And all in fight of inattentive man?
Familiar with th' effect we flight the cause,
And, in the conftancy of nature's course,
The regular return of genial months,
And renovation of a faded world,
See nought to wonder at. Should God again,
As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race
Of the undeviating and punctual fun,
How would the world admire! but speaks it lefs
An agency divine, to make him know
His moment when to fink and when to rife,
Age after age, than to arreft his course ?
All we behold is miracle, but feen
So duly, all is miracle in vain.
Where now the vital energy that mov'd,
While fummer was, the pure and fubtile lymph
Though th' imperceptible meandering veins
Of leaf and flow'r? It fleeps; and th' icy touch
Of unprolific winter has imprefs'd
A cold stagnation on th' inteftine tide.
But let the months go round, a few short months,
And all fhall be reftor'd. The naked fhoots,
Barren as lances, among which the wind
Makes wintry mufic, fighing as it goes,
Shall put their graceful foliage on again,
And more afpiring, and with ampler spread,
Shall boast new charms, and more than they have
Then, each in its peculiar honours clad,
Shall publish, even to the distant eye,
Its family and tribe. Laburnum rich
Its streaming gold; fyringa iv'ry pure;
The scented and the scentless rose, this red
And of an humbler growth, the * other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighb'ring cyprefs, or more fable yew,
Her filver globes, light as the foamy surf
That the wind fevers from the broken wave;
The lilac, various in array, now white,
Now fanguine, and her beauteous head now set
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if
Studious of ornament, yet unrefolv'd
Which hue the most approv'd, she chofe them all.
Copious of flow'rs the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compensating her fickly looks
With never-cloying odours, early and late ;
Hypericum all bloom, fo thick a swarm
Of flow'rs, like flies cloathing her flender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears; mezerion too,
Though leaflefs, well attir'd, and thick befet
With blushing wreaths, investing ev'ry spray;
Althea with the purple eye; the broom,
Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd,
Her bloffoms; and luxuriant above all
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf
Makes more confpicuous, and illumines more
The bright profufion of her scatter'd stars.—
These have been, and these shall be in their day,
And all this uniform, uncolour'd scene,
Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load,
And flush into variety again.
From dearth to plenty, and from death to life,
Is nature's progress when she lectures man
In heav'nly truth; evincing, as fhe makes
The grand transition, that there lives and works
A foul in all things, and that foul is God.
The beauties of the wilderness are his,
That make fo gay the folitary place
Where no eye fees them. And the fairer forms
That cultivation glories in, are his.
He fets the bright proceffion on its way,
And marshals all the order of the year :
He marks the bounds which winter may not pass,
And blunts his pointed fury; in its case,
Ruffet and rude, folds up the tender germ
Uninjur'd, with inimitable art,
And ere one flow'ry feason fades and dies,
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.
Some fay that, in the origin of things
When all creation started into birth,
The infant elements receiv'd a law
From which they fwerve not fince. That under force
Of that controuling ordinance they move,
And need not his immediate hand, who first
Prefcrib'd their course, to regulate it now.
Thus dream they, and contrive to fave a God
Th' incumbrance of his own concerns, and spare
The great Artificer of all that moves
The stress of a continual act, the pain
Of unremitting vigilance and care,
As too laborious and fevere a task.
So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems,
To fpan Omnipotence, and measure might
That knows no measure, by the scanty rule
And ftandard of his own, that is to day,
And is not ere to-morrow's fun go down.
But how should matter occupy a charge
. Dull as it is, and fatisfy a law
So vaft in its demands, unless impell'd
To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,
And under preffure of fome conscious caufe?
The Lord of all, himself through all diffus'd,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect
Whofe caufe is God. He feeds the fecret fire
By which the mighty process is maintain❜d,
Who fleeps not, is not weary; in whose fight
Slow-circling ages are as tranfient days;
Whose work is without labour, whofe defigns
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts,
And whose beneficence no charge exhaufts.
Him blind antiquity profan'd, not ferv'd,
With felf-taught rites, and under various names,
Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan,
And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling earth
With tutelary goddeffes and gods
That were not, and commending as they would
To each fome province, garden, field or grove.
But all are under one. One fpirit-His
Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows, Rules univerfal nature. Not a flow'r
But fhews fome touch in freckle, ftreak or ftain,
Of his unrivall❜d pencil. He infpires
Their balmy odours and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes
In grains as countless as the fea-fide fands,
The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth.
Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds
Of flavour or of fcent in fruit or flow'r,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand
In Nature, from the broad majestic oak.
To the green blade that twinkles in the fun,
Prompts with remembrance of a prefent God.
His presence, who made all fo fair, perceiv'd,
Makes all still fairer. As with him no scene
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