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 mofs, that clothes the hawthorn-
Deceive no ftudent. Wisdom there, and truth,
Not fhy, as in the world, and to be won By flow folicitation, feize at once
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.
What prodigies can power divine perform More grand than it produces year by year, And all in fight of inattentive man? Familiar with the 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 less An agency divine, to make him know
His moment when to fink and when to rise,
Age after age, than to arreft his courfe?
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 fleeps; and the icy touch Of unprolific winter has impreffed
A cold ftagnation on the inteftine tide.
But let the months go round, a few short months, And all shall be restored. These 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 boaft 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 In ftreaming gold; fyringa, ivory pure; The fcentless and the fcented rofe; this red, And of an humbler growth, the * other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom Of neighbouring cypress, 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 unrefolved
Which hue the most approved, the chose them all;
Copions of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compenfating her fickly looks
With never-cloying odours, early and late; Hypericum all bloom, fo thick a swarm
Of flowers, like flies clothing her flender rods, That scarce a leaf appears; mezerion too, Though leaflefs, well attired, and thick befet With blushing wreaths, investing every spray; Althea with the purple eye: the broom, Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloyed, Her bloffoms; and luxuriant above all
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, The deep dark green of whofe unvarnished leaf Makes more confpicuous, and illumines more The bright profufion of her scattered ftars.- 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 tranfition, that there lives and works A foul in all things, and that foul is God. The beauties of the wilderness are his, That makes 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 pafs, And blunts his pointed fury; in its case, Ruffet and rude, folds up the tender germ, Uninjured, with inimitable art;
And, ere one flowery season fades and dies, Defigns the blooming wonders of the next.
Some fay that in the origin of things, When all creation started into birth, The infant elements received a law,
From which they fwerve not fince. 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 fave a God The incumbrance of his own concerns, and spare The great artificer of all that moves The ftrefs of a continual act, the pain Of unremitted vigilance and care,
As too laborious and fevere a task. So man, the moth, is not afraid, it feems, To span 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 impelled To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, And under preffure of fome conscious caufe? The Lord of all, himself through all diffused, Suftains, 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,
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