There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitch’d the ear is
With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave:
Some chord in unison with what we
Is touch’d within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the
In cadence sweet, now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the
Where Memory slept. Wherever I have heardA kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains.
Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,
That in a few short moments I retrace(As in a map the voyager his course)The windings of my way through many years.
Short as in retrospect the journey seems,
It seem’d not always short; the rugged path,
And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn,
Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length.
Yet, feeling present evils, while the
Faintly impress the mind, or not at all,
How readily we wish time spent revoked,
That we might try the ground again, where once(Through inexperience, as we now perceive)We miss’d that happiness we might have found!
Some friend is gone, perhaps his son’s best friend,
A father, whose authority, in
When most severe, and mustering all its force,
Was but the graver countenance of love:
Whose favour, like the clouds of spring, might lower,
And utter now and then an awful voice,
But had a blessing in its darkest frown,
Threatening at once and nourishing the plant.
We loved, but not enough, the gentle
That rear’d us. At a thoughtless age,
By every gilded folly, we
His sheltering side, and wilfully
That converse, which we now in vain regret.
How gladly would the man recall to
The boy’s neglected sire! a mother too,
That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still,
Might he demand them at the gates of death.
Sorrow has, since they went, subdued and
The playful humour; he could now endure(Himself grown sober in the vale of tears)And feel a parent’s presence no restraint.
But not to understand a treasure’s
Till time has stolen away the slighted good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is.
The few that pray at all pray oft amiss,
And, seeking grace to improve the prize they hold,
Would urge a wiser suit than asking more.
The night was winter in its roughest mood;
The morning sharp and clear. But now at
Upon the southern side of the slant hills,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast,
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,
And has the warmth of May. The vault is
Without a cloud, and white without a
The dazzling splendour of the scene below.
Again the harmony comes o’er the vale;
And through the trees I view the embattled
Whence all the music. I again
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as I
The walk, still verdant under oaks and elms,
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
The roof, though moveable through all its
As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed,
And, intercepting in their silent
The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.
The redbreast warbles still, but is
With slender notes, and more than half suppress’d;
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting
From spray to spray, where’er he rests he
From many a twig the pendant drops of ice,
That tinkle in the wither’d leaves below.
Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,
Charms more than silence. Meditation
May think down hours to moments. Here the
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connexion. Knowledge
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which Wisdom builds,
Till smoothed and squared, and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learn’d so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells,
By which the magic art of shrewder
Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall’d.
Some to the fascination of a
Surrender judgment hoodwink’d. Some the
Infatuates, and through labyrinth and
Of error leads them, by a tune entranced.
While sloth seduces more, too weak to
The insupportable fatigue of thought,
And swallowing therefore without pause or
The total grist unsifted, husks and all.
But trees, and rivulets whose rapid
Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,
And sheepwalks populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes in which the primrose ere her
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
By slow solicitation, seize at
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.
What prodigies can power divine
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 nought to wonder at. Should God again,
As once in Gibeon, interrupt the
Of the undeviating and punctual sun,
How would the world admire! but speaks it
An agency divine to make him
His moment when to sink and when to rise,
Age after age, than to arrest his course?
All we behold is miracle; but,
So duly, all is miracle in vain.
Where now the vital energy that moved,
While summer was, the pure and subtle
Through the imperceptible meandering
Of leaf and flower? It sleeps; and the icy
Of unprolific winter has impress’d A cold stagnation on the 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
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,
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
Of neighbouring cypress, or more sable yew,
Her silver globes, light as the foamy
That the wind severs from the broken wave;
The lilac, various in array, now white,
Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if,
Studious of ornament, yet
Which hue she most approved, she chose them all:
Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compensating her sickly
With never-cloying odours, early and late;
Hypericum all bloom, so thick a
Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears; mezereon too,
Though leafless, well attired, and thick
With blushing wreaths, investing every spray;
Althæa with the purple eye; the broom,
Yellow and bright as bullion unalloy’d,
Her blossoms; and luxuriant above
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whose unvarnish’d
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines
The bright profusion of her scatter’d stars.—These have been, and these shall be in their day;
And all this uniform, uncolour’d
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
In heavenly truth; evincing, as she
The grand transition, that there lives and worksA 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 way,
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 swerve not since; that under
Of that controlling ordinance they move,
And need not His immediate hand, who
Prescribed their course, to regulate it now.
Thus dream they, and contrive to save a
The incumbrance of his own concerns, and
The great Artificer of all that
The stress of a continual act, the
Of unremitted vigilance and care,
As too laborious and severe a task.
So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems,
To span omnipotence, and measure might,
That knows no measure, by the scanty
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
So vast in its demands, unless
To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,
And under pressure of some conscious cause?
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 secret fire,
By which the mighty process is maintain’d,
Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose
Slow circling ages are as transient days;
Whose work is without labour; whose
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts;
And whose beneficence no charge 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
With tutelary goddesses and
That were not; and commending as they
To each some province, garden, field, or grove.
But all are under one. One spirit,
Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows,
Rules universal nature. Not a
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,
Of his unrivall’d pencil. He
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
Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or
In nature, from the broad majestic
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts with remembrance of a present God.
His presence, who made all so fair,
Makes all still fairer. As with him no
Is dreary, so with him all seasons please.
Though winter had been none, had man been true,
And earth be punish’d 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
Recovering fast its liquid music, prove.
Who then, that has a mind well strung and
To contemplation, and within his reachA scene so friendly to his favourite task,
Would waste attention at the chequer’d board,
His host of wooden warriors to and
Marching and countermarching, with an
As fix’d as marble, with a forehead
And furrow’d into storms, and with a
Trembling, as if eternity were hung In balance on his conduct of a pin?
Nor envies he aught more their idle sport,
Who pant with application
To trivial joys, and pushing ivory
Across a velvet level, feel a
Akin to rapture, when the bauble
Its destined goal of difficult access.
Nor deems he wiser him, who gives his
To miss, the mercer’s plague, from shop to
Wandering, and littering with unfolded
The polish’d counter, and approving none,
Or promising with smiles to call again.
Nor him who, by his vanity seduced,
And soothed into a dream that he
The difference of a Guido from a daub,
Frequents the crowded auction: station’d
As duly as the Langford of the show,
With glass at eye, and catalogue in hand,
And tongue accomplish’d in the fulsome
And pedantry that coxcombs learn with ease:
Oft as the price-deciding hammer falls,
He notes it in his book, then raps his box,
Swears ‘tis a bargain, rails at his hard
That he has let it pass—but never bids.
Here unmolested, through whatever
The sun proceeds,
I wander. Neither mist,
Nor freezing sky nor sultry, checking me,
Nor stranger intermeddling with my joy.
E’en in the spring and playtime of the year,
That calls the unwonted villager
With all her little ones, a sportive train,
To gather kingcups in the yellow mead,
And prink their hair with daisies, or to pickA cheap but wholesome salad from the brook,
These shades are all my own. The timorous hare,
Grown so familiar with her frequent guest,
Scarce shuns me; and the stockdove
Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor
His long love-ditty for my near approach.
Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm,
That age or injury has hollow’d deep,
Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves,
He has outslept the winter, ventures
To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun,
The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play:
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,
Ascends the neighboring beech; there whisks his brush,
And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,
With all the prettiness of feign’d alarm,
And anger insignificantly fierce.
The heart is hard in nature, and
For human fellowship, as being
Of sympathy, and therefore dead
To love and friendship both, that is not
With sight of animals enjoying life,
Nor feels their happiness augment his own.
The bounding fawn, that darts across the
When none pursues, through mere delight of heart,
And spirits buoyant with excess of glee;
The horse as wanton and almost as fleet,
That skims the spacious meadow at full speed,
Then stops and snorts, and, throwing high his heels,
Starts to the voluntary race again;
The very kine that gambol at high noon,
The total herd receiving first from
That leads the dance a summons to be gay,
Though wild their strange vagaries and
Their efforts, yet resolved with one
To give such act and utterance as they
To ecstacy too big to be suppress’d;—These, and a thousand images of bliss,
With which kind Nature graces every scene,
Where cruel man defeats not her design,
Impart to the benevolent, who
All that are capable of pleasure pleased,
A far superior happiness to theirs,
The comfort of a reasonable joy.
Man scarce had risen, obedient to His
Who form’d him from the dust, his future grave,
When he was crown’d as never king was since.
God set the diadem upon his head,
And angel choirs attended. Wondering
The new-made monarch, while before him pass’d,
All happy, and all perfect in their kind,
The creatures, summon’d from their various
To see their sovereign, and confess his sway.
Vast was his empire, absolute his power,
Or bounded only by a law, whose force‘Twas his sublimest privilege to
And own, the law of universal love.
He ruled with meekness, they obey’d with joy;
No cruel purpose lurk’d within his heart,
And no distrust of his intent in theirs.
So Eden was a scene of harmless sport,
Where kindness on his part, who ruled the whole,
Begat a tranquil confidence in all,
And fear as yet was not, nor cause for fear,
But sin marr’d all; and the revolt of man,
That source of evils not exhausted yet,
Was punish’d with revolt of his from him.
Garden of God, how terrible the
Thy groves and lawns then witness’d! Every heart,
Each animal, of every name, conceivedA jealousy and an instinctive fear,
And, conscious of some danger, either
Precipitate the loathed abode of man,
Or growl’d defiance in such angry sort,
As taught him too to tremble in his turn.
Thus harmony and family
Were driven from Paradise; and in that
The seeds of cruelty, that since have
To such gigantic and enormous growth,
Were sown in human nature’s fruitful soil.
Hence date the persecution and the
That man inflicts on all inferior kinds,
Regardless of their plaints. To make him sport,
To gratify the frenzy of his wrath,
Or his base gluttony, are causes
And just in his account, why bird and
Should suffer torture, and the streams be
With blood of their inhabitants impaled.
Earth groans beneath the burden of a
Waged with defenceless innocence, while he,
Not satisfied to prey on all around,
Adds tenfold bitterness to death by
Needless, and first torments ere he devours.
Now happiest they that occupy the
The most remote from his abhorr’d resort,
Whom once, as delegate of God on earth,
They fear’d, and as his perfect image loved.
The wilderness is theirs, with all its caves,
Its hollow glens, its thickets, and its plains,
Unvisited by man. There they are free,
And howl and roar as likes them, uncontroll’d;
Nor ask his leave to slumber or to play.
Woe to the tyrant, if he dare
Within the confines of their wild domain!
The lion tells him—I am monarch here!
And, if he spare him, spares him on the
Of royal mercy, and through generous
To rend a victim trembling at his foot.
In measure, as by force of instinct drawn,
Or by necessity constrain’d, they
Dependent upon man; those in his fields,
These at his crib, and some beneath his roof;
They prove too often at how dear a rate He sells protection. Witness at his
The spaniel dying for some venial fault,
Under dissection of the knotted scourge;
Witness the patient ox, with stripes and
Driven to the slaughter, goaded, as he runs,
To madness; while the savage at his
Laughs at the frantic sufferer’s fury,
Upon the guiltless passenger o’erthrown.
He too is witness, noblest of the
That wait on man, the flight-performing horse:
With unsuspecting readiness he
His murderer on his back, and, push’d all day,
With bleeding sides and flanks that heave for life,
To the far-distant goal, arrives and dies.
So little mercy shows who needs so much!
Does law, so jealous in the cause of man,
Denounce no doom on the delinquent? None.
He lives, and o’er his brimming beaker boasts(As if barbarity were high desert)The inglorious feat, and clamorous in
Of the poor brute, seems wisely to
The honours of his matchless horse his own.
But many a crime deem’d innocent on
Is register’d in heaven; and these no
Have each their record, with a curse annex’d.
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
But God will never. When he charged the
To assist his foe’s down-fallen beast to rise;
And when the bush-exploring boy that
The young, to let the parent bird go free;
Proved he not plainly that his meaner
Are yet his care, and have an interest all,
All, in the universal Father’s love?
On Noah, and in him on all mankind,
The charter was conferr’d, by which we
The flesh of animals in fee, and claimO’er all we feed on power of life and death.
But read the instrument, and mark it well:
The oppression of a tyrannous
Can find no warrant there. Feed then, and
Thanks for thy food. Carnivorous, through sin,
Feed on the slain, but spare the living brute!
The Governor of all, himself to
So bountiful, in whose attentive
The unfledged raven and the lion’s
Plead not in vain for pity on the
Of hunger unassuaged, has interposed,
Not seldom, his avenging arm, to
The injurious trampler upon Nature’s law,
That claims forbearance even for a brute.
He hates the hardness of a Balaam’s heart;
And, prophet as he was, he might not
The blameless animal, without rebuke,
On which he rode. Her opportune
Saved him, or the unrelenting seer had died.
He sees that human equity is
To interfere, though in so just a cause;
And makes the task his own. Inspiring
And helpless victims with a sense so
Of injury, with such knowledge of their strength,
And such sagacity to take revenge,
That oft the beast has seem’d to judge the man.
An ancient, not a legendary tale,
By one of sound intelligence rehearsed(If such who plead for Providence may
In modern eyes), shall make the doctrine clear.
Where England, stretch’d towards the setting sun,
Narrow and long, o’erlooks the western wave,
Dwelt young Misagathus; a scorner
Of God and goodness, atheist in ostent,
Vicious in act, in temper savage-fierce.
He journey’d; and his chance was as he
To join a traveller, of far different note,
Evander, famed for piety, for
Deserving honour, but for wisdom more.
Fame had not left the venerable manA stranger to the manners of the youth,
Whose face too was familiar to his view.
Their way was on the margin of the land,
O’er the green summit of the rocks, whose
Beats back the roaring surge, scarce heard so high.
The charity that warm’d his heart was
At sight of the man monster. With a smile,
Gentle and affable, and full of grace,
As fearful of offending whom he wish’d Much to persuade, he plied his ear with
Not harshly thunder’d forth, or rudely press’d,
But, like his purpose, gracious, kind, and sweet.“And doest thou dream,” the impenetrable
Exclaimed, “that me the lullabies of age,
And fantasies of dotards such as thou,
Can cheat, or move a moment’s fear in me?
Mark now the proof I give thee, that the
Need no such aids as superstition lends,
To steel their hearts against the dread of death.”He spoke, and to the precipice at
Push’d with a madman’s fury. Fancy shrinks,
And the blood thrills and curdles at the
Of such a gulf as he design’d his grave.
But though the felon on his back could
The dreadful leap, more rational, his
Declined the death, and wheeling swiftly round,
Or e’er his hoof had press’d the crumbling verge,
Baffled his rider, saved against his will.
The frenzy of the brain may be
By medicine well applied, but without
The heart’s insanity admits no cure.
Enraged the more by what might have reform’d His horrible intent, again he
Destruction, with a zeal to be destroy’d,
With sounding whip, and rowels dyed in blood.
But still in vain. The Providence, that meantA longer date to the far nobler beast,
Spared yet again the ignobler for his sake.
And now his prowess proved, and his
Incurable obduracy evinced,
His rage grew cool: and pleased perhaps to have earn’d So cheaply the renown of that attempt,
With looks of some complacence he
His road, deriding much the blank
Of good Evander, still where he was
Fix’d motionless, and petrified with dread.
So on they fared. Discourse on other
Ensuing seem’d to obliterate the past;
And tamer far for so much fury shown (As in the course of rash and fiery men),
The rude companion smiled, as if transform’d.
But ‘twas a transient calm. A storm was near,
An unsuspected storm. His hour was come.
The impious challenger of power
Was now to learn that Heaven, though slow to wrath,
Is never with impunity defied.
His horse, as he had caught his master’s mood,
Snorting, and starting into sudden rage,
Unbidden, and not now to be controll’d,
Rush’d to the cliff, and, having reach’d it, stood.
At once the shock unseated him: he
Sheer o’er the craggy barrier; and, immersed Deep in the flood, found, when he sought it not,
The death he had deserved, and died alone.
So God wrought double justice; made the fool The victim of his own tremendous choice,
And taught a brute the way to safe revenge.
I would not enter on my list of friends(Though graced with polish’d manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the
That crawls at evening in the public path:
But he that has humanity, forewarn’d,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes,
A visitor unwelcome, into
Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove,
The chamber, or refectory, may die:
A necessary act incurs no blame.
Not so when, held within their proper bounds,
And guiltless of offence, they range the air,
Or take their pastime in the spacious field:
There they are privileged; and he that
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,
Disturbs the economy of Nature’s realm,
Who, when she form’d, design’d them an abode.
The sum is this. If man’s convenience, health,
Or safety interfere, his rights and
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all—the meanest things that are,
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,
As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye therefore, who love mercy, teach your
To love it too. The spring-time of our
Is soon dishonour’d and defiled in
By budding ills, that ask a prudent
To check them. But, alas! none sooner shoots,
If unrestrain’d, into luxuriant growth,
Than cruelty, most devilish of them all.
Mercy to him that shows it is the
And righteous limitation of its act,
By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man;
And he that shows none, being ripe in years,
And conscious of the outrage he commits,
Shall seek it, and not find it, in his turn.
Distinguish’d much by reason, and still
By our capacity of grace divine,
From creatures that exist but for our sake,
Which, having served us, perish, we are
Accountable; and God, some future day,
Will reckon with us roundly for the
Of what he deems no mean or trivial trust.
Superior as we are, they yet
Not more on human help than we on theirs.
Their strength, or speed, or vigilance, were
In aid of our defects. In some are
Such teachable and apprehensive parts,
That man’s attainments in his own concerns,
Match’d with the expertness of the brutes in theirs,
Are ofttimes vanquish’d and thrown far behind.
Some show that nice sagacity of smell,
And read with such discernment, in the
And figure of the man, his secret aim,
That oft we owe our safety to a
We could not teach, and must despair to learn.
But learn we might, if not too proud to
To quadruped instructors, many a
And useful quality, and virtue, too,
Rarely exemplified among ourselves—Attachment never to be wean’d or
By any change of fortune; proof
Against unkindness, absence, and neglect;
Fidelity, that neither bribe nor
Can move or warp; and gratitude for
And trivial favours, lasting as the
And glistening even in the dying eye.
Man praises man. Desert in arts or
Wins public honour; and ten thousand
Patiently present at a sacred song,
Commemoration -mad; content to hear(O wonderful effect of music’s power!)Messiah’s eulogy for Handel’s sake.
But less, methinks, than sacrilege might serve(For was it less, what heathen would have
To strip Jove’s statue of his oaken wreath,
And hang it up in honour of a man?)—Much less might serve, when all that we
Is but to gratify an itching ear,
And give the day to a musician’s praise.
Remember Handel? Who, that was not
Deaf as the dead to harmony, forgets,
Or can, the more than Homer of his age?
Yes—we remember him; and while we praise A talent so divine, remember
That His most holy book, from whom it came,
Was never meant, was never used before,
To buckram out the memory of a man.
But hush!—the muse perhaps is too severe;
And, with a gravity beyond the
And measure of the offence, rebukes a
Less impious than absurd, and owing
To want of judgment than to wrong design.
So in the chapel of old Ely House,
When wandering Charles, who meant to be the third,
Had fled from William, and the news was fresh,
The simple clerk, but loyal, did announce,
And eke did rear right merrily, two staves,
Sung to the praise and glory of King George!—Man praises man; and Garrick’s memory next,
When time hath somewhat mellow’d it, and
The idol of our worship while he
The god of our idolatry once more,
Shall have its altar; and the world shall
In pilgrimage to bow before his shrine.
The theatre, too small, shall
Its squeezed contents, and more than it
Shall sigh at their exclusion, and
Ungratified: for there some noble
Shall stuff his shoulders with king Richard’s bunch,
Or wrap himself in Hamlet’s inky cloak,
And strut, and storm, and straddle, stamp, and stare,
To show the world how Garrick did not act—For Garrick was a worshipper himself;
He drew the liturgy, and framed the
And solemn ceremonial of the day,
And call’d the world to worship on the
Of Avon, famed in song. Ah, pleasant
That piety has still in human
Some place, a spark or two not yet extinct.
The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths;
The mulberry-tree stood centre of the dance;
The mulberry-tree was hymn’d with dulcet airs;
And from his touchwood trunk the
Supplied such relics as devotion
Still sacred, and preserves with pious care.
So ‘twas a hallow’d time: decorum reign’d,
And mirth without offence. No few return’d,
Doubtless much edified, and all refresh’d.—Man praises man. The rabble, all alive,
From tippling benches, cellars, stalls, and styes,
Swarm in the streets. The statesman of the day,
A pompous and slow-moving pageant, comes.
Some shout him, and some hang upon his car,
To gaze in his eyes, and bless him. Maidens
Their kerchiefs, and old women weep for joy;
While others, not so satisfied,
The gilded equipage, and turning
His steeds, usurp a place they well deserve.
Why? what has charm’d them? Hath he saved the state?
No. Doth he purpose its salvation? No.
Enchanting novelty, that moon at full,
That finds out every crevice of the
That is not sound and perfect, hath in
Wrought this disturbance. But the wane is near,
And his own cattle must suffice him soon.
Thus idly do we waste the breath of praise,
And dedicate a tribute, in its
And just direction sacred, to a
Doom’d to the dust, or lodged already there.
Encomium in old time was poets’ work!
But poets, having lavishly long
Exhausted all materials of the art,
The task now falls into the public hand;
And I, contented with an humble theme,
Have pour’d my stream of panegyric
The vale of Nature, where it creeps and
Among her lovely works with a
And unambitious course, reflecting clear,
If not the virtues, yet the worth, of brutes.
And I am recompensed, and deem the
Of poetry not lost, if verse of
May stand between an animal and woe,
And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge.
The groans of Nature in this nether world,
Which Heaven has heard for ages, have an end.
Foretold by prophets, and by poets sung,
Whose fire was kindled at the prophets’ lamp,
The time of rest, the promised Sabbath, comes.
Six thousand years of sorrow have well
Fulfill’d their tardy and disastrous
Over a sinful world; and what
Of this tempestuous state of human
Is merely as the working of a
Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest:
For He, whose car the winds are, and the
The dust that waits upon his sultry march,
When sin hath moved him, and his wrath is hot,
Shall visit earth in mercy; shall
Propitious in his chariot paved with love;
And what his storms have blasted and
For man’s revolt, shall with a smile repair.
Sweet is the harp of prophecy; too
Not to be wrong’d by a mere mortal touch:
Nor can the wonders it records be
To meaner music, and not suffer loss.
But when a poet, or when one like me,
Happy to rove among poetic flowers,
Though poor in skill to rear them, lights at
On some fair theme, some theme divinely fair,
Such is the impulse and the spur he feels,
To give it praise proportion’d to its worth,
That not to attempt it, arduous as he
The labour, were a task more arduous still.
O scenes surpassing fable, and yet true,
Scenes of accomplish’d bliss! which who can see,
Though but in distant prospect, and not
His soul refresh’d with foretaste of the joy?
Rivers of gladness water all the earth,
And clothe all climes with beauty; the
Of barrenness is past. The fruitful
Laughs with abundance; and the land, once lean,
Or fertile only in its own disgrace,
Exults to see its thistly curse repeal’d.
The various seasons woven into one,
And that one season an eternal spring,
The garden fears no blight, and needs no fence,
For there is none to covet, all are full.
The lion, and the libbard, and the
Graze with the fearless flocks; all bask at
Together, or all gambol in the
Of the same grove, and drink one common stream.
Antipathies are none. No foe to
Lurks in the serpent now: the mother sees,
And smiles to see, her infant’s playful
Stretch’d forth to dally with the crested worm,
To stroke his azure neck, or to
The lambent homage of his arrowy tongue.
All creatures worship man, and all
One Lord, one Father. Error has no place;
That creeping pestilence is driven away;
The breath of heaven has chased it. In the
No passion touches a discordant string,
But all is harmony and love.
Is not: the pure and uncontaminate
Holds it due course, nor fears the frost of age.
One song employs all nations; and all cry,“Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us!”The dwellers in the vales and on the
Shout to each other, and the mountain
From distant mountains catch the flying joy;
Till, nation after nation taught the strain,
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosannah round.
Behold the measure of the promise fill’d;
See Salem built, the labour of a God;
Bright as a sun, the sacred city shines;
All kingdoms and all princes of the
Flock to that light; the glory of all
Flows into her; unbounded is her joy,
And endless her increase. Thy rams are there,
Nebaioth, and the flocks of Kedar there;
The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind,
And Saba’s spicy groves, pay tribute there.
Praise in all her gates: upon her walls,
And in her streets, and in her spacious courts,
Is heard salvation. Eastern Java
Kneels with the native of the farthest west;
And Æthiopia spreads abroad the hand,
And worships. Her report has travell’d
Into all lands. From every clime they
To see thy beauty and to share thy joy,
O Sion! an assembly such as
Saw never, such as Heaven stoops down to see.
Thus heavenward all things tend. For all were
Perfect, and all must be at length restored.
So God has greatly purposed; who would
In his dishonour’d works himself
Dishonour, and be wrong’d without redress.
Haste, then, and wheel away a shatter’d world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! we would see(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)A world that does not dread and hate his
And suffer for its crime; would learn how
The creature is that God pronounces good,
How pleasant in itself what pleases him.
Here every drop of honey hides a sting;
Worms wind themselves into our sweetest flowers;
And e’en the joy that haply some poor
Derives from heaven, pure as the fountain is,
Is sullied in the stream, taking a
From touch of human lips, at best impure.
O for a world in principle as
As this is gross and selfish! over
Custom and prejudice shall bear no sway,
That govern all things here, shouldering
The meek and modest Truth, and forcing
To seek a refuge from the tongue of
In nooks obscure, far from the ways of men:
Where Violence shall never lift the sword,
Nor Cunning justify the proud man’s wrong,
Leaving the poor no remedy but tears:
Where he, that fills an office, shall
The occasion it presents of doing
More than the perquisite: where Law shall
Seldom, and never but as Wisdom
And Equity; not jealous more to guardA worthless form, than to decide aright:—Where Fashion shall not sanctify abuse,
Nor smooth Good-breeding (supplemental grace)With lean performance ape the work of Love!
Come then, and, added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth,
Thou who alone art worthy! It was
By ancient covenant, ere Nature’s birth;
And thou hast made it thine by purchase since,
And overpaid its value with thy blood.
Thy saints proclaim thee king; and in their hearts Thy title is engraven with a
Dipp’d in the fountain of eternal love.
Thy saints proclaim thee king; and thy
Gives courage to their foes, who, could they
The dawn of thy last advent, long desired,
Would creep into the bowels of the hills,
And flee for safety to the falling rocks.
The very spirit of the world is
Of its own taunting question, ask’d so long,“Where is the promise of your Lord’s approach?”The infidel has shot his bolts away,
Till, his exhausted quiver yielding none,
He gleans the blunted shafts that have recoil’d,
And aims them at the shield of Truth again.
The veil is rent, rent too by priestly hands,
That hides divinity from mortal eyes;
And all the mysteries to faith proposed,
Insulted and traduced, are cast aside,
As useless, to the moles and to the bats.
They now are deem’d the faithful, and are praised,
Who, constant only in rejecting thee,
Deny thy Godhead with a martyr’s zeal,
And quit their office for their error’s sake.
Blind, and in love with darkness! yet e’en
Worthy, compared with sycophants, who
Thy name adoring, and then preach thee man!
So fares thy church.
But how thy church may
The world takes little thought. Who will may preach,
And what they will. All pastors are
To wandering sheep, resolved to follow none.
Two gods divide them all—Pleasure and Gain:
For these they live, they sacrifice to these,
And in their service wage perpetual
With Conscience and with thee. Lust in their
And mischief in their hands, they roam the
To prey upon each other: stubborn, fierce,
High-minded, foaming out their own disgrace.
Thy prophets speak of such; and, noting
The features of the last degenerate times,
Exhibit every lineament of these.
Come then, and, added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, as radiant as the rest,
Due to thy last and most effectual work,
Thy word fulfill’d, the conquest of a world!
He is the happy man whose life e’en
Shows somewhat of that happier life to come;
Who, doom’d to an obscure but tranquil state,
Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose,
Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him
Content indeed to sojourn while he
Below the skies, but having there his home.
The world o’erlooks him in her busy
Of objects, more illustrious in her view;
And, occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o’erlooks the world.
She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;
He seeks not hers, for he has proved them vain.
He cannot skim the ground like summer
Pursuing gilded flies; and such he
Her honours, her emoluments, her joys.
Therefore in Contemplation is his bliss,
Whose power is such, that whom she lifts from
She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,
And shows him glories yet to be reveal’d.
Not slothful he, though seeming unemploy’d,
And censured oft as useless. Stillest
Oft water fairest meadows, and the
That flutters least is longest on the wing.
Ask him, indeed, what trophies he has raised,
Or what achievements of immortal
He purposes, and he shall answer—None.
His warfare is within. There, unfatigued,
His fervent spirit labours. There he fights,
And there obtains fresh triumphs o’er himself,
And never-withering wreaths, compared with
The laurels that a Cæsar reaps are weeds.
Perhaps the self-approving haughty world,
That as she sweeps him with her whistling
Scarce deigns to notice him, or, if she see,
Deems him a cipher in the works of God,
Receives advantage from his noiseless hours,
Of which she little dreams. Perhaps she
Her sunshine and her rain, her blooming
And plenteous harvest, to the prayer he makes,
When,
Isaac-like, the solitary
Walks forth to meditate at even-tide,
And think on her who thinks not for herself.
Forgive him, then, thou bustler in
Of little worth, an idler in the best,
If, author of no mischief and some good,
He seek his proper happiness by
That may advance, but cannot hinder, thine.
Nor, though he tread the secret path of life,
Engage no notice, and enjoy much ease,
Account him an encumbrance on the state,
Receiving benefits, and rendering none.
His sphere, though humble, if that humble
Shine with his fair example, and though
His influence, if that influence all be spent In soothing sorrow and in quenching strife,
In aiding helpless indigence, in
From which at least a grateful few
Some taste of comfort in a world of woe;
Then let the supercilious great
He serves his country, recompenses
The state, beneath the shadow of whose
He sits secure, and in the scale of
Holds no ignoble, though a slighted, place.
The man, whose virtues are more felt than seen,
Must drop indeed the hope of public praise;
But he may boast, what few that win it can,
That, if his country stand not by his skill,
At least his follies have not wrought her fall.
Polite Refinement offers him in
Her golden tube, through which a sensual
Draws gross impurity, and likes it well,
The neat conveyance hiding all the offence.
Not that he peevishly rejects a
Because that world adopts it. If it
The stamp and clear impression of good sense,
And be not costly more than of true worth,
He puts it on, and, for decorum sake,
Can wear it e’en as gracefully as she.
She judges of refinement by the eye,
He by the test of conscience, and a
Not soon deceived; aware that what is
No polish can make sterling; and that vice,
Though well perfumed and elegantly dress’d,
Like an unburied carcass trick’d with
Is but a garnish’d nuisance, fitter
For cleanly riddance than for fair attire.
So life glides smoothly and by stealth away,
More golden than that age of fabled
Renown’d in ancient song; not vex’d with
Or stain’d with guilt, beneficent,
Of God and man, and peaceful in its end.
So glide my life away! and so, at last,
My share of duties decently fulfill’d,
May some disease, not tardy to
Its destined office, yet with gentle stroke,
Dismiss me weary to a safe retreat,
Beneath the turf that I have often trod.
It shall not grieve me then that once, when
To dress a Sofa with the flowers of verse,
I play’d awhile, obedient to the fair,
With that light task; but soon, to please her more,
Whom flowers alone I knew would little please,
Let fall the unfinish’d wreath, and roved for fruit;
Roved far, and gather’d much: some harsh, ‘tis true,
Pick’d from the thorns and briars of reproof,
But wholesome, well-digested; grateful
To palates that can taste immortal truth;
Insipid else, and sure to be despised.
But all is in His hand, whose praise I seek.
In vain the poet sings, and the world hears,
If he regard not, though divine the theme.‘Tis not in artful measures, in the
And idle tinkling of a minstrel’s lyre,
To charm His ear, whose eye is on the heart;
Whose frown can disappoint the proudest strain,
Whose approbation — prosper even fair:
Lady :
Mrs.
Unwin, his closest companion and friend of many years, and the Mary of the verses To Mary.
