THE AUTUMN DAY. Now the day, O'er heaven and earth diffused, grows warm, and high Infinite splendour! wide investing all. How still the breeze! save what the filmy threads Of dew evaporate brushes from the plain. How clear the cloudless sky! how deeply tinged With a peculiar blue! the ethereal arch How swelled immense! amid whose azure throned, Laughs with the loud sincerity of mirth, Shook to the wind their cares. The toil-strung youth, The cudgel rattles, and the wrestler twines. Age too shines out; and, garrulous, recounts The feats of youth. Thus they rejoice; nor think Begins again the never-ceasing round. THOMSON. ITH slaughtering guns the unwearied fowler roves, When frosts have whitened all the naked groves, Where doves in flocks the leafless trees o'ershade, And lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade. He lifts the tube, and levels with his eye; Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky: Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamorous lapwings feel the leaden death: Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare, They fall, and leave their little lives in air. POPE. AFTER A TEMPEST. HE day had been a day of wind and storm ;— My eye upon a broad and beauteous scene, Where the vast plain lay girt by mountains vast, And hills o'er hills lifted their heads of green, With pleasant vales scooped out and villages between. The rain-drops glistened on the trees around, Whose shadows on the tall grass were not stirred, Save when a shower of diamonds to the ground Was shaken by the flight of startled bird; For birds were warbling round, and bees were heard About the flowers; the cheerful rivulet sung And gossipped, as he hastened ocean-ward; To the gray oak the squirrel, chiding, clung, And chirping from the ground the grasshopper upsprung. And from beneath the leaves that kept them dry And darted up and down the butterfly, That seemed a living blossom of the air. The flocks came scattering from the thicket, where The violent rain had pent them, in the way Strolled groups of damsels frolicsome and fair, The farmer swung the scythe or turned the hay, And 'twixt the heavy swaths his children were at play. It was a scene of peace-and, like a spell, And glassy river and white waterfall, And happy living things that trod the bright And beauteous scene; while, far beyond them all, On many a lovely valley, out of sight, Was poured from the blue heavens the same soft golden light. I looked, and thought the quiet of the scene The noise of war shall cease from sea to sea, No more shall beg their lives on bended knee, Too long at clash of arms amid her bowers, And pools of blood, the earth has stood aghast, O'er the wide landscape from the embracing sky, BRYANT. A SUMMER'S DAY. T is a sultry day; the sun has drunk And interrupted murmur of the bee, Settling on the sick flowers, and then again O come and breathe upon the fainting earth |