising strong,
Shook off the load of young debauch; abroad
The scourge of Persian pride, at home the friend
Of every worth and every splendid art;
Modest and simple in the pomp of wealth.      470
Then the last worthies of declining Greece,
Late called to glory, in unequal times,
Pensive appear. The fair Corinthian boast,
Timoleon, happy temper! mild and firm,
Who wept the brother while the tyrant bled.   475
And, equal to the best, the Theban Pairf
* Leonidas.       t Themistocles,: Pelopidas and Epaminondas.
12'




138                 WINTER.
Whose virtues, in heroic concord joined,
Their country raised to freedom, empire, fame.
He too, with whom Athenian honor-sunk,
And left a mass of sordid lees behind,        480'lhocion the Good; in public life severe,
To virtue still inexorably firm;
But when, beneath his low illustrious roof,
Sweet peace and happy wisdom smoothed his brow,
Not friendship softer was, nor love more kind.   485
And he, the last of old Lycurgus' sons,
The generous victim to that vain attempt
To save a rotten state, Agis, who saw
E'en Sparta's self to servile avarice sunk.
The two Achaian heroes close the train:       490
Aratus, who awhile relumed the soul
Of fondly lingering liberty in Greece;
And he her darling, as her latest hope,
The gallant Philopeemen; who to arms
Turned the luxurious pomp he could not cure;   495
Or toiling in his farm, a simple swain;
Or, bold and skilful, thundering in the field.
Of rougher front, a mighty people come!
A race of heroes! in those virtuous times
Which knew no stain, save that with partial flame 500
Their dearest country they too fondly loved:
Her better Founder first, the light of Rome,
Numa, who softened her rapacious sons:
Servius the king, who laid the solid base
On which o'er earth the vast republic spread.    505
Then the great consuls venerable rise.
The public Father* who the private quelled,
As on the dread tribunal sternly sad.
He, whom his thankless country could not lose,
Camillus, only vengeful to her foes.          513
Fabricius, scorner of all-conquering gold:
And Cincinnatus, awful from the plough. (q)
Thy willing victim,s Carthage, bursting loose
* Lucius Juanius Brutus.     Regulus.




WINTER.                   139
From all that pleading Nature could oppose,
From a whole city's tears, by rigid faith     515
Imperious called, and honor's dire command.
Scipio, the gentle chief, humanely brave,
Who soon the race of spotless glory ran,
And, warm in youth, to the poetic shade
With Friendship and Philosophy retired.       520
Tully, whose powerful eloquence awhile
Restrained the rapid fate of rushing Rome.
Unconquered Cato, virtuous in extreme:
And thou, unhappy Brutus, kind of heart,
Whose steady arm, by awful virtue urged,      525
Lifted the Roman steel against thy friend.
Thousands besides, the tribute of a verse
Demand; but who can count the stars of heaven?
Who sing their influence on this lower world?
Behold, who yonder comes! in sober state,    530
Fair, mild, and strong, as is a vernal sun:'Tis Phcebus self, or else the Mantuan Swain!
Great Homer too appears, of daring wing,
Parent of song! and equal, by his side,
The British Muse: joined hand in hand they walk,
Darkling, full up the middle steep to fame.   536
Nor absent are those shades, whose skilful touch
Pathetic drew th' impassioned heart, and charmed
Transported Athens with the moral scene;
Nor those who, tuneful, waked th' enchanting lyre.
First of your kind! society divine!       541
Still visit thus my nights, for you reserved,
And mount my soaring soul to thoughts like yours.
Silence, thou lonely power! the door be thine;
See on the hallowed hour that none intrude,   545
Save a few chosen friends, who sometimes deign
To bless my humble roof, with sense refined,
Learning digested well, exalted faith,
Unstudied wit, and humor ever gay.
Or from the Muses' hill with Pope descend,    550
To raise the sacred hour, to bid it smile,




140                WINTER.
And with the social spirit warm the heart?
For though not sweeter his own Homer sings,
Yet is his life the more endearing song.
Where art thou, Hammond? thou, the darling pride9
The friend and lover of the tuneful throng!   556
Ah, why, dear youth, in all the blooming prime
Of vernal genius, where disclosing fast
Each active worth, each manly virtue lay,
Why wert thou ravished from our hope so soon? 560
What now avails that noble thirst of fame,
Which stung thy fervent breast? that treasured store
Of knowledge, early gained? that eager zeal
To serve thy country, glowing in the band
Of youthful patriots, who sustain her name;   565
What now, alas! that life-diffusing charm
Of sprightly wit? that rapture for the Muse,
That heart of friendship, and that soul of joy,
Which bade with softest light thy virtues smile 
Ah! only showed, to check our fond pursuits,   570
And teach our humble hopes that life is vain!
Thus in some deep retirement would I pass
The winter glooms, with friends of pliant soul,
Or blithe, or solemn, as the theme inspired:
With them would search, if Nature's boundless frame
Was called, late-rising from the void of night,   571
Or sprung eternal from th' Eternal Mind;
Its life, its laws, its progress, and its ends
Hence larger prospects of the beauteous whole
Would, gradual, open on our opening minds;    580
And each diffusive harmony unite
In full perfection, to th' astonished eye.
Then would we try to scan the mortal world,
Which, though to us it seems embroiled, moves on
In higher order; fitted and impelled          585
By Wisdom's finest hand, and issuing all
In general good. The sage historic Muse
Should next conduct us through the deeps of time;
Show us how empire grew, declined, and fell,




WINTER.                   141
In scattered states; what makes the nations smile, 590
Improves their soil, and gives them double suns;
And why they pine beneath therbrightest skies,
In Nature's richest lap/ As thus we talked,
Our hearts would burn within us, would inhale
That portion of divinity, that ray            595
Of purest heaven, which lights the public soul
Of patriots and of heroes. But if doomed,
In powerless humble fortune, to repress
These ardent risings of the kindling soul;
Then, even superior to ambition, we           600
Would learn the private virtues; how to glide
Through shades and plains, along the smoothest stream
Of rural life; or, snatched away by hope,
Through the dimn spaces of futurity,
Wit]h earnest eye anticipate those scenes     605
Of happiness and wonder; where the mind,
In endless growth and infinite ascent,
Rises from state to state, and world to world.
But when with these the serious thought is foiled,
We, shifting for relief, would play the shapes    610
Of frolic fancy; and incessant form
Those rapid pictures, that assembled train
Of fleet ideas, never joined before,
Whence lively Wit excites to gay surprise;
Or folly-painting Humor, grave himself,       615
Calls Laughter forth, deep shaking every nerve.
Meantime the village rouses up the fire;
While well attested, and as well believed,
Heard solemn, goes the goblin story round;
Till superstitious horror creeps o'er all.    620
Or, frequent in the sounding hall, they wake
rhe rural gambol. Rustic mirth goes round;
The simple joke that takes the shepherd's heart,
Easily pleased; the long loud laugh, sincere;
The kiss, snatched hasty frem the sidelong maid, 625
On purpose guardless, or pretending sleep:
The leap, the slap, the haul; and, shook to notes




142 ~              WINTER.
Of native music, the respondent dance.
Thus jocund fleets with them the winter night.
The city swarms intense. The public haunt,  630
Full of each theme, and warm with mixed discourse,
Hums indistinct. The sons of riot flow
Down the loose stream of false enchanted joy,
To swift destruction. On the rankled soul
The gaming fury falls; and in one gulf        635
Of total ruin, honor, virtue, peace,
Friends, families, and fortune headlong sink.
Up springs the dance along the lighted dome,
Mixed and evolved a thousand sprightly ways.
The glittering court effuses every pomp;      640
The circle deepens: beamed from gaudy robes,
Tapers, and sparkling gems, and radiant eyes,
A soft effulgence o'er the palace waves:
While, a gay insect in his summer shine,
The fop, light fluttering, spreads his mealy wings. 645
Dread o'er the scene the ghost of Hamlet stalks;
Othello rages; poor Monimia mourns;
And Belvidera pours her soul in love.
Terror alarms the breast; the comely tear
Steals o'er the cheek: or else the comic Muse    650
Holds to the world a picture of itself,
And raises sly the fair impartial laugh.
Sometimes she lifts her strain, and paints the scenes
Of beauteous life; whate'er can deck mankind,
Or charm the heart, in generous Bevil* showed.  655
O Thou, whose wisdom, solid yet refined,
Whose patriot virtues, and consummate skill
To touch the finer springs that move the world,
Joined to whate'er the Graces can bestow,
And all Apollo's animating fire,              660
Give thee, with pleasing dignity, to shine
At once the guardian, ornament, and joy
Of polished life; permit the rural Muse,
* A character in The Conscious Lovers, written by Sir R. Steele




WINTER.                   143
O Chesterfield, to grace with thee her song!
Ere to the shades again she humbly flies,     665
Induige her fond ambition, in thy train
(For every Muse has in thy train a place,)
To mark thy various full-accomplished mind:
To mark that spirit which, with British scorn,
Rejects th' allurements of corrupted power;   670
That elegant politeness, which excels,
E en in the judgment of presumptuous France,
The boasted manners of her shining court;
That wit, the vivid energy of sense,
The truth of Nature, which, with Attic point    675
And kind well-tempered satire, smoothly keen,
Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects;
Or rising thence with yet a brighter flame,
O, let me hail thee on some glorious day,
When to the listening senate, ardent, crowd   680
Britannia's sons to hear her pleaded cause.
Then dressed by thee, more amiably fair,
Truth the soft robe of' mild persuasion wears;
Thou to assenting reason giv'st again
Her own enlightened thoughts; called from the heart,
Th' obedient passions on thy voice attend;    686
And e'en reluctant party feels awhile
Thy gracious power; as through the varied maze
Of eloquence, now smooth, now quick, now strong,
Profound, and clear, you roll the copious flood.   690
To thy loved haunt return, my happy Muse;
For now, behold, the joyous winter days,
Frosty, succeed; and through the blue serene,
For sight too fine, tht' etherial nitre flies;
Killing infectious damps, and the spent air   695
Storing afresh with elemental life.
Close crowds the shining atmosphere; and binds
Our strengthened bodies in its cold embrace,
Constringent; feeds and animates our blood;
Refines our spirits, through the new-strung nerves 700
In swifter sallies darting to the brain;




144               WINTER.
Where sits the soul, intense, collected, cool,
Bright as the skies, and as the season keen.
All Nature feels the renovating force
Of Winter, only to the thoughtless eye        705
In ruin seen. The frost-concocted glebe
Draws in abundant vegetable soul,
And gathers vigor for the coming year.
A stronger glow sits on the lively cheek
Of ruddy fire; and luculent along             710
The purer rivers flow; their sullen deeps,
Transparent, open to the shepherd's gaze,
And murmur hoarser at the fixing frost.
What art thou, frost? and whence are thy keen stores
Derived, thou secret, all-invading power,     715
Whom e'en th' illusive fluid cannot fly?
Is not thy potent energy, unseen,
Myriads of little salts, or hooked, or shaped
Like double wedges, and diffused immense
Through water, earth, and ether? hence at eve,  720
Steamed eager from the red horis.on round,
With the fierce rage of Winter deep suffused,
An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool
Breathes a blue film, and in its mid career
Arrests the bickering stream. The loosened ice, 7~S
Let down the flood, and half dissolved by day,
Rustles no more; but to the sedgy bank
Fast grows, or gathers round the pointed stone,
A crystal pavement, by the breath of heaven
Cemented firm; till, seized from shore to shore,  730
The whole imprisoned river growls below.
Loud rings the fiozen earth, and hard reflects
A double noise; while at his evening watch,
The village dog deters the nightly thief;
The heifer lows; the distant waterfall        735
Swells in the breeze; and, with the hasty tread
Of traveller, the hollow-sounding plain
Shakes from afar. The full etherial round,
Infinite worlds disclosing to the view,




WINTER.                   145
Shines out intensely keen; and, all one cope   710
Of starry glitter, glows from pole to pole.
From pole to pole the rigid influence falls,
Through the still night, incessant, heavy, strong,
And seizes Nature fast. It freezes on;
Till Morn, late rising o'er the drooping world,   745
Lifts her pale eye unjoyous. Then appears
The various labor of the silent night:
Prone from the dripping cave, and dumb cascade,
Whose idle torrents only seem to roar,
The pendent icicle; the frost-work fair,       750
Where transient hues and fancied figures rise;
Wide-spouted o'er the hill, the frozen brook,
A livid tract, cold-gleaming on the morn;
The forest bent beneath the plumy wave;
And by the frost refined the whiter snow,      755
Incrusted hard, and sounding to the tread
Of early shepherd, as he pensive seeks
His pining flock, or from the mountain top,
Pleased with the slippery surface, swift descends.
On blithesome frolics bent, the youthful swains, 760
While every work of man is laid at rest,
Fond o'er the river crowd, in various sport
And revelry dissolved; where mixing glad,
Happiest of' all the train! the raptured boy
Lashes the whirling top. Or, where the Rhine   765
Branched out in many a long canal extends,
From every province swarming, void of care,
Batavia rushes forth; and as they sweep,
On sounding skates, a thousand different ways,
In circling poise, swift as the winds, along,  770
The then gay land is maddened all to joy.
Nor less the northern courts, wide o'er the snow
Pour a new pomp. Eager, on rapid sleds,
Their vig(,lous youth in bold contention wheel
The long-resounding course. Meantime to raise  775
The manly strife, with highly-blooming charIns,
13




146                WINTER.
Flushed by the season, Scandinavia's dames,
Or Russia's buxom daughters, glow around
Pure, quick, and sportful is the wholesome day,
But soon elapsed. The horizontal sun,         7.3
Broad o'er the south, hangs at his utmost noon;
And, ineffectual, strikes the gelid cliff:
His azure gloss the mountain still maintains,
Nor feels the feeble touch. Perhaps the vale
Relents awhile to the reflected ray;          7r5
Or from the forest falls the clustered snow,
Myriads of gems, that in the waving gleanm
Gay-twinkle as they scatter. Thick around
Thunders the sport of those, who with the gun,
And dog impatient bounding at the shot,       790
Worse than the season, desolate the fields;
And, adding to the ruins of the year,
Distress the footed or the feathered game.
But what is this? our infant Winter sinks
Divested of his grandeur, should our eye      795
Astonished shoot into the frigid zone;
Where, for relentless months, continual Night
Holds o'er the glittering waste her starry reign.
There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barred by the hand of Nature from escape,     800
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow,
And heavy-loaded groves, and solid floods,
That stretch, athwart the solitary vast,
Their icy horrors to the frozen main;         805
And cheerless towns, far distant, never blessed,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,*
With news of human kind. Yet there life glows;
Yet cherished there, beneath the shining waste,  810
The furry nations harbor: tipped with jet,
Fair ermines, spotless as the snows they press'
Sables, of glossy black; and dark-embrowned,
* The old name for China.




WINTER.                   147
Or beauteous freaked with many a mingled hue,
Thousands besides, the costly pride of courts.    815
There, warm together pressed, the trooping deer
Sleep on the new-fallen snows; and, scarce his head
Raised o'er the heapy wreath, the branching elk
Lies slumbering sullen in the white abyss.
The ruthless hunter wants not dogs nor toils,    820
Nor with the dread of sounding bows he drives
The fearful flying race; with ponderous clubs,
As weak against the mountain heaps they push
Their beating breasts in vain, and piteous bray,
ie lays them quivering on th' ensanguined snows, 825
And with loud shouts rejoicing bears them home.
There through the piny forest half-absorbed,
Rough tenant of these shades, the shapeless bear,
With dangling ice all horrid, stalks forlorn;
Slow-paced, and sourer as the storms increase,   830
He makes his bed beneath th' inclement drift,
And, with stern patience, scorning weak complaint,
Harden's his heart against assailing want.
Wide o'er the spacious region's of the north,
That see Boetes urge his tardy wain,          835
A boisterous race, by frosty Caurus' pierced,
Who little pleasure know, and fear no pain,
Prolific swarm. They once relumed the flame
Of lost mankind in polished slavery sunk,
Drove martial horde on horde,t with dreadful sweep
Resistless rushing o'er th' enfeebled south,   ~  841
And gave the vanquished world another form
Not such the sons of Lapland: wisely they
Despise th' insensate barbarous trade of war;
They ask no more than simple Nature gives,    845
They love their mountains, and enjoy their storms.
No false desires, no pride-created wants,
Disturb the peaceful current of their time;
And through the restless ever-tortured maze
Of pleasure or ambition bid it rage.          850
* The North-west wind.  t The wandering Scythian clans.




148                   WINTER.
Their reindeer form their riches.  These their tents,
Their robes, their beds, and all their homely wealth
Supply, their wholesome fare and cheerful cups.
Obsequious at their call, the docile tribe
Yield to the sled their necks, and whirl them swift 855
O'er hill and dale, heaped into one expan'se
Of marbled snow, as far as eye can sweep,
With a blue crust of ice unbounded glazed.
By dancing meteors then, that ceaseless shake
A waving blaze refracted o'er the heavens,           860
And vivid moons, and stars that keener play
With doubled lustre from the glossy waste,
E'en in the depth of polar night, they find
A wondrous day: enough to light the chase,
Or guide their daring steps to Finland fairs.        865
Wished Spring returns; and from the hazy south,
While dim Aurora slowly moves before,
The welcome sun, just verging up at first,
By small degrees extends the swelling curve;
Till seen at last for gay rejoicing months,          870
Still round and round his spiral course he winds
And as he nearly dips his flaming orb,
Wheels up again, and reascends the sky.
In that glad season, from the lakes and floods,
Where pure Niemi's* fairy mountains rise,            875
And fringed with roses Tengliot rolls his stream,
They draw the copious fry.  With these, at eve,
They, cheerful loaded, to their tents repair;
* MI. de Maupertuis, in his book on the Figure of the Earth, after
having described the beautiful lake and mountain of Niemi, in
Lapland, says, " From this height we had opportunity several
times to see those vapors rise firom the lake, which the people of
the country call Haltios, and which they deem to be the guiardian
spirits of the mountains. We had been frighted with stories of
bears that haunted this place, but saw none. It seemed rather a
place of resort for fairies and genii than bears."
t The same author observes, " I was surprised to see upon the
banks of this river (the Tenglio) roses of as lively a red as any
that are in our gardens."'




WINTER.                   149
Where all day long in useful cares employed,
Their kind unblemished wives the fire prepare.  ~Eib
Thrice happy race! by poverty secured
From legal plunder and rapacious power:
In whom fell interest never yet has sown
The seeds of vice: whose spotless swains ne'er!k-ne
Injurious deed, nor, blasted by the breath    5SU
Of faithless love, their blooming daughters wo.
Still pressing on, beyond Tornea's lake,
And Hecla flaming through a waste of snow,
And farthest Greenland, to the pole itself,
Where, failing gradual, life at length goes out,   890
The Muse expands her solitary flight;
And, hovering o'er the wild, stupendous scene,
Beholds new seas beneath another sky.*
Throned in his palace of cerulean ice,
Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court;      895
And through his airy hall the loud misrule
Of driving tempest is forever heard:
Here the grim tyrant meditates his wrath;
Here arms his winds with all-subduing frost;
Moulds his fierce hail, and treasures up his snows, 900
With which he now oppresses half the globe.
Thence, winding eastward to the Tartar's coast,
She sweeps the howling margin of the main;
Where undissolving, from the first of time,
Snows swell on snows amazing to the slay;     905
And icy mountains high on mountains piled,
Seem to the shivering sailor from afar,
Shapeless and white, an atmosphere of clouds.
Projected huge and horrid o'er the surge,
Alps frown on Alps; or, rushing hideous down,  91C'
As if old Chaos was again returned,
Wide rend the deep, and shake the solid pole.
Ocean itself no longer can resist
The binding fury: but, in all its rage
* The other hemisphere.
13*




150                WINTER.
Of tempest taken by the boundless frost,       915
Is many a fathom to the bottom chained,
And bid to roar no more: a bleak expanse,
Shagged o'er with wavy rocks, cheerless, and void
Of every life, that from the dreary months
Flies conscious southward. Miserable they!     920
Who, here entangled in the gathering ice,
Take their last look of the descending sun;
While full of death, and fierce with tenfold frost,
The long, long night, incumbent o'er their heads,
Falls horrible. Such was the Briton's fate,*   925
As with first prow (what have not Britons dared!)
He for the passage sought, attempted since
So much in vain, and seeming to be shut
By jealous nature with eternal bars.
In these fell regions, in Arzina caught,       930
And to the stony deep his idle ship
Immediate sealed, he with his hapless crew,
Each full exerted at his several task,
Froze into statues; to the cordage glued
The sailor, and the pilot to the helm.         935
Hard by these shores,where scarce his freezing stream
Rolls the wild Oby, live the last of men;
And half enlivened by the distant sun,
That rears and ripens man as well as plants,
Here human nature wears its rudest form.       940
Deep from the piercing season sunk in caves,
Here by dull fires, and with unjoyous cheer,
They waste the tedious gloom. Immersed in furs,
Doze the gross race. Nor sprightly jest, nor song,
Nor tenderness they know; nor aught of life    945
Beyond the kindred bears that stalk without.
Irill morn, at length, her roses drooping all,
Sheds a long twilight brightening o'er their fields,
And calls the quivered savage to the chase.
* Sir HIugh Willoughby, sent by Queen Elizabeth to dLctVtM
the  north-east passage.




WINTER.                   151
What cannot active government perform,      950
New-moulding man? Wide-stretching  from  these
A people savage from remotest time,       [shores,
A huge neglected empire, one vast mind,
By Heaven inspired, from gothic darkness called.
Immortal Peter! first of monarchs! lhe       955
His stubborn country tamed, her rocks, her fens,
Her floods, her seas, her ill-submitting sons;
And while the fierce barbarian he subdued,
To more exalted soul he raised the man.
Ye shades of ancient heroes, ye who toiled    960
Through long successive ages to build up
A laboring plan of state, behold at once
The wonder done! behold the matchless prince!
Who left his native throne, where reigned till then
A mllighty shadow of unreal power;            965
Who greatly spurned the slothful pomp of courts;
And roaming every land, in every port
His sceptre laid aside, with glorious hand
Unwearied plying the mechanic tool,
Gathered the seeds of trade, of useful arts,  970
Of civil wisdom, and of martial skill.
Charged with the stores of Europe, home he goes'
Then cities rise amid th' illumined waste;
O'er joyless deserts smiles the rural reign;
Far distant flood to flood is social joined;  975
Th' astonished Euxine hears the Baltic roar;
Proud navies ride on seas that never foamed
With daring keel before; and armies stretch
Each way their dazzling files, repressing here
The frantic Alexander of the north,           980
And awing there stern Othman's shrinking sons.
Sloth flies the land, and Ignorance and Vice,
Of old dishonor proud: it glows around:
Taught by the Royal Hand that roused the whole,
One scene of arts, of arms, of rising trade:  985
For what his wisdom planned, and power enforced,
More potent still, his great example showed.




152               DWINTER
Muttering, the winds at eve, with blunted point,
Blow hollow-blustering from the south. Subdued,
The frost resolves into a trickling thaw.     990
Spotted the mountains shine: loose sleet descends,
And floods the country round. The rivers swell,
Of bonds impatient. Sudden from the hills,
O'er rocks and woods, in broad brown cataracts,
A thousand snow-fed torrents shoot at once;   995
And, where they rush, the wide-resounding plain
Is left one slimy waste. Those sullen seas,
That washed the ungenial pole, will rest no more
Beneath the shackles of the mighty north;
But, rousing all their waves, resistless heave.   1000
And hark' the lengthening roar continuous runs
Athwart the rifted deep; at once it bursts,
And piles a thousand mountains to the clouds.
Ill fares the bark, with trembling wretches charged,
That, tossed amid the floating fragments, moors  1005
Beneath the shelter of an icy isle,
While night o'erwhelms the sea, and horror looks
More horrible. Can human force endure
Th' assembled mischiefs that besiege them round?
Heart-gnawing hunger, fainting weariness,    1010
The roar of winds and waves, the crush of ice,
Now ceasing, now renewed with louder rage,
And in dire echoes bellowing round the main.
More to embroil the deep, Leviathan,
And his unwieldy train, in dreadful sport,   1015
Tempest the loosened brine; while through the gloom,
Far from the bleak, inhospitable shore,
Loading the winds, is heard the hungry howl
Of famished monsters, there awaiting wrecks.
Yet Providence, that ever-waking eye,        1020
Looks down with pity on the feeble toil
Of mortals lost to hope, and lights them safe
Through all this dreary labyrinth of fate.'Tis done! dread Winter spreads his latest glooms,
And reigns tremendous o'er the conquered year. 1025




WINTER.                   153
HIow dead the vegetable kingdom lies!
How dumb the tuneful! horror wide extends
His desolate domain. Behold, fond man!
See here thy pictured life; pass some few years,
Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength,
Thy sober Autumn fading into age,            1031
And pale concluding Winter comes at last,
And shuts the scene. Ah! whither now are fled
Those dreams of greatness? those unsolid hopes
Of happiness? those longings after fame?   10)35
Those restless cares? those busy bhustling days?
Those gay-spent, festive nights? those veering thoughts,
Lost between good and ill, that shared thy life?
All now are vanished! Virtue sole survives,
Immortal, never-failing friend of Man,       1040
His guide to happiness on high. And see!'Tis come, the glorious morn! the second birth
Of heaven and earth! awakening Nature hears
The new-creating word, and starts to life,
In every heightened form, from pain and death  10.15
Forever free. The great eternal scheme,
Involving all, and in a perfect whole
Uniting, as the prospect wider spreads,
To reason's eye refined clears up apace.
Ye vainly wise! ye blind presumptuous! now,  1050
Confounded in the dust, adore that Power
And Wisdom oft arraigned: see now the cause,
Why unassuming worth in secret lived,
And died neglected: why the good man's share
In life was gall and bitterness of soul:     1055
Why the lone widow and her orphans pined
In starving solitude; while Luxury,
In palaces, lay straining her low thought,
To form unreal wants: why heaven-born truth,
And moderation fair, wore the red marks      1060
Of superstition's scourge: why licensed pain,
That cruel spoiler, that embosomed foe,




154                WINTER.
Embittered all our bliss. Ye good distressed!
Ye noble few! who here unbending stand
Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up awhile,  10G6
And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deemed evil, is no more:
The storms of Wintry Time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded Spring encircle all.




THESE, as they change, ALMIGHTY FATHER, the:8e
Are but the varied GOD. The rolling year
Is full of THEE. Forth in the pleasing Spring
THuY beauty walks, THY tenderness, and 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:   10
And oft TIIY vOICE in dreadful thunder speaks;
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales
TrHY bounty shines in Autumn unconfined,
And spreads a common feast for all that live.       15
In Winter awful THOU with clouds and storms
Around TE:E thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled.
Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wing,
Riding sublime, THOU bidst the world adore,
And humblest Nature with THY northern blast.        20
Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,
Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,
Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combined;
Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade;       v3
And all so forming an harmonious whole;
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not THEE, marks not the mighty hand,
That, ever busy, wheels the silent sphere;         30
Works in the secret deep; shoots, steaming, thence
I'he fair profusion that o'erspreads the Spring;
Flings from the sun direct the flaming day;
Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth;
And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,    3
With transport touches all the springs of life.




.156                  IIYMN.
Nature, attend! join, every living soul
Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,
In adoration join; and, ardent, raise
One general song! To HIsM, ye vocal gales,         -4
Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes;
0, talk of HIM in solitary glooms!
Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving pine
Fills the browin shade with a religious awe.
And yo, whose bolder note is heard afar,            45
Who shake th' astonished world, lift high to heaven
Th' Impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.
His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
And let me catch it as I muse along.
Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound;           50
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
Or bids you roar or bids your roarings fall.        55
Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
In mingled clouds to HIM; whose sun exalts,
Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.
Ye forests, bend; ye harvests, wave to HIMi;
Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,    60
As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth asleep
Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams,
Ye constellations, while your angels strike,
Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.             65
Great source of day! best image here below
Of thy CREATOR, ever pouring wide,
From world to world, the vital ocean round,
On Nature write with every beam His praise.
The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world,  70
While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.
Bleat out afresh, ye hills: ye mossy rocks,
Retain the sound: the broad responsive lowe,
Ye valleys, raise; for the GREAT SHEPHERD reigns,
And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come.          76
Ye woodlands all, awake: a boundless song
Burst from the groves! and when the restless day,




HYMN.                      157
Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep,
Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomnela, charm
[he listening shades, and teach the night His praise.   80
Ye chief, for whomI thle whole creation smiles,
At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all,
Crown the great hymn; in swarming cities vast,
Assembled men, to the deep organ join
the long resounding voice, oft breaking'clear,      85
At solemn pauses, through the swelling base;
And, as each mingling flame increases each,
[n one united ardor rise to heaven.
Or if you rather choose the rural shade,
And find a fane in every sacred grove;              90
There let the shepherd's flute, the virgin's lay,
The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre,
Still sing the GOD oF SEASONs as they roll.For me, when I forget the darling theme,
Whether the blossom blows, the summer ray            95
Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams,
Or Winter rises in the blackening east;
Be my tongue mute, my fancy paint no more,
And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat!
Should fate command me to the farthest verge     100
Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes,
Rivers unknown to song; where first the sun
Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam
Flames on th' Atlantic isles;'tis nought to me:
Since GoD is ever present, ever felt,               105
In the void waste as in the city full:
And where HE vital breathes there must be joy.
When even at last the solemn hour shall come,,
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,
I cheerful will obey; there, with new powers,      110
Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go
Where Universal Love not smiles around,
Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns;
From seeming Evil still educing Good,
And better thence again, and better still,         115
In infinite progression. But I lose
Myself in HIM, in Light ineffable!
Come then, expressive Silence, muse His praise.




NOTES..freJS044..
[The following Notes have been hastily prepared. Few and
imperfect as they are, it is hoped they will increase, in some
degree, the value of the present edition of the Seasons, as well
as interest the youthful reader, for whose benefit they are specially added. if they shall be found valuable to the inquiring
scholar, or stimulate him to further research, the object of their
preparation will have been obtained.]
Note (a)-page 8.
Such themes as these the sural z.faro sung.
Maro, generally called Virgil, was ", the prince of Latin poets."
He was born about 70 years before Christ, at Andes, near Mantua; and is hence called the "' Mantuan bard."  The _/neid, his
greatest work, has rendered his nayne immortal. He spent eleven
successive years in composing it, and died before having an opportunity to revise it. On his death-bed, he ordered it to be burnt,
as an imp-rfect and unnnished production. Virgil was excessively bashful, and oftten took refuge in the shops, to screen himself fromn the observation of the people, who came out to see
him and pay respect to his genius. Such sensibility often accompanies trite merit. Virgil was also the author of a poem on agriculture, and hence called the ", rural Maro."
Note (b)-page 12.
Here, awfuzl Xes7ton, the dissolving- clouds
Form, frontinsg on the sun, thy showery prism.
Sir Isaac Newton first discovered that light is a conmpound substance; i. e. it is made up of seven different colors; and these
colors all appear in the rainbow. No philosophical explanation
of this phenomenon had been given previous to this discovery of
Newton. The rays of light, in passing through the drops of rain,
are decomposed in the same manner as by a prism. This fact is
noticed by the poet i and, in introducing the name of the great
philosopher in connection with it, he also acknowledges the discovery.
Note (c)-page 17.
the Samian sage.
Pythagoras was one of the greatest philosophers of antiquity.
He was born at Samos, an island in the Archipelago, and is hence
called " the Samian sage."  He ate no animal food, and imposed
the same restriction upon his pupils. The object of this, was to
prevent the taking of animal life-an act which the Pythagoreans
religiously refrained from. Our author, therefore, in Ihis condemnation of the practice, as the reader will perceive, veiy naturally
refers to the old philosopher.




NOTES.                         159
Note (d)-page 42.
Of utmost Saturn.
Thomson wrote many years before the discovery of the planet
Herscheil. At that period, astronomers knew of no planet lbeyond
Saturn. Hence its orbit was considered the bulwark of the solar
system.
Note (e)-page 58.
The Hindoos hold it to be an imperative duty to bathe in the
Ganges, or wasli their bodies in its " sacred" waters. They believe it rises immediately from the feet of their god, Brama. The
sick are carried to its banks, that they may drinlk of its waters
and die there. Those who live too far distant for this, always
preserve some of the precious water in a copper vessel, to be taken
in the hour of death. In the British courts of justice, the water
of the Ganges is used for swearing Hindoos, as the Bible is for
Christians.
Note (f) —page 62.
Golconda's gemLs, and sad Potosi's mines.
Golconda is a province in Flindostan, celebrated for its diamond
mines. Formerly, 6000 men were constantly employed in them;
but they have now ceased to be of much importance.  Potosi has
the richest silver minps in South Anlerica.
Note (g)-page 67.
that cruel trade
FWhich spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons.
That may well be called a " cruel trade," which has, within the
last two centuries, plundered Africa of forty millions of her children. Thomas Jefferson, in the original draft of the Declaration
of Independence, pronounced it an " execrable commerce" —a
" piratical warfare"-and'- the opprobium of infidel powers."
By our own laws it is " piracy." Yet, after all the efforts that
have been made to suppress the " slave trade," two hundred
thousand wretched victims are annually torn from their country,
to feed the rapacity of this infernal traffic.
Note (h)-page 67.
Gallanlt Vernon.
Edward Vernon was a distinguished English admiral. He was
sent to attack Carthagena, in South America. His troops were
swept off with a dreadful mortality by the plague which prevailed
in that tropical climate. To this miserablescene the author refers
Admiral Vernon had the honor of giving his name to the seat of
General Washington, (MJIount Vernon,) then in the possession of
the admiral's brother.
Note (i)-page 70.
Snoodon's pcak.
Snowdol is the loftiest mountain in Wales.




160                     NOTES.
Note (j)-page 70..And Thule bellows through her utmost isles.'Thule" was an island in the most northern parts of the Ger
man ocean, (North Sea,) which the ancients called ultima. Some
suppose it to have been Iceland.  Hence the phrase,' ultitma
Thule," the farthest land.
Note (k)-page 70.
Thy sons of glory many! Adlfred, thine.
Alfred the Great ascended the English throne, A. D. 872 Vorming the design of freeing his country from the power of the Panes.
he went into their camp in disguise, as a wandering harper. Having thus ascertained their situation, he returned and led his troops
successfully against them. He now made Lon.lon the capital of
his donilnionrs; provided for an impartial administration of justice; encouraged learning; founded the college at Oxford  Pinally, he did fior his country what Peter the Great afterwards did
for Russia. The English cherish, with a good deal of pride the
name of their " immortal Alfred."
Note (1)-page 79.
--  but who can speak
Thie nauterous worthies of the Jaluiden Reign'
The reign of Elizabeth, England's maiden queen, was adorned
by a brilliant constellation of statesmen, poets, and men of science. She was, herself, one of the most remarkable of female
sovereigns-sagacious, energetic, and ambitious.  Haughty and
vain,,-he treated every proposal of marriage with scorn; declaring that " England was her husband,)' and wishing for no higher
character than this simple inscription on her tombstone'-" Here
lies Elizabeth, who lived and died a Maiden Queen."  She even
carried this ambition to such an extent, that when the drscoveries
of Cabot put her in possession of all North America, fromm Labrador to the Mexican gulf, she stamped upon it the name of ViacGINIA-at once significant of her sovereignty and character.
Note (m)-page 80.
Thine is a Bacon.
It has been said that Lord Bacon " drew a sponge over the table
of human knowledge."t He attacked and swept away the jargon
and idle speculation of Aristotle, who had so long tyrannized
over the human mind, and became himself the founder of IJiductive Philosophy. He;was the great reformer in philosophy, that
Luther was in rel,.!ion. And the encomium  which the poet bestows upon him., as a scholar and thinker, is justly merited. But
although a man of the most splendid abilities, he lacked stability
of virtue. Hiaving been made lord keeper of the seals, and high
chancellor of England, he dishonored the high trust committed to
him, and became politically degraded. Pope sums up his character in one line"The greatst, wisest, meanest of mankind."




NOTES.                          161
Note (n)-page 108..rAd brozught Ji.eucalionls watery times agfain
Deucalion was a son of Prometheus. According to mytholoagy,
in his reign the whole earth was overwhelmed in a delige.
Deucalion and his wife saved themselves in a ship, that rested
on mount Parnassus when the flood subsided. They were directed by an oracle to repair the lose of mankind, by throwing
behind them the bones of their grandmother. These were the
stones of the earth. They obeyed; and the stones which Deucalion threw became men, and those which his wife threw becamne
women. So says ancient story.
Note (o)-page 137.
Lycurgus thee, waho boewed benleath theforce.
Lyculrgus was the great Spartan lawgiver. tHe reformed the
government and the people, abolished luxury, an& substituted
iron for money. After lie had succeeded in reforming the Spartans, he retired from the country, binding therm by an oath, that
neither they nor their posterity would alter, violate or abolish the
laws he had established, before his return. Soon after, he put
himself-to death- and commanded that his ashes should be thrown
into the sea, lest they should be carried back to Sparta, and thus
afford the citizens an excuse for abandoning their oath, and violating the laws.
Note (p)-page 137.
Ads at Thermopylew he glorious fell.
The strait of Thermopylae is a narrow pass in the mountains in
Greece. The word signifies the gate of warm spri7tngs. Tile 1'ace
is celebrated for the desperate resistance which Leonidas and his
three hundred Spartans made against the PerIiani army. Every
nlan was slain except one. The Greeks erected a monuiment on
the spot to commemorate their valor, on which. vas the following
inscription:-" Stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here
ill obedience to their laws."  These laws allowed no Spartan
wrrrior to retreat —he must conquer or die.
Note (q)-page 138..nld Ciclinnatus, awful from the plough.
Cincinnatus has always been admired as a noble examplre of
disinterested patriotism. When he was elected consul, thie meassengers who brought the intelligence, found him  at the ploutgh.
lie accepted the office reluctantly; sayingp, "  lThen my fields vill
not be sown this year." The second year he refused the office,
and returned to his farm. He was afterwards chosen dictator by
the Romans for six months to terminate a war with the Volscians.
In this he was successful: and, after holding the officr sixteen
days, he resignled it, and ret'urned again to his pl)ugh.




INDEX.
SPRING.
Line.
Age  manners of the  in poet's time,............7............ 274
Amanda, address to.......................................  480
Anglers, directions to,..................................... 381
Animals, influence of Spring upon.........................   705
Bees, description of their haunts,........................... 505
Birds, description of different species,........................ 595,,   pairing of........................................... 614,,   imprisonment of, lamented...........................  699
Clouds, their use,.............................                              260
)ecluge, universal, described................................ 308
Fear, description of,..........................  85
Flowers of Spring......................                                    527
Fly-fishing, directions concerning,.........................  405
Groves, passion of the.................................... 578O
Herbs, their countless variety,.............................. 221
Hertford, Countess of, inscription to........................                  5
Insects, armies of,...............................  120
invitation to a Spring walk in the fields..................... 486
Jealousy, effects of, in youth............................... 1074
Kilda, shore of,................................ 754.Lark, morn's messenger,.................................... 587
Love, advice to a youth respecting......................... 980,,   effects of, in youth,.................................. 986,,   matchless joys of.................................... 1154
Lyttleton, Lord, address to.......................... 903
Man, lord of creation...................................... 170
Marriage, true pleasures of,...............................1115
Melody, the voice of love.................................. 611
Nature, painting of,....................................... 465
Night, description of, after a shower........................  216
Pair, married, happy state of, described...............1110
Passions described,....................................... 280
Philomel, the nightingale................................. 598
Plough, injunction to venerate......................         6. 66
Ploughing, mode of,......................................  41
Prospect, rural, desvsribed................................. 491
Rainbow described,........................................ 203,, deception  of..................................... 211




INDEX.                                        163
Seasons, annua, succession of,........................     Line 316,,     not distinguished  before the flood,................. 319
Shepherd described,.....................................  830
Shower, description of,.................................                             171
Spring, its influence on man,.............................. 864
Supreme Be ng, address to.................................  553
Swan  described........................................... 775
Trout-fishing described,............................. 376
Vilgil, the Mantuan  bard..................................   55
Walking in Spring enjoined,...........................  100, 486
Winds, their use.................................. 136
Winter, passing away,..................1.................   11
Zodiac, signs of the,....................2...................    6
SUMMER.
Alfred the Great. king  of England,........................1478
Amelia, story of,......................................1171
Anana, the pine apple,.................................... 685
Augusta, Roman name for London,................1409
Ausonia, or Italy,........................................  956
Bacon, Sir Francis,........................................1534
Bathing recommended,....................... 1256
Behemoth, or river horse,.................................. 710
Blast of tile desert.......................................                         961
Boyle, Robert,......................................            1555
Britannia, invocation to,...................1441,,      its distinguished  men,..........................1478,,      daughters of, described,.......................1.. 580
Cassius, (British, Algernon Sidney,).....................     1527
Cataract described,........................................ 600
Celadon  and  Amelia, story of,..............................1171
Chaucer, Geoffrey........................................ 1576
Cincinnatus, Lucius Quintus,............................     1491
Columbus, Christopher,.................................... 832
Comet described.......................................... 1707
Cooper, Ashley,....................................... 1550
Dambea, an African river............................                                808
Damnon and Musidora, story of............................ 1270
Day, dawn  of,...................5.......................  52
Diartmond, its formation,.................................... 142
Doddington, Mr., Address to................2...........  29
Drakle, Sir Francis, the Navigator,..........................1494
Elelphant, description of,............................   721
Evening in summer, do do




164                                   INDEX.
Friends, social, described............................. Line 1383
Gaina, Vasco de, the Portuguese Navigator................. 1001
Gaul, ancient name of.......................................                        1485
Gay, John,,the dramatic poet,...........................1422
Ghosts, vagaries of fancy,..................................1680
Grove, solemn, described,............................... 516
IIampden, the patriot,................;.................... 1513
EIaymaking described,....................... 35.2
Iheat, address to,......................................       451
htenry, Prince of Lusitania.............................                            1010
HIippolotamus, or river horse,............................. 710
Indolence; dissuasives against,.............................    67
Insects, summer, described,.....4.......1................  241
Locke, Johli, the Philosopher.............................. 1557
Love, genuine evidence of,................................1669
Man, unenlightened, his condition,..........................  1757
Meditation, haunts of,.....................................  522
Meteors, summer,...........................        1700
Milton, John, the English poet,............................ 1567
Montezun a's dominion,................................... 742
More, Sir Thomas,.......4...................  1487
liusidora and Damon...................................... 129G
Nature's volume,,.....................                                              192
Nemesis, arbiter of rewards and punishments..............11034
Newton, Sir Isaac, the astronomer,......................... 1559
Niger, an African river....................................822
Night described...........................................1683
Nile described,.......................................  805
Noon,  description of,...................................... 432
Orellana, river of the Amazons............................. 849
Oronoque, a South American river..........................   834
Philomel, the nightingale............................. 744
Philosophy, address to....................................1729
Plague described,.......................................... 1 053
Planets, reflections on their motions,....................... 1695
Plata, South American river................................ 843
Plato, the Athenian plhilosopher............................ 1541
Poetry, power of, in connection  with philosophy........... 1752
Pomona, goddess of fruit, address to....................... 663
Queensbury, Duke of..................................... 14'2
Raleigh, Sir Walter,.....................................15.11
Retiremnent: proper occasion  for,............................1396
Russell, Lord William,................................... 152l
Sennaar, vale of,....................................    750
Shakspeare, the dramatic bard.............................1565
Sharks, manner of seizing their prey.......................1622
Sheep-shearing described..................................   3




IN OEX.                                      165
Shene, ancient name of Richlnond,...................Line 1407
Shepherd and his flock described,..........................  493
Sidney, Algernon,.....................................  1527,,    Sir Philip,................................1510
Spenser, Edmund,.............................. 1572
Spirits, departed, their address to man,..................... 544
Staniey, Miss, death  lamented.............................   564
State, the present, infancy of our being....................1801
Storm  described,................................. 12836
Sun rising,..........................8...........   81,, address to,.................................... 9......   91,, parent of tile Seasons...................11.............  11,, various effects on Nature's works,......................    161, do    do.                      do.    do. d.......................  200
Gunset described,........................................ 1619
Thames, an English  river...................1...........14.15
Thunder, its residence............................... 796
and lightning, storm  of,........................ 1128
Vern on, Edward, a British admiral,.......................... 1041
Virtues described?......................................... 1604
Walking in Summer, suitable time  for,....................  1378
Walsingham, Sir Francis, an English statesman...........1493
Waterfall described.............................            590
Wool, the great British staple,...........................    423
Zodiac, signs of the,.......................................    43
Zone, torrid, described..............................                              632
AUTUMN.
Andes  Mountains.......................................~ 80 2
Argyle, D)uke of, (John Campbell)..........................   927
Atlas, feigned as propping heaven,......................... 796
Aurora borealis,...........................................1107
Autumn  described,.......................................                            27,,   gleaners in,.......................................   165
Bees, destruction  of...................................... 1170
Caledonia, ancient name of Scotland, description of........ 878
Chatham, Earl of, (William   Pitt)..........................  1046
Coblllams,  Lord, proprietor of Stowe........................1070
Comnmerce, ilnprovemlents by...........................   118
Diversions, rural, described...............................122.1
Doddington, description of hIis country seat,........,......   65
Drinking-boullt described,.................................  530
Fair, Britishl, dissuaded from  the chase,..................... 572
employments suitable for,..................... 579




[66;INDEX
Forbes, Duncan, address to,......................... Line  942
Fox-hunting described,.................... 471
Freshet, autumnal,........................................ 332
Gaul, ancient name of,................................    1075
Hampden, John, the British patriot,........................1513
Harvest, fields ready for.....3...........................   31
Hebrides, the  Wrestcrn  Isles...............................     863
Heinus  and Tempe, fields in Thessaly,......................1315
flunting, description of;............................... 401,,      pleasures after the chase,.........................  502,,      advice to fair sex  respecting,....................... 570
Lndustry, reflections in praise of,...........................   43
Jed, a Scottish river,....................................  889
Justice, kingly,.......................................... 104
Lavinia, story of,......................................    177,,    address to her by Palemon........................205
Liberality enjoined,..................................... 350
Life, a country, recommended.............................  133,,  a philosophic.........................................135
Lights, northern, description of,.........................     1107
Melancholy, influence of,..................................002
Meteors, autumnal,.....................................                              107
Mirth, drunken, described,..............................   539
Moon, mountains of the,................................                              800
Mloonlight described,.................................  1096
Mountains, Andes...............................                                     802
Nature, address to....................................                             1350
Night, its approach,........................................1136
Nutting described,........................................   617
October,..................................................  519
Olympus, MIount,........................................ 784
Onslow, Mr., address to...................................                              9
Orcas' Peak,.............................................  891
Palemon's address to Lavinia,.............................  265
Phillips, John, pastoral poet,.......................... 644
Pitt, William, Earl of Chathamj........................ 1046
Reaping, description of.................................... 155
Rhine, a river of Germany............................... 847
Riphean Rocks, supposed by the Muscovites the great stony
girdle of the earth,.................................. 790
Sea, Caspian,......................................... 789
Storm, autumnal, effects of............................... 311
Stowe, the seat of Lord Cobhal,...........................1040
Teinpe and Hermus, Thessalian fields,.....................1315
Thalnes, address to the,..................................  121
Traveller benighted, description of,........................1143
Vineyard described.......................................  681




INDEX.                                      167
Wallace, Sir WVilliam, the celebrated Scottish general,.. Line  898
Young, Edward, a distinguished British poet................ G66
WINTER.
Agis, king of Sparta,..................................... 488
Alps and Apennine Mountains,............................  39)
Aratus, deliverer of Greece,................................ 491
Aristides the Just,......................................... 4583
Erutus, Lucius Junius, the public father,................... 517
Brutus, MIarcus Junius, the Roman  conspirator,................ 594
-Camnillus, the distinguished  Roman,......................... 510
Cathay, ancient name of China,............................ 808
Cato, Marcus Portius, of Utica...................5.........  53
Chesterfield, Earl of, (Philip Dormer Stanhope)............. 604
Ciolln, an Athenian  general................................ 466
Dranma, amusemenrts of, described,.......................... 64(;
Epaininondas and Pelopidas,.............................. 476
Exile, Russian, condition of............................... 800
Fabricius, the Roman general.............................. 50
Flood, description of,.......................................                      1
Frost, description  (f,...................................... 713
Genius of approaching storm...............................   67
Grisons, residence of,.......................................I1II
llanminond, James,......................................... 5: 5
Hlomler, celebrated Grecian  poet,...........................  533
Lap!and, description of the people,......................... 843
Leonidas, the devoted Spartan chief,......................  457
Leviathan, monster of the deep,............................1014
Life, vanities of........................................... 009
Life, comparison of the seasons,.......................... 1030,,  pleasures of,.........................................1304
Nature, address to,....................................... o,                   0
Numla, sccond king of Rome,.............................. 543
Oby, a river of Siberia,................................ 931;
Peter the Great, czar of Muscovy,.......................    953
hilopcemen, a renowned Grecian general,.................. 494
Plhcion,                do.           do............................ 481
Polar regions, description of,............................... 79
Pope, Alexander, the distinguished  English  poet,........... 550
Prison, miseries of....................................... 362
Pegulus, a celebrated Roman  commander............3.....                       513
Rhine, a German river..........78......................... 765
Sea, Baltic................................................ 169




168                               IND E 
Sea, Euxine, hearing the Baltic's roar,.................Line 976
Seasons, change of,...0.................... i. 1
Servius, Publius, sixth Roman king......................  504
Shepherd, duty of, in winter,.............................' 65
Skating. description of,.............................. 769
Snow, man perishing in, described,.................... 285
Socrates, the philosopher of Athens....................... 439
Solon, legislator of              do............................   446
Sparta, degenerate state of................................. 489
Tempest, its approach,........:...................7........  73
Thaw described...........................................  990
Theban- pair, (Epaminondas and Pelopidas,)............ 476
Themistocles, the celebrated Athenian general,........... 464'rhermopyla!, fall of Leonidas at Straits of................. 456
Tully, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great Roman orator...... 521
Virgil, Publius Maro, the Mantuan bard,................... 532
Vi, tue, the friend to man,..,.............................. 104C
Wilmington, Earl of, Sir Spencer Compton, address to,......  18
Winter, in frigid zone, described,..........7................ 795,,    rural diversions in season of,.......................  760,,   ~ do.        do.           do..................   789
Zodiac, some of its signs enumerated,......................  4
Zone, frigid, described.....o.......................... 796