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Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,
That in a few short moments I retrace
(As in a map the voyager his course)

The windings of my way through many years.
Short as in retrospect the journey seems,

It seem'd not always short; the rugged path,
And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn,
Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length.
Yet feeling present evils, while the past
Faintly impress the mind, or not at all,
How readily we wish time spent revoked,
That we might try the ground again, where once
(Through inexperience, as we now perceive)
We miss'd that happiness we might have found!
Some friend is gone, perhaps his son's best friend.
A father, whose authority, in show

When most severe, and mustering all its force,
Was but the graver countenance of love;
Whose favour, like the clouds of spring, might low
And utter now and then an awful voice,
But had a blessing in its darkest frown,
Threatening at once and nourishing the plant.
We loved, but not enough, the gentle hand
That rear'd us. At a thoughtless age, allured
By every gilded folly, we renounced

His sheltering side, and wilfully forewent
That converse which we now in vain regret.
How gladly would the man recall to life
The boy's neglected sire! a mother too,
That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still,
Might he demand them at the gates of death.
Sorrow has, since they went, subdued and tamed
The playful humour; he could now endure,
(Himself grown sober in the vale of tears)

And feel a parent's presence no restraint.
But not to understand a treasure's worth,
Till time has stolen away the slighted good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,

And makes the World the wilderness it is.
The few that pray at all pray oft amiss,

And, seeking grace to improve the prize they hold,
Would urge a wiser suit than asking more.

The night was winter in his roughest mood;
The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon
Upon the southern side of the slant hills,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast,
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,

And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue
Without a cloud, and white without a speck
The dazzling splendour of the scene below.
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale;

And through the trees I view the embattled tower
Whence all the music. I again perceive
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as I tread

The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
The roof, though moveable through all its length
As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed,
And, intercepting in their silent fall

The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.
The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd;
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the pendent drops of ice
That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below.

Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the h May give a useful lesson to the head,

And Learning wiser grow without his books.
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connexion. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,

The mere materials with which Wisdom builds,
Till smooth'd and squared, and fitted to its place
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells,
By which the magic art of shrewder wits
Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall'd.
Some to the fascination of a name

Surrender judgment, hoodwink'd. Some the sty
Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds
Of error leads them, by a tune entranced.
While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear
The insupportable fatigue of thought,

And swallowing, therefore, without pause or choi
The total grist unsifted, husks and all.
But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course
Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,
And sheep-walks, populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time
Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawtho
Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and Truth,
Not shy, as in the world, and to be won

By slow solicitation, seize at once

The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.

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What prodigies can power divine performie Native More grand than it produces year by year,

And all in sight of inattentive man?
Familiar with the effect, we slight the cause,
And, in the constancy of Nature's course,
The regular return of genial months,
And renovation of a faded world,
See nought to wonder at. Should God again,
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 impress'd

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,

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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 other1 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 her 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 unalloy'd,
Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more
The bright profusion 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

1 The guelder-rose.

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