As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race
Of the undeviating and punctual sun,

How would the world admire! But speaks it less
An agency divine, to make him know

His moment when to sink and when to rise
Age after age, than to arrest his course?
All we behold is miracle, but seen
So duly, all is miracle in vain.

Where now the vital energy that moved,

While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph
Through the imperceptible meandering veins
Of leaf and flower? It sleeps; and the icy touch
Of unprolific winter has impressed

A cold stagnation on the intestine tide.

But let the months go round, a few short months,
And all shall be restored. These naked shoots,
Barren as lances, among which the wind

Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes,

Shall put their graceful foliage on again,

And more aspiring and with ampler spread

Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost.
Then, each in its peculiar honours clad,

Shall publish even to the distant eye
Its family and tribe. Laburnum rich
In streaming gold; syringa ivory 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 neighbouring cypress or more sable yew
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf
That the wind severs from the broken wave.
The lilac various in array, now white,

Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if

Studious of ornament, yet unresolved

Which hue she most approved, she chose them all.
Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compensating their sickly looks
With never-cloying odours, early and late.
Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm
Of flowers like flies clothing her slender rods
That scarce a leaf appears. Mezerion too,
Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset
With blushing wreaths investing every spray.
Althea with the purple eye; the broom,
Yellow and bright as bullion unalloyed
Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whose unvarnished leaf
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more
The bright profusion of her scattered stars.
These have been, and these shall be in their day;

And all this uniform uncoloured 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 heavenly truth; evincing as she makes
The grand transition, that there lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.
The beauties of the wilderness are his,
That make so gay the solitary place

Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms
That cultivation glories in, are his.

He sets the bright procession 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
Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ
Uninjured, with inimitable art,

And ere one flowery season fades and dies
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.
Some say that in the origin of things,
When all creation started into birth,
The infant elements received a law

From which they swerve not since. That under force
Of that controlling ordinance they move,

And need not his immediate hand, who first
Prescribed their course to regulate it now.

Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God

The encumbrance of his own concerns, and spare
The great Artificer of all that moves
The stress of a continual act, the pain
Of unremitted vigilance and care,
As too laborious and severe a task.
So man the moth, is not afraid it seems
To span Omnipotence, and measure might
That knows no measure, by the scanty rule
And standard of his own, that is to-day,
And is not ere to-morrow's sun go down.
But how should matter occupy a charge
Dull as it is, and satisfy a law

So vast in its demands, unless impelled
To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,
And under pressure of some conscious cause?
The Lord of all, himself through all diffused,
Sustains and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect

Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire
By which the mighty process is maintained,
Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight
Slow-circling ages are as transient days;
Whose work is without labour, whose designs
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts,

And whose beneficence no charge exhausts.
Him blind antiquity profaned, not served,
With self-taught rites and under various names,
Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan,
And Flora and Vertumnus; peopling earth
With tutelary goddesses and gods

That were not, and commending as they would
To each some province, garden, field, or grove.
But all are under One. One spirit-His

Who bore the platted thorns with bleeding brows,
Rules universal nature. Not a flower

But shows some touch in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivalled pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odours and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes
In grains as countless as the sea-side sands,
The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth.
Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds
Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad majestic oak
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts with remembrance of a present God.
His presence who made all so fair, perceived,
Makes all still fairer. As with him no scene
Is dreary, so with him all seasons please.
Though winter had been none had man been true,
And earth be punished for its tenant's sake,
Yet not in vengeance; as this smiling sky
So soon succeeding such an angry night,

And these dissolving snows, and this clear stream
Recovering fast its liquid music, prove.

Who then that has a mind well strung and tuned
To contemplation, and within his reach
A scene so friendly to his favourite task,
Would waste attention at the chequered board,
His host of wooden warriors to and fro
Marching and counter-marching, with an eye
As fixed as marble, with a forehead ridged
And furrowed into storms, and with a hand
Trembling as if eternity were hung
In balance on his conduct of a pin?
Nor envies he aught more their idle sport
Who pant with application misapplied
To trivial toys, and pushing ivory balls
Across the velvet level, feel a joy
Akin to rapture, when the bauble finds
Its destined goal of difficult access.

Nor deems he wiser him, who gives his noon
To Miss, the mercer's plague, from shop to shop
Wandering, and littering with unfolded silks
The polished counter, and approving none,

Or promising with smiles to call again.
Nor him, who by his vanity seduced

And soothed into a dream that he discerns
The difference of a Guido from a daub,
Frequents the crowded auction. Stationed there
As duly as the Langford of the show,
With glass at eye, and catalogue in hand,
And tongue accomplished in the fulsome cant
And pedantry that coxcombs learn with ease,
Oft as the price-deciding hammer falls
He notes it in his book, then raps his box,
Swears 'tis a bargain, rails at his hard fate
That he has let it pass, but never bids.

Here unmolested, through whatever sign
The sun proceeds, I wander. Neither mist
Nor freezing sky, nor sultry, checking me,
Nor stranger intermeddling with my joy.
Even in the spring and play-time of the year
That calls the unwonted villager abroad
With all her little ones, a sportive train,
To gather king-cups in the yellow mead,
And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick
A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook,
These shades are all my own. The timorous hare,
Grown so familiar with her frequent guest,
Scarce shuns me; and the stock-dove unalarmed
Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends
His long love-ditty for my near approach.
Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm
That age or injury has hollowed deep,
Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves
He has outslept the winter, ventures forth
To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun,
The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play.
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,

Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks his brush
And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud,
With all the prettiness of feigned alarm,

And anger insignificantly fierce.

The heart is hard in nature, and unfit

For human fellowship, as being void
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike

To love and friendship both, that is not pleased
With sight of animals enjoying life,

Nor feels their happiness augment his own.

The bounding fawn that darts across the glade,

When none pursues, through mere delight of heart,

And spirits buoyant with excess of glee;

The horse, as wanton and almost as fleet,

That skims the spacious meadow at full speed,

Then stops and snorts, and throwing high his heels
Starts to the voluntary race again;

The very kine that gambol at high noon,
The total herd receiving first from one
That leads the dance, a summons to be gay,
Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth
Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent
To give such act and utterance as they may
To ecstasy too big to be suppressed ;-
These, and a thousand images of bliss,
With which kind nature graces every scene
Where cruel man defeats not her design
Impart to the benevolent, who wish
All that are capable of pleasure pleased,
A far superior happiness to theirs,
The comfort of a reasonable joy.

Man scarce had risen, obedient to His call Who formed him, from the dust his future grave When he was crowned as never king was since. God set the diadem upon his head,

And angel choirs attended. Wondering stood
The new-made monarch, while before him passed
All happy and all perfect in their kind,

The creatures, summoned from their various haunts
To see their sovereign, and confess his sway.
Vast was his empire, absolute his power,

Or bounded only by a law whose force
'Twas his sublimest privilege to feel

And own, the law of universal love.

He ruled with meekness, they obeyed with joy.
No cruel purpose lurked within his heart,

And no distrust of his intent in theirs.

So Eden was a scene of harmless sport,

Where kindness on his part who ruled the whole
Begat a tranquil confidence in all,

And fear as yet was not, nor cause for fear.
But sin marred all; and the revolt of man,
That source of evils not exhausted yet,

Was punished with revolt of his from him.
Garden of God, how terrible the change

Thy groves and lawns then witnessed! every heart,
Each animal of every name, conceived

A jealousy and an instinctive fear,

And conscious of some danger, either fled
Precipitate the loathed abode of man,
Or growled defiance in such angry sort,

As taught him too to tremble in his turn.
Thus harmony and family accord

Were driven from paradise; and in that hour
The seeds of cruelty that since have swelled
To such gigantic and enormous growth,
Were sown in human nature's fruitful soil.
Hence date the persecution and the pain
That man inflicts on all inferior kinds,