Does but encumber whom it seems t' enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned 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 enthralled. Some to the fascination of a name
Surrender judgment, hoodwinked. Some the style 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 choice, 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 hawthorn root,
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. What prodigies can power divine perform 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 naught 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?
And 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 th' icy touch Of unprolific winter has impressed
A cold stagnation on th' 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, 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 scentless and the scented rose; this red And of an humbler growth, the other* 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; mezereon 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 unalloyed, Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, The deep dark green of whose unvarnished leaf Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more, The bright profusions of her scattered starc.- 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 transition, that there lives and works A soul in all things, and that soul is God. The beauties of the wilderness are his, That makes so gay the solitary place,
Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms, That cultivation glories in, are his.
He sets the bright procession on its And marshals all the order of the year;
He marks the bounds, which winter may not pass. And blunts his pointed fury; in its case, Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ, Uninjured with inimitable art;
And, ere one flowery season fades and dies, Designs the blooming wonders of the next. Some say that in the origin of things, When all creation started into birth, The infant elements received a law, From which they swerved not since.
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 save a God Th' encumbrance of his own concerns, and spare The great artificer of all that moves The stress of a continual act, the pain Of unremitted vigilance and care, As too laborious and severe a task. Se man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems, To span omnipotence, and measure might, That knows no measure, by the scanty rule And standard of his own, that is to-day, And is not ere to-morrow's sun go down. But how should matter occupy a charge, Dull as it is, and satisfy a law
So vast in its demands, unless impelled To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, And under pressure of some conscious caus:.? The Lord of all, himself through all diffused, Sustains, and is the life of all that lives. /Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God. He feeds the sacred fire By which the mighty process is maintained; Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight Slow circling ages are as transient days; Whose work is without labour; whose designs No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts; And whose beneficence no change exhausts. Him blind antiquity profaned, not served, With self-taught rites, and under various names, Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan,
And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling earth With tutelary goddesses and gods,
That were not; and commending as they would To each some province, garden, field, or grove. But all are under one. One spirit-His,
Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows,— Rules universal nature. Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak. or stain, Of his unrivalled pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues, And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes, In grains as countless as the seaside sands, The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth. Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower, Or what he views of beautiful or grand In nature, from the broad majestic oak To the green blade that twinkles in the sun, Prompts with remembrance of a present God. His presence, who made all so fair, perceived, Makes all still fairer. As with him no scene Is dreary, so with him all seasons please. Though winter had been none, had man been true, And earth be punished for its tenant's sake, Yet not in vengeance; as this smiling sky, So soon succeeding such an angry night, And these dissolving snows, and this clear stream Recovering fast its liquid music, prove.
Who then, that has a mind well strung and tuned To contemplation, and within his reach. A scene so friendly to his favourite task, Would waste attention at the checkered board, His host of wooden warriors to and fro Marching and counter-marching, with an eye As fixed as marble, with a forehead ridged And furrowed into storms, and with a hand Trembling, as if eternity were hung In balance on his conduct of a pin? Nor envies he ought more their idle sport, Who pant with application misapplied To trivial toys, and pushing ivory balls Across a velvet level, feel a joy
Akin to rapture, when the bauble finds Its destined goal, of difficult access.
Nor deems he wiser him, who gives his noon To Miss, the mercer's plague, from shop to shop Wandering, and, littering with unfolded silks
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