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Imbrown; a crowded umbrage dusk and dun,
Of ev'ry hue, from wan declining green
To sooty dark. These now the lonesome
muse,

Low whisp'ring, lead into their leaf-strown walks,

And give the season in its latest view.

Meantime, light shadowing all, a sober calm

Fleeces unbounded ether: whose least wave
Stands tremulous, uncertain where to turn
The gentle current: while illumined wide,
The dewy-skirted clouds imbibe the sun,
And through their lucid veil his soften'd
force

Shed o'er the peaceful world. Then is the time,

For those whom virtue and whom nature charm,

To steal themselves from the degenerate crowd,

And soar above this little scene of things:
To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their

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O let not, aim'd from some inhuman eye,
The gun the music of the coming year
Destroy; and harmless, unsuspecting harm,
Lay the weak tribes a miserable prey
In mingled murder, flutt'ring on the ground!
The pale descending year, yet pleasing
still,

A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf
Incessant rustles from the mournful grove;
Oft startling such as studious walk below,
And slowly circles through the waving air.
But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs
Sob, o'er the sky the leafy deluge streams;
Till choked, and matted with the dreary
shower,

The forest walks, at ev'ry rising gale,
Roll wide the wither'd waste, and whistle
bleak.

Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields;
And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery

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His annual visit. Half afraid, he first Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights

On the warm hearth; then hopping o'er the floor,

Eyes all the smiling family askance,

And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is :

Till more familiar grown, the table crumbs Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,

Though timorous of heart, and hard beset

By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs,

And more unpitying men, the garden seeks, Urged on by fearless want. The bleating

kine

Eye the bleak heaven, and next, the glist'ning

earth,

With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dis

persed,

Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow. *

As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce

All winter drives along the darken'd air,
In his own loose revolving fields the swain
Disaster'd stands; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow, and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;
Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray,
Impatient flouncing through the drifted
heaps,

Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home

Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth

In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul !

What black despair, what horror, fills his heart!

When for the dusky spot which fancy feign'd,

His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and bless'd abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge
Smoothed up with snow; and what is land

unknown,

What water of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom
boils.

These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks

Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mix'd with the tender anguish nature shoots Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,His wife, his children, and his friends, un

seen.

In vain for him the officious wife prepares
The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm:
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife nor children more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every

nerve

The deadly winter seizes, shuts up sense,
And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows a stiffen'd corse,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching on the northern
blast.

James Thomson.-Born 1700, Died 1748.

874.-A HYMN.

These, as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God. The rolling year

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Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,

Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,
Yet so delightful mix'd, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combined;
Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole;
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
But wandering oft, with brute unconscious
gaze,

Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand,

That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ; Works in the secret deep; shoots, steaming, thence

The fair profusion that o'erspreads the Spring:

Flings from the Sun direct the flaming day; Feeds every creature; hurls the tempests forth;

And, as on Earth this grateful change revolves,

With transport touches all the springs of life.
Nature, attend! join every living soul,
Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,
In adoration join; and, ardent, raise
One general song! To him, ye vocal gales,
Breathe soft, whose Spirit in your freshness
breathes :

Oh, talk of him in solitary glooms;
Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving
pine

Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.
And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar,
Who shake th' astonish'd world, lift high to
Heaven

Th' impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.

His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;

And let me catch it as I muse along.

Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound;
Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
A secret world of wonders in thyself,
Sound his stupendous praise; whose greater
voice

Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall. Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,

In mingled clouds to him; whose Sun exalts, Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil

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As home he goes beneath the joyous Moon. Ye that keep watch in Heaven, as Earth asleep

Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams,
Ye constellations, while your angels strike,
Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.
Great source of day! best image here below
Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
From world to world, the vital ocean round,
On Nature write with every beam his praise.
The thunder rolls; be 'hush'd the prostrate
world;

While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.

Bleat out afresh, ye hills: ye mossy rocks, Retain the sound: the broad responsive low, Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns;

And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come. Ye woodlands all, awake: a boundless song Burst from the groves! and when the restless day,

Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep, Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomela, charm The listening shades, and teach the night his praise.

Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles, At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all,

Crown the great hymn! in swarming cities vast,

Assembled men, to the deep organ join
The long-resounding voice, oft breaking

clear,

At solemn pauses, through the swelling base;
And, as each mingling flame increases each,
In one united ardour rise to Heaven.
Or if you rather chuse the rural shade,
And find a fane in every secret grove;
There let the shepherd's flute, the virgin's

lay,

The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre, Still sing the God of Seasons, as they roll. For me, when I forget the darling theme, Whether the blossom blows, the Summer

ray

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O, who can speak the vigorous joy of health?

Unclogg'd the body, unobscured the mind: The morning rises gay, with pleasing stealth,

The temperate evening falls serene and

kind.

In health the wiser brutes true gladness find.

See how the younglings frisk along the meads,

As May comes on, and wakes the balmy wind;

Rampant with life, their joy all joy exceeds:

Yet what but high-strung health this dancing pleasaunce breeds?

James Thomson.-Born 1700, Died 1748.

876.-ODE.

O Nightingale, best poet of the grove, That plaintive strain can ne'er belong to thee,

Blest in the full possession of thy love :

O lend that strain, sweet nightingale, to me!

'Tis mine, alas! to mourn my wretched fate: I love a maid who all my bosom charms, Yet lose my days without this lovely mate; Inhuman Fortune keeps her from my arms.

You, happy birds! by nature's simple laws Lead your soft lives, sustain'd by Nature's fare;

You dwell wherever roving fancy draws,

And love and song is all your pleasing care:

But we, vain slaves of interest and of pride, Dare not be blest lest envious tongues should blame :

And hence, in vain I languish for my bride; O mourn with me, sweet bird, my hapless flame.

James Thomson.-Born 1700, Died 1748.

877.-HYMN ON SOLITUDE. Hail, mildly pleasing Solitude, Companion of the wise and good, But, from whose holy, piercing eye, The herd of fools and villains fly.

Oh how I love with thee to walk, And listen to thy whisper'd talk, Which innocence and truth imparts, And melts the most obdurate hearts.

A thousand shapes you wear with ease, And still in every shape you please. Now wrapt in some mysterious dream, A lone philosopher you seem; Now quick from hill to vale you fly, And now you sweep the vaulted sky; A shepherd next, you haunt the plain, And warble forth your oaten strain. A lover now, with all the grace Of that sweet passion in your face; Then, calm'd to friendship, you assume The gentle-looking Hartford's bloom, As, with her Musidora, she (Her Musidora fond of thee) Amid the long withdrawing vale, Awakes the rivall'd nightingale.

Thine is the balmy breath of morn, Just as the dew-bent rose is born; And while meridian fervours beat, Thine is the woodland dumb retreat; But chief, when evening scenes decay, And the faint landscape swims away, Thine is the doubtful soft decline, And that best hour of musing thine.

Descending angels bless thy train, The virtues of the sage, and swain; Plain Innocence, in white array'd, Before thee lifts her fearless head: Religion's beams around thee shine, And cheer thy glooms with light divine: About thee sports sweet Liberty; And rapt Urania sings to thee.

Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell!
And in thy deep recesses dwell:
Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill,
When Meditation has her fill,

I just may cast my careless eyes
Where London's spiry turrets rise,
Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain,
Then shield me in the woods again.

James Thomson.-Born 1700, Died 1748.

878. THE HAPPY MAN.

He's not the Happy Man to whom is given
A plenteous fortune by indulgent Heaven;
Whose gilded roofs on shining columns rise,
And painted walls enchant the gazer's eyes;
Whose table flows with hospitable cheer,
And all the various bounty of the year;
Whose valleys smile, whose gardens breathe
the spring,

Whose carved mountains bleat, and forests sing;

For whom the cooling shade in Summer twines,

While his full cellars give their generous wines ;

From whose wide fields unbounded Autumn pours

A golden tide into his swelling stores;

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