Painted gardens-grots-and groves,
Intermingling shade and light!
Lengthen'd vistas, green alcoves,
Join to give the eye delight.
Hamlets-villages, and spires
Scatter'd on the landscape lie,
Till the distant view retires,
Closing in an azure sky.
FAIR Morn ascends; soft Zephyr's wing
O'er hill and vale renews the Spring;
Where sown profusely, herb and flower
Of balmy smell, of healing power,
Their souls in fragrant dews exhale,
And breathe fresh life in every gale.
Here spreads a green expanse of plains,
Where sweetly pensive Silence reigns;
And there, at utmost stretch of eye,
A mountain fades into the sky;
While winding round, diffused and deep,
A river rolls with sounding sweep.
Of human art no traces near,
I seem alone with Nature here!
Here are thy walks, O saered Health!
The monarch's bliss, the beggar's wealth,
The seasoning of all good below!
The sovereign friend, in joy or woe!
O thou! most courted, most despised,
And but in absence duly prized!
Power of the soft and rosy face,
The vivid pulse, the vermeil grace;
The spirits when they gayest shine,
Youth, beauty, pleasure, all are thine!
O sum of life! whose heavenly ray
Lights up and cheers our various day,
The turbulence of hopes and fears,
The storm of fate, the cloud of years,
Till Nature, with thy parting light,
= Reposes late in Death's calm night:
Fled from the trophied roofs of state,
Abodes of splendid pain and hate;
Fled from the couch, where in sweet sleep
Hot Riot would his anguish steep,
But tosses through the midnight shade,
Of death, of life alike afraid;
For ever fled to shady cell,
Where Temperance, where the Muses dwell;
Thou oft art seen, at early dawn,
Slow-pacing o'er the breezy lawn;
Or on the brow of mountain high
In silence feasting ear and eye
With song and prospect, which abound
From birds and woods and waters round.
But when the Sun, with noontide ray,
Flames forth intolerable day;
While Heat sits fervent on the plain,
With Thirst and Languor in his train,
All Nature sickening in the blaze,
Thou, in the wild and woody maze
That clouds the vale with umbrage deep,
Impendent from the neighbouring steep,
Wilt find betimes a calm retreat,
Where breathing Coolness has her seat.
There plunged amid the shadows brown
Imagination lays him down,
Attentive, in his airy mood,
To every murmur of the wood:
The bee in yonder flowery nook,
The chidings of the headlong brook,
The green leaf shivering in the gale,
The warbling hill, the lowing vale,
The distant woodman's echoing stroke,
The thunder of the falling oak:
From thought to thought in vision led,
He holds high converse with the dead,
Sages or poets. See! they rise,
And shadowy skim before his eyes.
Hark! Orpheus strikes the lyre again,
That soften'd savages to men:
Lo, Socrates! the sent of Heaven,
To whom its moral will was given:
Fathers and friends of humankind,
They form'd the nations or refined;
With all that mends the head and heart,
Enlightening truth, adorning art.
While thus I mused beneath the shade,
At once the sounding breeze was laid,
And Nature, by the unknown law,
Shook deep with reverential awe.
Dumb silence grew upon the hour,
A browner night involved the bower;
When, issuing from the inmost wood,
Appear'd fair Freedom's genius good.
O Freedom! sovereign boon of Heaven,
Great charter with our being given,
For which the patriot and the sage
Have plann'd, have bled, through every age!
High privilege of human race,
Beyond a mortal monarch's grace,
Who could not give, nor can reclaim,
What but from God immediate came!
APOSTROPHE TO SPRING.
ALAS, delicious Spring! God sends thee down
To breathe upon his cold and perish'd works
Beauteous revival; earth should welcome thee,
Thee and the west wind, thy smooth paramour,
With the soft laughter of her flowery meads,
Her joys, her melodies. The prancing stag
Flutters the shivering fern, the steed shakes out
His mane, the dewy herbage silver-webb'd
With frank step trampling; the wild goat looks
down
From his empurpling bed of heath, where break
The waters deep and blue with crystal gleams
Of their quick-leaping people: the fresh lark
Is in the morning sky, the nightingale
Tunes evensong to the dropping waterfall.
Creation lives with loveliness, all melts
And trembles into one mild harmony.
Man, only harsh and inharmonious man,
Strews for thy delicate feet the battle field,
Makes all thy smooth and flowing airs to jar
With his hoarse trumpetings, scares thy sweet light
With gleams of violent and angry brass.
REFLECTIONS ON HAVING LEFT A
PLACE OF RETIREMENT.
Low was our pretty cot: our tallest rose
Peep'd at the chamber-window.
At silent noon and eve and early morn
The sea's faint murmur. In the open air
Our myrtles blossom'd; and across the porch
Thick jasmine twined: the little landscape round
Was green and woody, and refresh'd the eye.
It was a spot which you might aptly call
The Valley of Seclusion! Once I saw
(Hallowing his Sabbath day by quietness)
A wealthy son of commerce saunter by,
Bristowa's citizen: methought it calm'd
His thirst of idle gold, and made him muse
With wiser feelings: for he paused, and look'd
With a pleased sadness, and gazed all around,
Then eyed our cottage, and gazed round again
And sigh'd, and said, it was a blessed place.
And we were blessed. Oft with patient ear
Long-listening to the viewless skylark's note
(Viewless, or haply for a moment seen
Gleaming on sunny wing) in whisper'd tones
I've said to my beloved,' Such, sweet girl!
The inobtrusive song of happiness,
Unearthly minstrelsy! then only heard
When the soul seeks to hear; when all is hush'd,
And the heart listens !'
But the time when first From that low dell, steep up the stony mount I climb'd with perilous toil and reach'd the top, Oh! what a goodly scene! Here the bleak mount,
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